INDONESIA: SHARIA-BASED LAWS CREEP INTO HALF OF PROVINCES

Islamic-based legislation may be a key issue in this year’s elections.

DUBLIN, February 2 (Compass Direct News) – As candidates hit the campaign trail in preparation for Indonesia’s presidential election in July, rights groups have voiced strong opposition to an increasing number of sharia-inspired laws introduced by local governments. They say the laws discriminate against religious minorities and violate Indonesia’s policy of Pancasila, or “unity in diversity.”

With legislative elections coming in April and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono likely to form a coalition with several Islamic parties for the July presidential election, such laws could become a key campaign issue.

Although Aceh is the only province completely governed by sharia (Islamic law), more than 50 regencies in 16 of 32 provinces throughout Indonesia have passed laws influenced by sharia. These laws became possible following the enactment of the Regional Autonomy Law in 2000.

The form of these laws varies widely. Legislation in Padang, West Sumatra, requires both Muslim and non-Muslim women to wear headscarves, while a law in Tangerang allows women found “loitering” alone on the street after 10 p.m. to be arrested and charged with prostitution. Other laws include stipulations for Quran literacy among schoolchildren and severe punishment for adultery, alcoholism and gambling.

“Generally the legal system regulates and guarantees religious freedom of Indonesian citizens … but in reality, discrimination prevails,” a lawyer from the legal firm Eleonora and Partners told Compass.

Some regencies have adopted sharia in a way that further marginalizes minority groups, according to Syafi’I Anwar, executive director of the International Center for Islam and Pluralism.

“For instance, the Padang administration issued a law requiring all schoolgirls, regardless of their religion, to wear the headscarf,” he told the International Herald Tribune. This is unacceptable because it is not in line with the pluralism that the constitution recognizes.”

Freedom of religion is guaranteed by Article 29 of the country’s constitution, he added. “Therefore the government must assist all religious communities to practice their beliefs as freely as possible and take actions against those who violate that right.”

While Indonesia’s largest Muslim group, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), has publicly denounced the implementation of such laws, other groups actively support them. The Committee for the Implementation and Maintenance of Islamic Law (KPPSI) has held several congresses in Makassar, South Sulawesi with the goal of passing sharia-inspired legislation and obtaining special autonomy for the province, similar to that in Aceh.

KPPSI has also encouraged members to vote for politicians who share their goals, according to local news agency Komintra.

 

‘Threatening’ Decision

In February of last year, Home Affairs Minister Mardiyanto declared that the government saw no need to nullify some 600 sharia-inspired laws passed by local governments. His announcement came after a group of lawyers in June 2007 urged the government to address laws that discriminated against non-Muslims.

Moderates were alarmed at Mardiyanto’s decision, fearing it would encourage other jurisdictions to pass similar laws. Last August, Dr. Mohammad Mahfud, newly re-elected as head of the Constitutional Court, slammed regional administrations for enacting sharia-inspired laws.

“[These] laws are not constitutionally or legally correct because, territorially and ideologically, they threaten our national integrity,” he told top military officers attending a training program on human rights, according to The Jakarta Post.

Mahfud contended that if Indonesia allowed sharia-based laws, “then Bali can pass a Hindu bylaw, or North Sulawesi can have a Christian ordinance. If each area fights for a religious-based ordinance, then we face a national integration problem.” According to Mahfud, sharia-based laws would promote religious intolerance and leave minority religious groups without adequate legal protection.

Under the 2000 Regional Autonomy Law, the central government has the power to block provincial laws but showed little willingness to do so until recently when, bowing to pressure from advocacy groups, it pledged to review 37 sharia-based ordinances deemed discriminatory and at odds with the constitution.

Such reviews are politically sensitive and must be done on sound legal grounds, according to Ridarson Galingging, a law lecturer in Jakarta.

“Advocates of sharia-based laws will stress the divine origin of sharia and resist challenges [that are] based on constitutional or human rights limits,” he told The Jakarta Post. “They maintain that sharia is authorized directly by God, and political opposition is viewed as apostasy or blasphemy.”

 

Empowering Vigilantes

A national, sharia-inspired bill regulating images or actions deemed pornographic sparked outrage when presented for a final vote in October last year. One fifth of the parliamentarians present walked out in protest, leaving the remainder to vote in favor of the legislation.

The bill provided for up to 15 years of prison and a maximum fine of US$1.5 million for offenders.

“This law will only empower vigilante groups like the Islamic Defender’s Front (FPI),” Eva Sundari, a member of the Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) told reporters. FPI is widely-regarded as a self-appointed moral vigilante group, often raiding bars and nightclubs, but also responsible for multiple attacks on churches.

“Many of the members are preparing for elections and looking for support among the Islamic community,” she added. “Now they can point to this law as evidence that they support Islamic values.”

Although several Golkar Party politicians support sharia-based laws, senior Golkar Party member Theo Sambuaga has criticized politicians for endorsing such legislation to win support from Muslim voters. Several major parties openly back sharia laws, including the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), the United Development Party, and the Crescent Star party.

 

Key Election Issue

Sharia-based laws may become an even hotter election issue this year as a change to the voting system means more weight will be given to provincial candidates.

Political analysts believe Yudhoyono must form a coalition with most if not all of the country’s Islamic parties in order to win a majority vote against the Golkar party, allied for this election with former president Megawati Sukarnoputri’s PDIP.

The coalition Yudhoyono could form, however, likely would come with strings attached. As Elizabeth Kendal of the World Evangelical Alliance wrote in September 2008, “The more the president needs the Islamists, the more they can demand of him.”

In 2004, Yudhoyono partnered with the NU-sponsored National Awakening Party, the National Mandate Party (founded by the Islamic purist organization Muhammadiyah) and the PKS to achieve his majority vote. Analysts predict PKS will again be a key player in this election.

Few realize, however, that PKS draws its ideology from the Muslim Brotherhood, a group formed in Egypt in 1928 with a firm belief in Islamic world dominance. Crushed by the Egyptian government in the 1960s, members of the Brotherhood fled to Saudi Arabia, where they taught in the nation’s universities – influencing the future founders of Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Sudan’s National Islamic Front.

The Brotherhood took root at a university in Bandung, West Java in the 1970s in the form of Tarbiyah, a secretive student movement that eventually morphed into the Justice Party (JP) in 1998. Winning few votes, JP allied itself with a second party to form the PKS prior to the 2004 elections.

Since then, PKS has gained widespread support and a solid reputation for integrity and commitment to Islamic values. Simultaneously, however, PKS leaders are vocal supporters of Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, leader of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI).

Sadanand Dhume, writing in the Far Eastern Economic Review, says the two organizations have much in common. In its founding manifesto, PKS calls for the creation of an Islamic caliphate. Unlike JI, however, “the party can use its position in Parliament and its … network of cadres to advance the same goals incrementally, one victory at a time.”  

Report from Compass Direct News

WORLD EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE ASSEMBLY CLOSES IN THAILAND

More than 500 senior evangelical leaders gathering in Pattaya, Thailand from October 25-30, 2008, have wrapped up their General Assembly, after five days of intensive discussion to plan the way forward in world evangelization, reports Michael Ireland, chief correspondent, ASSIST News Service.

On Wednesday, delegates agreed upon six major resolutions setting out an evangelical response to religious liberty, HIV and Aids, poverty, peacemaking, creation care and the global financial crisis, according to a media release obtained by ANS.

“The worldwide financial turmoil is, at its root, evidence of what happens when too many are captivated by greed and put their faith in, and entrust their security and future aspirations to, a system animated by the maximization of wealth. Many legitimately feel betrayed,” read the resolution on the global financial crisis.

“While we hope that the painful consequences of the turmoil will be mitigated, our concern is that its impact will continue to permeate into more regions and economies of the world. We recognize that this economic crisis will have the most painful impact on the poor, who are the most vulnerable.

“We reaffirm our faith in God and acknowledge that He is in control. We repent when we have placed our trust in money, institutions and persons, rather than God. Our security is not found in the things of this world.”

The resolution called on Christians to care for the poor during the crisis and live simply and generously.

“The Body of Christ, His Church, is living with HIV,” stated the resolution on HIV, a major focus area for the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA). “With brokenness we admit that as Evangelical Christians we have allowed stigmatization and discrimination to characterize our relationships with people living with HIV. We repent of these sinful attitudes and commit to ensuring that they are changed.”

In the preamble to the resolution on the Millennium Development Goals, evangelical leaders stated, “In coping with the financial crisis of 2008, governments and international institutions have shown how quickly and effectively they can move to mobilize massive resources in the face of serious threats to our global, common economic well being.

“Yet one child dying of preventable causes every three seconds and 2.7 billion people barely sustained on an income of less than two dollars per day has yet to evoke a similar level of urgent response.

“We believe this to be an affront to God, a shame to governments and civil society, and a massive challenge to the witness and mission of the followers of Christ.”

World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) international director Dr Geoff Tunnicliffe told delegates that they faced additional challenges to fulfilling the Great Commission from radical secularism, postmodernism, declining Christianity at the same time as growing interest in spirituality, trafficking and migration.

He insisted, however, that great challenges also brought great opportunities for evangelical engagement.

“We see this tremendous growth and this seismic shift in the church around the world and we are excited to what God is doing as he raises up women and men around the world in so many different places,” he said.

“As we think about the global reality of the world in which we live, [there are] immense challenges but also immense opportunities.”

Dr Tunnicliffe also said that the WEA would remain committed to integral mission “or holistic transformation, a proclamation and demonstration of the Gospel”.

“It is not simply that evangelism and social involvement are done alongside of each other but rather in integral mission proclamation has social consequences. We call people to love and repentance in all areas of life,” he said.

He reaffirmed the WEA’s commitment to world evangelization.

“If anyone tells you that we’ve gone soft on world evangelization you can tell them that we are totally committed to world evangelization because it is only Jesus Christ that changes people’s lives,” he said.

A highlight of the week was an address from the Rev Joel Edwards, who was commissioned during the assembly as the new director of Christian anti-poverty movement Micah Challenge.

In his address, the former head of the UK Evangelical Alliance told delegates that the power to rehabilitate the word ‘evangelical’ lay in their hands.

“Whatever people think of evangelical Christians, if people are going to think differently about evangelicals the only people who can actually change their minds are evangelicals,” he said.

“We must reinvent, rehabilitate and re-inhabit what evangelical means as good news. We must present Christ credibly to our culture and we should seek to be active citizens working for long-term spiritual and social change.

“Words can change their meaning. If 420 million evangelicals in over 130 nations across the world really wanted it to happen, evangelical could mean good news.”

In another key address, the head of the Evangelical Fellowship of India, the Rev Richard Howell said that an identity anchored in Christ and a universal God was an evangelical non-negotiable in an age of pluralism.

“We have but one agenda: obedience to the Triune God revealed in Jesus Christ,” said Dr Howell. “We are evangelical Christians for the sake of God.”

“Our identity has to be related back to God. Unless we do that, we will never know who we are. Our identity comes from God and God alone.”

“The Christian belief in the oneness of God implies God’s universality, and the universality implies transcendence with respect to any given culture.

“Christians can never be first of all Asians, Africans, Europeans, Americans, Australians and then Christians.”

The assembly also heard from the Chair of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization (LCWE), Douglas Birdsall.

The WEA is collaborating with the LCWE in its major Cape Town 2010 meeting, which will bring together 4,000 evangelicals to assess the next steps in realizing the movement’s vision of ‘the whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole world’.

“You might ask is there a need for an international congress that deals with world evangelization,” Birdsall told the assembly. “I would say that throughout history, such a gathering is only necessary when the future of the life of the church is threatened by some type of challenge – either internal challenge or external pressure.”

The assembly also saw the launch of the WEA Leadership Institute, a brand new initiative to see the leaders of the WEA’s 128 national alliances trained to serve and proclaim Christ within some challenging contexts.

“Leading an Evangelical Alliance is not easy,” commented Dr Tunnicliffe. “That’s why we want to provide them with the relevant training and resources.”

Also commissioned during the week was the new leader of the WEA’s Religious Liberty Commission, Sri Lankan national Godfrey Yogarajah.

Dr Tunnicliffe rounded up the assembly with a call to evangelicals to keep in step with God’s work on earth.

“It is my prayer that we in our community will be women and men who live with divine purpose within our lives, that we will be good leaders envisioned by God to make a difference in the world,” he said.

“The most important thing that you can do with your [life] is to integrate it into the never ending story of God’s kingdom. God’s already at work in the world. He’s doing things. We just need to align with what He is doing.”

World Evangelical Alliance is made up of 128 national evangelical alliances located in 7 regions and 104 associate member organizations. The vision of WEA is to extend the Kingdom of God by making disciples of all nations and by Christ-centered transformation within society. WEA exists to foster Christian unity, to provide an identity, voice and platform for the 420 million evangelical Christians worldwide.

Report from the Christian Telegraph

CHRISTIANS CONCERN: RELIGIOUS FREEDOM TO BE DEFINED IN AUSTRALIA

The World Evangelical Alliance is concerned about growing evidence of a fundamentalist religious lobby in Australia supporting same-sex relationships, stem-cell research, and abortion. Anti-hate speech legislation in Australia would put a choke collar on anyone who spoke against these practices, including Christians. The Human Rights Commission is launching a national review of what Australians believe freedom of religion means, reports MNN.

Commissioner of race discrimination Tom Calama says that a balance needs to be struck between the freedom to practice a religion and not pushing those beliefs on the rest of society. He says that people in Australia need to understand what religious freedom means in the 21st century.

“Does religious belief influence policies being determined in any country, particularly in our country?” he said.

Law in Australia provides for freedom of religion, but in October 2003 hate speech legislation affected two pastors giving a seminar on Islam. A civil suit was filed with the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, alleging defamation of Muslims during a seminar the pastors had given on Islam. The Islamic Council sought an apology, retraction of the comments in question, and compensation.

“These seminars largely consisted of opening the Koran and reading from [it],” said Jeff King, president of the International Christian Concern. “There was Saudi money that went into Australia; they hired the best lawyers in the country and sued these guys for defamation.”

The pastors’ lawyers argued that the complaint was outside the tribunal’s jurisdiction and that it infringed on the Constitutional right of freedom of expression. Although the pastors were convicted, the case was appealed and later settled after mediation.

Calama says that in a secular, multi-faith society, people sometimes have different expectations of what freedom of religion means and how the law should reflect those beliefs. People are invited to make submissions concerning their views of freedom of religion until the end of January.

Report from the Christian Telegraph

CRUEL OPPRESSION OF CHRISTIANS INCREASING IN LAOS

Christianity is labeled a “foreign religion” in Laos, so becoming a believer is considered near treason, reports MNN.

Christians in Communist-ruled Laos report escalating persecution. According to the World Evangelical Alliance, believers are dealing with more outright harassment and intimidation tactics.

The trend began in 2004 when reports began to surface about the treatment believers received at the hands of the government.

Some have been held at gunpoint and forced to renounce their faith in Christ. The government has also put extensive restrictions on all religious groups. While the government has worked to improve their human rights record, the church is not yet free from persecution.

Two believers and a pastor have been handcuffed and in stocks since August for refusing to renounce their faith. 32-year-old Pastor Sompong Supatto and 18-year-olds, Boot and Khamvan Chanthaleuxay were taken from a house church because they were practicing their faith.

They were officially arrested August 3 for refusing to sign papers renouncing their faith. They had been threatened several times previously but had continued to worship.

According to Compass Direct reports, Pastor Supatto faces life behind bars for leading the Boukham church. The teenagers will only be released when they renounce their faith.

Report from the Christian Telegraph

INDONESIA: RELIGIOUS TENSIONS RISE IN WEST PAPUA

Authorities must act now to prevent Malukan-style conflict, report says.

DUBLIN, July 14 (Compass Direct News) – Authorities in West Papua, Indonesia, must move fast to prevent tension between Christian and Muslim communities escalating into a Malukan-style conflict, according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group (ICG).

The neighboring Maluku islands erupted into bitter sectarian warfare between 1999 and 2002, leaving thousands dead, injured or homeless.

While the conflict in West Papua dates back to Indonesia’s takeover of the region in 1963, several developments from the beginning of the decade have heightened tension in recent months, according to ICG’s June 16 report, “Communal Tensions in Papua.”

New, less tolerant strands of Islam and Christianity have gained influence since 2002, creating fissures within and between religious communities, the report claims. Also, faith issues have acquired a political dimension, since many Papuan Christians believe a Special Autonomy Law passed in 2001 was too limited, while Muslim migrants firmly support centralized rule from Jakarta and accuse Christians of separatism.

Most importantly, an influx of Muslim migrants, initially sponsored by the government, has changed demographics in the region, with Papuan Christians now fearing they will become a minority.

Indonesian troops and special police forces assigned to the region to quell independence movements have tortured and sometimes executed Christians suspected of involvement with the Free Papua Movement, according to other reports from local human rights organizations.

 

Manokwari: Trouble in ‘Gospel City’

Two incidents covered in the ICG report illustrate the potential for violence. In May, church leaders in the city of Manokwari – commonly referred to as “Gospel City” – circulated the second draft of a regulation designed to protect Christian values and traditions, drawing heavy criticism.

The “Regulation on Designating Villages for Mental Spiritual Guidance” came in response to a proposed mosque building project on Mansiman Island, considered the “birthplace” of Christianity in the region since the first two missionaries to West Papua landed there in 1855.

A local politician first proposed building a Grand Mosque and Islamic study center on the island in 2005. Uproar followed, with Christians asking whether Muslims would be offended if the most visible landmark in the deeply Islamic province of Aceh was a church.

The Manokwari District Interchurch Cooperation Board issued a statement decrying the “discriminatory and unjust” stance of the national government towards Christianity, pointing to a total of 991 attacks against Christians, churches and individuals throughout Indonesia dating back to 1949; trauma suffered by Christians in conflict areas such as the Malukus, and legal discrimination against churches under a 1969 Joint Ministerial Decree (SKB) regulating the establishment of places of worship.

Civil authorities then rejected the building proposal submitted by the mosque committee, citing objections from church leaders.

In response, Muslims claimed that Islam had come to Papua long before Christian missionaries arrived. One Muslim also told ICG that the rejection of a “house of Allah” provided grounds for jihad.

Jihadi groups outside Papua were quick to offer assistance. Three Javanese followers of the infamous Abu Bakar Ba’asyir traveled to Manokwari in December 2005 and drew up a hit list of 38 pastors leading the campaign against the Great Mosque. A similar group from the Malukus arrived in January 2006, but local Muslims turned both groups away.

The Evangelical Christian Church (GKI) of Papua decided in February 2006 that a regulation should be adopted to preserve Manokwari’s status as the Gospel City. In March the GKI circulated a first draft of the “Regulation on Implementing Mental Spiritual Guidance.” Muslims believed the draft law referred to the proselytizing and conversion of Muslims, which further inflamed tensions.

Both Muslim and Christian leaders denounced the draft regulation, but it became a national issue, with major Muslim newspapers portraying it as an attack on Islam. Another jihadi group, the Laskar Jundullah in South Sulawesi, briefly discussed launching a new jihad in Manokwari, spreading rumors that the draft regulation was a foreign plot to combine Maluku and Papua into a single independent Christian state.

On the contrary, Christians fear they will be increasingly marginalized in the region, according to John Barr, general secretary for the international mission wing of the Uniting Church in Australia.

“Christianity came to West Papua more than 100 years ago, and most Papuans eagerly adopted it to the point that Christianity reinforces and now underlines their identity,” he told Compass. “Where Papuan culture appears to be in the process of being eroded, Christianity serves to maintain local values and provide Papuans with a strong sense of who they are.”

Formally declaring Manokwari a Gospel City is an attempt to address this despair, he explained. “It’s an attempt to be proactive about the future.”

 

Kaimana’s Iron Christmas Tree

Tensions also erupted unexpectedly last year in Kaimana, a district historically known for religious tolerance, with Christians sitting on mosque development committees and Muslims assisting in the construction of churches, according to ICG.

In October 2007, during the Muslim celebration of Ramadan, the Protestant Church of Indonesia in Papua (GPI) scheduled a fund-raising concert at a school situated between two mosques. Muslims were incensed when plans for the concert emerged, but mosque leaders averted a clash by asking GPI to reschedule the event for 9 p.m., after evening prayers.

In December 2007, GPI leaders erected an iron Christmas tree crowned with a Star of David in a public park near the town center, claiming they had a permit to do so from the deputy district head. Local Muslims were furious, and a crowd quickly gathered. Rumors spread that Christian neighborhoods would be attacked and panic took hold, with some Christians fleeing into the jungle.

District head Hasan Achmad intervened and negotiated a compromise; the tree could remain in the park until January 21.

Tensions remained high, however, with GPI leaders calling an emergency meeting on December 28 following rumors of impending attacks on Christians. The rumors came to nothing, and on January 21 the GPI reluctantly complied with orders to remove the tree. By then, however, mutual trust and acceptance had been shattered.

 

Both Sides Aggrieved

ICG concludes that potential for communal conflict is high because both sides consider themselves aggrieved.

In some areas, local governments have controlled tensions by pairing a Papuan Christian district leader with a non-Papuan Muslim deputy. This has proved effective in some areas, but not all, the report stated.

ICG suggests that in areas where conflict is greatest, indigenous Papuan Muslim organizations such as the Papuan Muslim Council might play a bridging role.

Other West Papua observers such as Barr and Elizabeth Kendal of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) believe ICG’s report is a useful analysis but somewhat biased toward the Muslim point of view.

In her analysis, Kendal remarked on ICG’s unquestioning acceptance of Muslim claims that Islam came first to West Papua, and that Christian colonialists then proceeded to obliterate all traces of Islam, despite no evidence that Islam ever became popular in the region. She also criticized the report for suggesting that the development of indigenous Muslim scholars and teachers was a realistic solution to the problem.

“The report forecasts that if Muslim-versus-Christian clashes do erupt, they will remain localized,” Kendal added. “I do not agree with that assessment. The jihadist groups, the pro-Indonesian militias and in particular the Indonesian military are looking for an excuse to unleash violent repression and ethnic-religious cleansing. Any clash therefore has incendiary potential.”

 

Outside Influences

According to ICG, there are multiple reasons for the breakdown in trust throughout West Papua.

New strands of Christianity and Islam began arriving in West Papua early this decade, bringing voices not necessarily in tune with the traditional tolerance of Papuans. Salafism, an ultra-Puritan method of practicing Islam, eventually made it to Papua after spreading rapidly through Indonesia in the 1990s. Some Papuan Muslims who had studied elsewhere in Indonesia or in the Middle East also returned with new, less tolerant interpretations of their faith.

Newer evangelical churches such as the Congregation of the Holy Way, Bethel and Bethany churches began to hold mass religious rallies, locally known as KKRs, in public places. Often these meetings featured testimonies from Muslim converts. Muslim residents objected to the KKRs and responded by publicly questioning basic tenets of the Christian faith, such as the divinity of Jesus, further compounding tensions.

An influx of both Christian and Muslim refugees from the neighboring Maluku islands brought its own problems, with refugees sharing personal accounts and video clips of bloody confrontations in Ambon and Seram. Video clips of beheadings in Iraq also circulated on cell phones, reinforcing negative images of Islam in some circles.

Human rights organizations began to report sightings of jihadi groups and training camps in West Papua. ICG’s report contends that most if not all of these “jihadis” were members of a non-violent Islamic missionary group, Jemaah Tabligh, active in Papua since 1988. Jemaah Tabligh members dress as the Moluccan Laskar Jihad members do, with men in white robes and turbans and women in full veils rather than headscarves.

Kendal, who analyzed ICG’s report for the WEA, noted that the source who rejected reports of jihadi sightings was identified in the footnotes as a “Muslim activist.”

Ja’far Umar Thalib, the leader of Laskar Jihad, admitted that some of his men arrived in Papua in late 2000 to assess “the needs of Muslims.” Thalib then sent approximately 200 men to Papua in 2001 to “crush” the Papuan independence movement, which he claimed was a Christian conspiracy to secede from Indonesia and form a Christian state.

 

Changing Demographics

The Indonesian government launched a migration program in 1975 that brought an influx of Muslim citizens into the mostly Christian territory of West Papua, sparking Papuan fears of a religious takeover. The program ended in 1985, but migration continued; of approximately 2.5 million inhabitants of West Papua today, 1 million are migrants.

Officially, Christians still make up about 56 percent of the total population and 95 percent of the indigenous population in West Papua, according to Jim Elmslie of the West Papua Project at the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney, Australia. But both communities dispute these figures. Christians claim the number of Muslim migrants is deliberately downplayed, while Muslims claim authorities have combined animist and Christian populations to project a Christian majority.

When the Indonesian government took control of the region in 1963, it passed a new law declaring all land and natural resources property of the Indonesian state. This measure gave migrants and multinational oil companies access to Papuan ancestral lands, sparking angry demonstrations from indigenous landowners, many of them Christians.

 

Toward a Solution

While potential for conflict is high, Barr said a church-sponsored human rights group, ELSHAM, is already conducting workshops in peace education and conflict resolution, and churches have worked hard to rectify abuses of both Muslim and Christian communities.

This has occasionally put Christians at risk. For example, Kendal reports that in January 2007, Indonesian police occupied the headquarters of the indigenous Kingmi church in Jayapura, accusing the Rev. Benny Giay and the Rev. Noakh Nawipa of engineering an attack on a gold and copper mine in August 2002 in support of the independence movement. Giay and Nawipa rejected the allegations and said they were targeted because of their non-violent work for peace and justice in West Papua.

“ICG’s report does raise critical questions,” Barr concluded. “Papua is part of Indonesia, and Christians need to live alongside Muslims in a harmonious society. The alternative is horrific, and the Malukus bear witness to this.”

 

Timeline of Events in West Papua, Indonesia

1419

An Indian trader brought Islam to Papua on this date, according to a Papuan Muslim preacher. Other scholars claim the Bacan sultanate in North Maluku brought Islam to Papua in 1569.

 

1855

Two German missionaries landed on Mansiman Island, off the coast of Manokwari in West Papua.

 

1963

Dutch colonialists handed the territory of West Papua (then known as West Irian Jaya) to the United Nations, which then gave it to Indonesia on condition that a referendum on integration be held by December 1969. Following the takeover, Indonesia passed a new law declaring all West Papuan land and natural resources as the property of the Indonesian state.

 

1969

Under the ”Act of Free Choice,” 1,025 hand-picked West Papuans voted unanimously – under great duress – for integration with Indonesia.

 

1975

Indonesia’s Suharto government launched a migration program that would last until 1985. Thousands of Indonesian Muslims migrated to West Papua, both under this program and through voluntary migration.

 

May 1998

The Suharto government collapsed, sparking independence demonstrations in Papua.

 

1999 – 2002

Violent conflict in the Maluku islands sparked a refugee influx into West Papua. Jihadi groups also established a limited presence in West Papua.

 

2001

Indonesia granted limited autonomy to West Papua with a Special Autonomy Law; today, many provisions of this law have yet to be implemented.

 

November 2001

Indonesian Special Forces abducted and murdered popular Papuan leader Theys Eluay.

 

December 2003

The Indonesian government appointed Timbul Silaen to head the police force in West Papua. U.N. prosecutors had previously indicted Silaen for his role in war crimes and crimes against humanity while he headed the Indonesian police force in East Timor in 1999.

 

September 2005

A politician in Manokwari promised Muslim voters that he would build a Grand Mosque and Islamic study center on Mansiman Island.

 

October 2005

Civic authorities rejected an application for the Grand Mosque building project.

 

November 2005

Christians in Manokwari demonstrated against the construction project.

 

December 2005

Jihadis from Java arrived in West Papua and draw up a hit list of 38 pastors who campaigned against the mosque project. Local Muslims rejected their offer of assistance.

 

January 2007

Police accused the indigenous Papuan Kingmi church of being the religious arm of the Free Papua Movement (OPM).

 

March 2007

Church leaders in Manokwari outlined a draft “Regulation on Implementing Mental Spiritual Guidance,” creating a national uproar.

 

December 2007

Christians in Kaimana erected an iron Christmas Tree topped with a Star of David in a public park, infuriating local Muslims.

 

January 2008

Christians removed the Christmas Tree from the park as agreed in a meeting with town leaders.

 

May 2008

Church leaders in Manokwari circulated a second draft of their “Regulation on Designating Villages for Mental Spiritual Guidance.”

 

April 2008

Christians celebrated the 100th anniversary of local Christianity. In the same month, Muslims held a seminar entitled “Awakening of Irian Muslims” to assert the prior arrival of Islam in West Papua.

 

Report from Compass Direct News