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n international human rights organization has accused President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo of scapegoating democracy for his failure to reform government policies it claims have empowered militant groups and fueled sectarianism in Indonesia.

Phelim Kine, the deputy director of the Asia division of New York-based Human Rights Watch, said in a statement that Jokowi should stop blaming democracy for rising religious intolerance in Indonesia and instead attempt to eliminate all regulations that are deemed discriminatory.

“Indonesia’s President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo has an unlikely scapegoat for the country’s rise in religious intolerance and sectarianism: democracy,” Kine said on his organization’s website on Thursday.

He said the Indonesian legal system perpetuated discrimination against religious minorities, citing the 1965 Blasphemy Law and a ministerial regulation on houses of worship as discriminatory pieces of legislation.

The Blasphemy Law, which has already targeted high-profile figures, such as Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama and Islam Defenders Front (FPI) leader Rizieq Shihab, punishes those who are deemed to deviate from or insult the six officially recognized religions in Indonesia: Islam, Catholicism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism.

The regulation on houses of worship, meanwhile, stipulates that minorities should get approval to construct or renovate places of worship, a stipulation that has frequently been used to discriminate against minority groups seeking to build houses of worship.

“The complicity of police and government officials in this intolerance has continued unchecked under Jokowi,” Kine said.

President Jokowi said on Wednesday that Indonesian democracy had “gone too far.” He said that “political freedom has opened the door for extreme politics, such as liberalism, fundamentalism, sectarianism, radicalism, terrorism and other ideologies that contradict the state ideology Pancasila.”

On the same day as Jokowi made his statement, another human rights organization, Amnesty International, released its 2016/2017 annual report, detailing human rights violations around the world, including Indonesia.

The UK-based organization revealed in the report that human rights violations persisted in Indonesia. “Despite the [Indonesian] authorities’ commitments to resolve past cases of human rights violations, millions of victims and their families are still denied truth, justice and reparation,” it said.

The organization detailed a number of cases, where Indonesians’ freedom of expression and human rights were jeopardized. They included a case in May 2016, when former leaders of disbanded religious group Gafatar were arrested and later charged with blasphemy and treason.

The case has been tried at the East Jakarta District Court and is currently awaiting a verdict, which is scheduled to be read on March 7.

Another case in point is the investigation into the September 2004 murder of rights activist Munir Said Thalib.

President Jokowi pledged in September last year to resolve the murder case, while the government-sanctioned Public Information Commission (KIP) ruled in October 2016 that a 2005 report by a fact-finding team established by the administration of then president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to investigate Munir’s death, should be made public.

On Feb. 16, however, the Jakarta State Administrative Court (PTUN) ruled that the government did not need to publish the report. (mrc)