E-KTP Program Makes Allowances for Citizens Outside Six Official Religions
Robertus Wardi | February 21, 2012
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499365But where do the naked dancers currently under arrest in Palembang keep their ID cards? Surely the police will have to conduct an internal body search to determine their religion and then which court to process them!!
@benimaru, I'm with you on this one. There should also be a column for 'hobbies' and 'favourite type of fruit.'
nothing will change - just words
Its already permitted to not declare BTW on certain documents - but actually try it and see the result
Just more BS - truly Indonesia
I agree with anon. Just leave it out of ID cards. You need to collect data on how many Moslem, Christian, Buddhist, etc living in this oh-so-peaceful-and-pluralistic Indonesia? Keep the data to BPS, don't show it around! This so-called need to collect data will be used as a tool to discriminate other, just like in the past with the 0. code in our ID card number for Chinese descendants.
I wonder how many deep, smart and intelligent people would support our Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi on his great proposal. Realistically though, there is huge amount of narrow minded and religious extremest across Indonesia that will very much likely to stop this proposal. Religion is a very personal matter and it is every body's right to keep it private.
The government plans to allow people who do not identify with any of the six official religions to leave the religion column on their identity cards blank, the Home Affairs Ministry says.
The change is meant to put the country’s pluralistic founding principles into practice by offering a solution for people who have often felt marginalized by government policy due to their minority religious affiliations.
“Believers in local religions, for instance, don’t have to fill out the religion column on their identity cards if they don’t want to. Just leave it empty,” Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi said after opening a meeting on electronic identity cards, or e-KTP, in Jakarta on Monday.
Gamawan said he would invite related officials, including Minister of Religious Affairs Suryadharma Ali, to finalize the proposal. The plan, however, will be discu ssed further with the Ministry of Religious Affairs before being floated to the public.
It is a move that will likely create controversy as militant religious groups mushroom across the archipelago.
The Constitution guarantees Indonesians freedom of religion. However, the government only recognizes six official religions: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism.
The existing law requires that every Indonesian citizen hold an identity card identifying them as one of these six religions. The country also does not recognize agnosticism or atheism.
The government’s program to issue an e-KTP to all citizens has been dogged by problems since it was first scheduled to begin in August last year.
Delays in getting fingerprinting and retinal scanners to urban ward offices in 197 initial districts and municipalities delayed the launch by several weeks.
The deadline to register all residents of the capital for the cards within the first 100 days of the launch came and went, forcing the Jakarta administration to request a deadline extension to April this year.
Other districts and cities, which had been given until the end of 2011 to register their residents, also had their deadline extended to April.
Gamawan, meanwhile, has delayed the deadline once more.
“The old IDs can only be used up to Dec. 31,” the minister said. “All citizens must use the e-KTP by January 1, 2013.”
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