W

hen first president Sukarno was under pressure from Muslim groups in 1965, he complied with their calls by issuing a law for the prevention of “religious abuse and/or defamation” to “protect” official religions from mystical indigenous faiths.

 At that time the law was used to protect Indonesia’s official religions of Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Confucianism and Buddhism. It was aimed at followers of indigenous faiths who were considered to have blasphemed against official beliefs.

Now there is growing concern this draconian law not only targets followers of indigenous faiths but also followers of minority religions, along with people from ethnic minorities, who have done or said things deemed to insult majority religions.

 It is important to consider the relative numbers of adherents of different religions in Indonesia. Around 87 percent of the country’s 250 million people are Muslims; around 7 percent Protestant, around 3 percent Catholic, with Hindus, Buddhists, and Confucianists each under 2 percent.

The recent imprisonment of a Chinese Buddhist woman, Meliana, in North Sumatra for one-and-a-half years for complaining about the volume of the azan (call to prayer) is a clear instance where Indonesia was breaching its obligations to respect the right to freedom of expression.

 Meliana lives in the overwhelmingly majority Muslim Tanjung Balai city, home to around 170,000 people, of whom 85 percent are Muslim and around 6 percent Buddhist.

She is also a member of the Chinese minority, which comprises about 1.2 percent of Indonesia’s population.  

Her alleged “crime” was to ask for the mosque around 6 meters from her house to lower the volume of its loudspeaker, which she has denied.

Meliana’s jailing clearly violates her right to freedom of expression, which is guaranteed under the Constitution and international law.

 A similar case occurred in 2017, when a court ordered a two-year jail term for then Jakarta governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahja Purnama, a Chinese Christian in the Muslim majority city, in a blasphemy case for criticizing a Quranic verse prohibiting Muslims from electing non-Muslims as leaders.

Both cases saw followers of majority religions pushing for blasphemy charges against the defendants, throughout the process from the investigation to the trial.

 Meliana’s case triggered the worst anti-Chinese riot in the country since 1998 when angry mobs destroyed at least eight Buddhist places of worship in Tanjung Balai. Ahok’s case triggered the largest mass protests of around 1 million Muslim protesters in Jakarta that the country had ever seen.

That such pressure has instigated the investigation and imprisonment of these two people breaches the principle of impartial investigation and fair trial, which applies to all in Indonesia.

In Meliana’s case, the North Sumatra deputy police chief in 2016 asserted that she had not committed an offenSe and should not be named a suspect.

Ahok’s case also showed a similar pattern, in which National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian stated publicly that Ahok had no intention to insult Islam.

But similarly the two were later named suspects by the police after the police received strong pressure from Muslim groups.

After the blasphemy laws were introduced in 1965, for over 30 years they were used to prosecute only around 10 individuals. This was between 1965 and 1998 during former president Soeharto’s leadership, which clamped down on freedom of expression.

That statistic pales in comparison with what has happened in recent years. Between 2005 and 2014, Amnesty International recorded at least 106 individuals who were prosecuted and convicted under blasphemy laws.

In 2017 and 2018 alone, 17 people have been imprisoned under blasphemy laws, including Ahok and Meliana.

Early in 2017 a court in Jakarta convicted three leaders of the now disbanded religious minority group Fajar Nusantara Movement (Gafatar), for blaspheming Islam.

This came after the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) issued a religious fatwa declaring the movement heretical for combining the teachings of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. That conviction clearly violates the right of members of that group to freedom of religion.

Under Indonesian law, blasphemy carries a penalty of up to five years in prison.

While countries are permitted under international human rights law to impose certain restrictions on the exercise of the right to freedom of expression where such restrictions are demonstrably necessary and proportionate to protect the rights of others, this cannot be used to shield belief systems from criticism.

The right to religious freedom protects the rights of individuals, but does not protect religious belief systems and does not protect a religion or belief from being criticized or ridiculed.

Certain Muslim groups are urging the use of these draconian laws against whoever they claim has insulted Islam. This intolerance and divisiveness threatens pluralism, tolerance and freedoms of expression and religion in Indonesia.

Moreover, the vague stipulations in such laws provide an opportunity for the authorities to use them against religious and ethnic minorities.

Amnesty International calls for the immediate and unconditional release of these prisoners of conscience and urges the Indonesian authorities to repeal the blasphemy laws and related regulations.

These draconian rules must be prevented from claiming even more victims in the future.

 ________________________________

The writer is executive director of Amnesty International Indonesia.