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Permit for Riau Islands church revoked over local fears 'it may turn into an icon'
Riau Islands FKUB head Ahars Sulaiman said the church had violated several requirements, including that it had not earned support from 70 percent of residents in the Muslim-majority area.
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Illustration of a church. (Shutterstock/Chiangrai)
T
he construction of another Christian house of worship in Indonesia was abruptly halted after the Tanjungpinang administration in Riau Islands revoked the building permit (IMB) for the Bethel Church of Indonesia (GBI) My Home church last month.
The move followed a claim by a local interfaith communication forum (FKUB) that the church had not met the requirements set by a controversial 2006 joint ministerial decree on places of worship.
GBI My Home pastor Baskoni Ginting said the congregation started preparing for construction in 2016 by informing the neighbors and surrounding communities about its plans to build a church at the D'Green City housing complex.
The joint ministerial decree requires a congregation to get 90 signatures from its members and another 60 from other locals before building a house of worship.
The church eventually obtained an IMB issued by the one-stop integrated service (PTSP) agency in 2018. However, the permit was only good for a year since Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) officers removed on Dec. 23 last year the IMB signpost located in the middle of the site, bringing the church's construction to a halt, Baskoni said.
"They said that there was a finding alluding that we had used ID cards of residents who disagreed with the construction, when in fact we had obtained 110 ID cards and the residents' signatures. We've done that since 2016, starting at the community and neighborhood level to the PTSP agency until the IMB was issued. However, the permit was revoked," he said.
Baskoni added that the construction of GBI My Home was important as it would be used by about 1,200 registered congregants, who for now had to pray in an old church building located about 5 kilometers away from the new church.
