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hmadiyah followers from Manislor, Kuningan, in West Java have turned to the central government in Jakarta to get their electronic identification (e-ID) cards issued after years of being denied the cards.

Fifteen members of the community went to the Home Ministry’s Population and Civil Registration Agency (Dukcapil) office in Jakarta to report the Kuningan administration for refusing to issue e-IDs for 1,600 Ahmadis in Manislor, as well as to ask the central Dukcapil office in Jakarta to take over the
responsibility.

“We came here and asked for help because one of the options given to us in a previous meeting was that our e-IDs could be issued outside Kuningan if the local administration refused to do so,” Desi Aries Sandy, one of the Manislor Ahmadis, told The Jakarta Post.

The 28-year old housewife referred to a meeting between the Ahmadiyah sect and the Kuningan administrators facilitated by Dukcapil on July 10 this year, a meeting that required the local administration to immediately issue e-IDs to Desi and the other members of the Ahmadiyah community.

The meeting apparently failed to persuade the Kuningan regency administration to comply with its obligations because none of the 1,600 Ahmadis have yet received their e-IDs.

According to Desi, the local administration asked members of the sect to renounce their faith, and convert to Sunni Islam, in order to obtain their e-IDs.

The lack of e-IDs has caused members of the community to suffer from various forms of discrimination.

Desi herself recalled a recent incident when she could not withdraw money from her bank account because she could not show her e-ID. Some of her relatives also had to cancel plans to perform the haj because they were unregistered.

“Without e-IDs, they will not be able to access many of the government’s social services, such as the BPJS [Healthcare and Social Security Agency]. Their marriages are unregistered. They cannot even go anywhere around the country by plane or train because we need ID to arrange travel by such transportation,” said activist Syamsul Alam Agus from the Yayasan Satu Keadilan (YSK), one of the human rights organizations that supervises Manislor’s Ahmadis in their search for justice.

Persecution of Ahmadis in Manislor and other parts of the country has intensified since 2005 when the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) officially declared Ahmadiyah a deviant sect, and called on the government to ban it. The MUI’s fatwa has encouraged violence against members of the sect until today.

On Monday, Desi and her fellow Ahmadis also reported the Kuningan regency administration to the Indonesian Ombudsman. It was the second time they filed the report after the first report on June 20, this year.

In responding to the matter, the director of Dukcapil, Zudan Arif Fakrulloh, told the Post that his office would continuously push the Kuningan administration to fulfill the job of issuing the e-IDs to members of the local Ahmadiyah sect.

“The Kuningan [administration] has no option but to issue the e-IDs,” Zudan said.

He dismissed suggestions that his office would take over the responsibility of issuing the e-IDs should the local administration refuse to comply.

“There is no such option. It is the Kuningan [administration] that must issue the e-IDs.”

Home Minister Tjahjo Kumolo said the problem with the Ahmadis was that many of them did not want to be labeled as other than Muslims in their ID cards, while the local administrations insisted they were not Muslims.

“They do not want [to be labeled as other] than Islam in the religion space in their ID cards, so the local administrations has refused to issue the cards.”