Wisma Transito was designed as a transit center for local people who intended to resettle on other islands under the state-sponsored transmigration program during the days of the New Order regime (1966-1998). It was designed to accommodate 60 people who would take part in agricultural training for three weeks at the most.

Back then, open sectarian conflicts were rare. Obviously, it never occurred to the builders that several decades on, it would turn into a shelter to house scores of people for many years.

Now, the decrepit 1,000-square-meter property consisting of three long adjacent houses is testament to 12 years of hardship that the displaced Ahmadis have endured — one of the longest periods of internal displacement for victims of sectarian conflict that Indonesia has ever seen.

Families live in small compartments separated by pieces of fabric, plywood and cardboard sheets. Don’t even ask about privacy.

As many as 117 Ahmadis are housed in the facility. They were forcibly evicted from their homes in Ketapang, an agricultural village in western Lombok, in 2006, and their children born in the shelter. In the span of 12 years, they have counted 28 births and nine adult deaths there.

The internally displaced people cook meals along the alleyways. They also use the space to keep furniture they managed to save from the marauding mob and which they hope they can use again when they return — if their ultimate wish is ever fulfilled.

Their future is uncertain. The end of 2008 also saw the end of government aid for the victims of violence. They no longer received foodstuff like instant noodles, medicine or secondhand clothing. Local social affairs officials told them the law stipulated that locally displaced people like them were entitled to government aid only for a maximum of two years.

Since then, they have had to make do with limited skills to make ends meet as casual workers, motorcycle taxi drivers, itinerate barbers or food hawkers. Some are brave enough to grow rice and vegetable on the largely neglected farmland in the village they fled and return to Transito at night.

The people who have been displaced in their own land have no one to rely on. Everybody here shares the same dream: to return to their home village and rebuild their shattered lives.

“We want to rediscover our freedom, rebuild our finances and raise our children like other people,” says Munikah. The 41-year-old woman knows only well that this will not happen in the foreseeable future. They marked last week’s Idul Fitri in the shelter.

She runs a small kiosk selling snacks and essential commodities, with fellow displaced people being regular customers. Her husband, Sahdan, 45, is an itinerate barber with an irregular income. They have a 10-year-old daughter, Transita Sinta Nuriyah Safitri, partly named after the wife of the late president Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid, Sinta Nuriyah, whom Munikah admires for her humbleness, generosity and compassion.

“My daughter was born the day she [Gus Dur’s wife] paid us a visit here at Transito in 2007,” Munikah says. “We need more public figures like her, leaders who care about others’ suffering.”

The lack of government aid has made life harder for Abdullah, 45, who was forced to abandon his farm. He is now a casual construction worker and acts as a trash picker when there are no construction projects.

Recently, the local administration offered the displaced people three options: move to low-cost apartments or detached housing to be built by the government or move to other islands under the transmigration program. But none of the choices are certain. Some are suspicious that the options may be a ploy by politicians to win support from the marginalized group to win the forthcoming election.

Bad rules

In 2013, the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) criticized the government’s sluggish response to the crisis. “They have lost privacy and their sense of security,” then Komnas HAM chairman Imdadun Rahmat said.

The prolonged crisis reflects how poorly the government handles ramifications of sectarian conflicts in the multicultural country. The state recognizes only six religions: Buddhism, Catholicism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam and Protestantism.

The actual number of Ahmadis in Indonesia is virtually unknown. The government estimates there are 500, but the Indonesian Jamaah Ahlulbait Association (IJABI), or the Ahmadi governing body, claims there are between 2.5 million and 5 million.

Ahmadis and Shiites make up about 1 percent of Indonesian Muslims while an overwhelmingly 99 percent are Sunnis. Approximation is hard to establish because few are willing to state their faith for fear of persecution.

In an interview with tempo.co, IJABI chairman Jalaluddin Rakhmat said Ahmadis chose to remain invincible, mingling with those of other Islamic branches rather than risk harassment. This is possible because Ahmadis’ rituals are basically the same as those of Sunnis.

Discrimination against Ahmadis and Shiites has found endorsement under an Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) fatwa, first issued in 1980 and reaffirmed in 2005, which declares the sect founded by Ghulam Mirza Ahmad as heretical because its followers regard him as the last prophet while mainstream Islam recognizes Muhammad as the last prophet. MUI has declared that Ahmadiyah is not part of Islam.

Cases of violence against Ahmadis and Shiites rose after the administration of president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, whose credo was “make a thousand friends and zero enemies”, issued a joint ministerial decree in 2008, which aimed to limit their activities.

Basically, they are not outlawed but are forbidden from proselytizing to those of other faiths. The decree also forbids the local religious majority from taking the law into their hands.

The controversial decree was enforced following a wave of street protests organized by hard-line groups such as the Islam Defenders Front (FPI), Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia and Majelis Taklim Jakarta.

Human Rights Watch recorded 30 Ahmadiyah mosques forcibly closed down by militant groups with the tacit support of state institutions. At the height of the anti-Ahmadiyah campaigns, assailants killed three Ahmadis in Cikeusik, Banten, in 2011. The perpetrators received only three- to six-month jail sentences.

Maulana Saleh Ahmadi, an adviser to West Nusa Tenggara Ahmadi communities, has recorded nine attacks and forcible evictions of believers in the province between 2002 and May 2018, the latest being one that occurred in East Lombok last month.

Interestingly, government authorities have sided with the perpetrators in every case, putting the blame on the Ahmadis, accusing them of unlawful propagation in violation of the 2008 ministerial decree, which Maulana has denied. To the Ahmadi’s dismay, the authorities have hardly taken any legal action against
perpetrators.

“This is the real issue. Perpetrators enjoy impunity. Everywhere we are, we feel threatened no matter how much we uphold civility,” he says.

A public activity that the Transito residents routinely perform is a blood drive, which is held up to four times a year, with 80 people participating in each session. This altruism is meant to bode well with the Ahmadis’ doctrine, “love all and hate none”.

Disillusioned

Syahidin, 59, who coordinates the displaced people at Transito, says his brethren have not lost hope of returning to their home village some day to till their farms and send their children to school. However, since the government stopped aid and abandoned them, the people have become increasingly disillusioned.

“Nobody listens to us anymore,” Syahidin says. “Maybe the government doesn’t even think we exist. Now we’re totally resigned, but grateful that we have the strength to carry on.”

Although the people have ID cards as Mataram city residents, they are still denied their basic right to benefit from state programs like state health insurance and educational assistance that the Jokowi administration started in 2014. Uninsured Transito residents with serious illness do not have access to hospitals. They have to pay tap water and electricity.

They are forever worried about the assets they left behind when they fled their village because the government has promised neither compensation nor security. The local administration continues to forbid them from returning to Ketapang.

“We feel like we live under colonial rule,” says Syahidin. “We want nothing more than to return […] a dream that never came true during president Yudhoyono’s two terms in office [2004-2014]. Now, President Jokowi is doing little to help us.”

In 2016, Ahmadi children born in the camp wrote a letter to the President, appealing to him for help to return to their ancestral land in Ketapang for a better life.

“Dear Pak Jokowi, we Transito children want to return to where we belong. Please listen to our appeal,” said a line in the letter read out by 9-year-old Barahim to the media because the children had no idea where and how to deliver their message.

It is not known if the President even heard the children’s voices.

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It has been 12 years since more than 100 Ahmadis were resettled at Wisma Transito, a dilapidated guesthouse in the West Nusa Tenggara provincial capital of Mataram, after they were forced out of their village in 2006 by Sunni neighbors who accused them of being heretic. This week, they will mark Idul Fitri in the shelters. Now living in poverty with no aid from the government, their plight reflects the state’s incompetence in ensuring justice for the oppressed minority religious group. The Jakarta Post correspondent Panca Nugraha takes a close look how the Ahmadis survive.

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