Indonesia: Persecution of Gafatar Religious Group | WPN World People News

Indonesian officials and security forces have been complicit in the violent forced eviction of more than 7,000 members of the Gafatar religious community from their homes on Kalimantan island since January 2016, Human Rights Watch said on March 29, 2016.

Human Rights Watch research in West and East Kalimantan provinces found that security forces failed to protect members of Gerakan Fajar Nusantara, known as Gafatar, standing by while mobs from the ethnic Malay and Dayak communities looted and destroyed properties owned by the group’s members. Government officials transferred Gafatar members to unofficial detention centers and then to their home towns not as a short-term safety measure but apparently to end their presence on the island and dissolve the religious group.

“Ethnic groups and state officials have acted hand-in-hand in the name of ‘religious harmony’ to deny members of the Gafatar religious community their basic rights to security and religious freedom,” said Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director. “Government agencies and security forces did little to protect Gafatar members from expulsion, but instead assisted in their forced eviction, locked them up, and scattered them around the country.”

The security forces prevented physical assaults on Gafatar members, but only by forcibly evacuating them from Kalimantan to Java, members told Human Rights Watch. Authorities then arbitrarily detained and interrogated them and threatened them with criminal charges.

The forced eviction and detention followed a wave of intense public animosity against the group fueled by media reports in early January of allegations by relatives of Gafatar members that the community engages in abductions and forced recruitment. The Gafatar have long generated public suspicion due to their belief system, which combines Islam with Christian and Jewish beliefs, leading to accusations that Gafatar members practice “deviant teachings.”

Media reports also claimed, without providing evidence, that Gafatar was a separatist movement bent on creating an independent theocracy in Kalimantan.

On January 14, Home Affairs Minister Tjahjo Kumolo instructed regional administrations to close down Gafatar offices. On March 24, Attorney General Muhammad Prasetyo announced a joint decree signed by Minister of Religious Affairs Lukman Saifuddin and Minister of Home Affairs Tjahjo Kumolo banning Gafatar activities and propagation of the group’s beliefs. Punishments for violations include a maximum five-year prison term, based on the 1965 blasphemy law.

At a news conference on March 24, Attorney General Prasetyo said: “If we let it go on, Gafatar could potentially cause public unrest and trigger various other sensitive issues. So I hope all parties understand that this [is] for the sake of maintaining religious harmony.”

A Gafatar spokeswoman, Farah Meifira, told Human Rights Watch that violent mobs forcibly evicted 2,422 families, a total of 7,916 people, including many children, from West Kalimantan and East Kalimantan provinces between mid-January and mid-February. At the peak of the crackdown, in late January and early February, Indonesian authorities were detaining more than 6,000 Gafatar members forcibly evicted from Kalimantan in at least six unofficial detention centers in the provinces of Jakarta, Yogyakarta, West Central, and East Java. Human Rights Watch has been unable to independently confirm these figures, but in the first two weeks of February visited three detention centers in Java that each held at least 800 Gafatar members. At the time of writing, there are currently at least 302 Gafatar members, including at least 100 children, who remain in detention in Central Java’s Boyalali regency awaiting transfer to their hometowns in North Sumatra.

Gafatar members told Human Rights Watch that officials forbade them from leaving the facilities except for short excursions to purchase food and other necessities. They said government officials also threatened them with “religious reeducation,” “deradicalization counselling,” and prosecutions for blasphemy. In at least one detention center, in Boyolali, Central Java, military personnel subjected about a thousand Gafatar members to mandatory “patriotic education,” all-day sessions about state ideology and civic education.

Since mid-February, the government has released most detained Gafatar members, but it has failed to adopt measures to protect their rights to freedom of religion, movement and association. Members say that the Indonesian government has not offered them the means and security to safely return to their homes in Kalimantan.

Instead, the government has discouraged Gafatar members from returning to Kalimantan, requiring them to return instead to their original home towns following their release from detention centers. Government officials have enforced this forcible relocation by compelling Gafatar members to be released into the custody of either local officials or relatives from their home town.

The Indonesian government should take prompt action to end the persecution of the Gafatar religious community in Indonesia, Human Rights Watch said. The joint decree effectively banning the group should be revoked. The government should help group members return safely to their homes in Kalimantan, and provide effective security to prevent further harassment and violence. It should provide prompt and adequate compensation or other reparation for property lost. The authorities should investigate and appropriately prosecute officials, security force personnel and local residents responsible for the forced eviction and other unlawful acts against members of the Gafatar community.

“The government’s abuse of Gafatar members’ rights is the latest example of official complicity with forces of intolerance in Indonesia,” Kine said. “The Gafatar, like the Shia, Ahmadiyah, and some Christian congregations, have learned the hard way that officials and security forces obligated to protect religious minorities are all-too-ready to deny them their freedoms.”

Source: Human Rights Watch