The chancellor should campaign for the threatened Christians and Ahmadiyya Muslims

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) urges Chancellor Angela Merkel that – during her visit to Indonesia early next week – she should campaign for a better protection of Christians and Ahmadiyya Muslims. "The number of attacks against Christians and Ahmadis has increased significantly since January 2012", said the STP's Asia-consultant, Ulrich Delius, in Göttingen on Friday. "Although Indonesia praises its democracy, the situation regarding the freedom of religion for religious minorities is quite bad in the most populous Muslim state." The German Chancellor will visit Indonesia from July 9th to 11th, 2012.

Christians in Indonesia are harassed and intimidated more and more often. There is an increase of bombings and arson attacks on churches, assaults on priests, harassment of Christian believers by Islamic extremists and arbitrary closures of houses of worship by the authorities. While 47 incidents were noted for 2010 and 64 in 2011, there have been nearly 40 violations of the freedom of religion until the end of May 2012. Many believers are so afraid that they choose not to attend the services.

The Christians are accusing the authorities of despotism against religious minorities. Contradictory regulations for the construction of churches in regional and national decrees resulted in the fact that 20 churches of the "United North Sumatra Alliance" in the Aceh region were closed down. Now they are to be demolished, because the rule that at least 90 or 150 believers must agree to the construction of the church has allegedly been breached. "The way the authorities argue is strange, because one of the affected churches already exists for more than 80 years", criticized Delius. The Christians see the controversial decisions as an arbitrary interference of the authorities with their religious rights and are demanding the churches to be reopened immediately.

The Ahmadiyya Muslims are also affected by violent attacks of Muslim extremists and by arbitrariness of the authorities. For example, there are no more marriage licenses issued for Ahmadiyya Muslims in West Sumatra – and Ahmadis from West Java are not allowed to do pilgrimages to Mecca any more. Hundreds of Ahmadis are living in makeshift shelters on the islands of Lombok and Banten, after their homes were vandalized by Muslims.

About 88 percent of the 240 million inhabitants of Indonesia are Muslims, six percent are Protestants, three percent are Catholics. Most Muslims are Sunnis, only 200,000 see themselves as Ahmadyya Muslims. Their religious community was founded in India in 1889 as an Islamic reform movement – which the Sunnis and Shiites refuse to acknowledge.