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Yasmin Holds Third Service at Palace
Ulma Haryanto | February 13, 2012

Lawmaker Lily Wahid, second right, and rights activist Todung Mulya Lubis, right, with the GKI Yasmin congregation at a service outside the State Palace on Sunday. The church hopes the central government will intervene with its long-standing dispute in Bogor.­ (Antara Photo/Puspa Perwitasari) Lawmaker Lily Wahid, second right, and rights activist Todung Mulya Lubis, right, with the GKI Yasmin congregation at a service outside the State Palace on Sunday. The church hopes the central government will intervene with its long-standing dispute in Bogor.­ (Antara Photo/Puspa Perwitasari)
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blightyboy
7:02am Feb 14, 2012

Putrimawar - sorry can't hear you.

blightyboy
12:05pm Feb 13, 2012

Putrimawar - Actually I know the moral. "Dont do as I do, do as I say".

devine
11:57am Feb 13, 2012

Putrimawar; so in your oppinion there should not be any Mosques in Bali, for example?

blightyboy
11:48am Feb 13, 2012

Putrimawar - your argument is deeply flawed and fundamentally untrue. You are just demonstrating your own ignorance and the intolerance, hypocrisy, double standards, and perverted logic that exists within the minds of many Muslims here in Indonesia.

As far as the building of Mosques goes. In Bandung near my wife's mothers house, there used to be a nice playground and a patch of green where the kids used to go and play and mothers could take infants to sit, it was the only open space for miles around. Then the powers that be decided to build a Mosque on the ground. And believe me, there were/is no shortage of Mosques in the area. There was outrage and protest in the community, but it went ahead anyway. The children now play in the street, dodging cars, and the Mosque is now a place where old men can hang out and smoke and slob around all day. So what is the moral of this I wonder? I am at a loss.

Jawohl
11:32am Feb 13, 2012

ckckckck….they have most deepest sympathy. Kesian ye?

After more than a year of being banned from praying inside their own church by Bogor administration and local militant groups, members of the embattled GKI Yasmin church again turned to the central government for intervention in the case.

They staged another Sunday service in front of the State Palace, vowing to continue holding services there until they were allowed into their church again.

“We want to remind the central government about this case, so that they take responsibility,” said Dwiyanti Novita Rini, a church spokeswoman.

The central government, she said, should enforce the Supreme Court’s decision to allow them to use the church for Sunday mass and other religious activities.

“The president’s spokesman once said that the president could not interfere because this was the jurisdiction of the regional government, but this is a matter of religious [rights] and should be under the authority of the central government,” she said on Sunday.

The congregation stayed in front of the palace until 3 p.m.

National Awakening Party (PKB) lawmaker Lily Wahid, lawyer and human rights activist Todung Mulya Lubis, Andy Yentriyani of the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan), the Indonesian Communion of Churches’ Gomar Goeltom, deputy secretary general of Nahdlatul Ulama Imdadun Rahmat and pluralist activist Muhammad Guntur Romli also attended the service.

Sunday’s service was the congregation’s third mass prayers in front of the palace

Imdadun delivered a speech after the prayer, condemning militant groups and saying that “the state has been ruled by radical groups who don’t want unity between diverse beliefs to be upheld in the country.”

The Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that the Bogor authorities needed to restore the church’s permit but the city’s mayor, Diani Budiarto, has refused to do so.

The case is one of several cited by activists as a sign that religious intolerance in Indonesia is growing as people become increasingly exposed to fundamentalism.

In an open letter sent to US President Barack Obama recently, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom called on Obama to speak out against Indonesia’s growing religious tensions.

New York-based Human Rights Watch also urged Obama to discuss human-rights issues in Indonesia, including attacks on religious minorities, restrictions on freedom of expression and the lack of accountability of security forces for human rights abuses.