Religious Intolerance Cases Increase
Thursday, 28 January, 2010 | 16:27 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: The Setara Institute NGO has revealed that cases of religious intolerance from 2007-2009 are still numerous, and have even increased qualitatively.

“Even though there is a quantity decrease from 2008-2009, the intolerance level increases qualitatively,” said the Deputy Head of the Setara Institute Bonar Tigor Naipospos at a press conference in Jakarta yesterday.

In 2007, he said, there were 135 cases with 185 violations. In 2008 there were 265 cases with 367 violations. In 2009 there were 200 cases with 291 violations.

In the beginning, the Setara Institute predicted that there would be a decrease in 2009 because people were focusing on the legislative and presidential elections. “But it turned out that people still have a lot of energy and there are still many violations,” said Bonar.

According to him, there has been a change in agent’s characters between 2007 and 2009. In 2007, the majority of them had clear identities and came from outside local members of the general public. But in 2008-2009, they were mostly anonymous, came from the local population and had unclear identities.

In 2009, there was no need for an external trigger for a conflict to erupt. “This trend demonstrated that the level of religious intolerance has increased,” said Bonar. Based on this assumption, the Setara Institute is worried that in 2010 the number of conflicts will increase.

Setara Institute Founder, Benny K. Harman, observed that there were a lot of issues involving the construction of houses of worship.”Building a house of worship is forbidden, even obstructed by the police and the local population. But obtaining permits for houses of prostitutes is easy,” said Benny.

ARYANI KRISTANTI