Category Archives: Indonesia

Police Running Tests on Woman Who Drowned Her Son

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For some women, size really does matter a lot.

H/T Magic Martin

Jakarta Globe:

The Jakarta Police are conducting psychological tests on a woman who allegedly drowned her son due to the size of his genitals, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

Retno Purwati, 38, was arrested on Tuesday after she went to the East Jakarta police and admitted to killing her son at her house in Cakung, East Jakarta.

“It seems like she committed the murder consciously. She filled up a bathtub with water, tied the kid up and drowned him. Afterward, she dressed him. It was all done very neatly, but we still recommend for her to undergo a psychological examination,” Sr. Comr. Rikwanto told the Jakarta Globe on Wednesday.

After Retno forced her son’s head underwater, she picked her oldest daughter from school and asked her to go home to look after her brother, while Retno went to the police station to report herself.

She explained to the police what she had done and asked them to check if her son was still alive. However, when the police arrived at the scene, the boy had already died.

Rikwanto said the mother told the police that she killed her son because after he was circumcised, his penis shrank.

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Indonesia: Religious Minorities Targets of Rising Violence

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HRW.Org

Government Inaction, Discriminatory Laws Embolden Militant Groups
February 28, 2013

  • Soldiers walk past a burned Ahmadiyah mosque in Cisalada, West Java province, which hundreds of Muslims burned along with five other houses on October 2, 2010.

    © 2010 Reuters
Yudhoyono needs to insist that national laws be enforced, announce that every violent attack will be prosecuted, and map out a comprehensive strategy to combat rising religious intolerance.
Brad Adams, Asia director

(Jakarta) – The Indonesian government is failing to protect the country’s religious minorities from growing religious intolerance and violence, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono should respond much more decisively and adopt a “zero tolerance” policy for attacks on religious minority communities.

The 107-page report, “In Religion’s Name: Abuses against Religious Minorities in Indonesia,” documents the government’s failure to confront militant groups whose thuggish harassment and assaults on houses of worship and members of religious minorities has become increasingly aggressive. Those targeted include Ahmadiyahs, Christians, and Shia Muslims. Indonesian monitoring groups have noted a steady increase in such attacks, one group finding 264 violent incidents over the past year.

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Women, Indonesia, Hijra and motorcycles

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Everyone knows the legend about boiling a frog slowly so that it doesn’t object. I am pretty confident that is a load of bull. But slowly immersing people into ideas and laws that are fascist, illegal and illiberal, that does work every-time. Just look at how anti-smoking laws were forced on people everywhere with no vote, no discussion and often breaking municipalities own laws on passing legislation as was done in Ottawa Canada. The same goes for freedom of speech and the return from the enlightenment and freedom of speech and secularism back to theocracy and the protection of insane ideas from criticism, something that anyone in the Western world would have said could simply never happen 30 years ago.

In Indonesia this process is galloping forward with all sorts of sharia compliant laws being implemented in that ‘hijra’ (move towards greater islam compliancy) way. This is just today’s example for Indonesia.

But let me be unequivocal in this. The process of implementing sharia compliancy is taking place in Canada, the US, and across Europe whether it is called anti-hate-speech as it is in England and elsewhere (article to appear soon on the arrest of Kev Caroll in England on this charge) or with any number of other excuses and reasons to implement sharia norms in contradiction to basic and critical constitutional guarantees most of us take horribly for granted across the secular West. While women can still ride motorcycles here, all of us know that criticism of Islam will lead to death threats and intimidation from Muslims living in Canada in ways that the police may not be able to prevent, and more importantly our own government will not allow us to protect ourselves from.

At the end of the day, how is this not submission to sharia norms?

Eeyore for Vlad.

From DW.De

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Indonesia’s northwestern province Aceh has introduced a controversial new law banning women from sitting on motorcycles with their legs apart. Activists are calling for a reversal of the ban.

Despite opposition from human rights activist, authorities in Aceh’s city administration of Lhokseumawe decided to release a law banning women from straddling motorbikes earlier this week.

“We’re going ahead with the ban. There’s no resistance here. The criticism did not come from Aceh,” Dasni Yuzar, the city secretary of Lhokseumawe, stated in an interview with DW.

Yuzar also said around 50 streamers had already been distributed all over Lhokseumawe, explaining the proper way for women to sit on the back of motorbikes. Almost a week ago leaflets were distributed to government offices and villages to inform residents about the planned bylaw.

Mayor Suaidi Yahya, who had proposed the law, appealed to the public on Monday, January 7, saying it was not meant to discriminate against women, but instead help the implementation of Sharia law in Aceh.

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Fifty Alleged Terrorists From Islamic School in Nganjuk Detained

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How long are we expected to nurture a viper in our bosom merely because the threat pretends to a religion and an oppressed minority. Either Muslims are a fragile delicate flower or they are 1.6 Billion strong. Either they are a poor people in need of help or sitting on top of the bulk of the worlds 2nd most important strategic resource. It cannot be both. And Islamic schools and mosques are neither institutions of growing one’s value to society nor for spiritual piety. They are beachheads. They need to be seen and treated as such.

Jakarta Globe | November 13, 2012

Police guard outside a house, used as a boarding school, in Nganjuk, East Java, on Tuesday. Indonesian police detained 48 students and a teacher from an Islamic boarding school and seized firearms and sharp weapons, a spokesman said Tuesday , in the nation’s latest terror raid. (AFP Photo/Juni Kriswanto)
Police guard outside a house, used as a boarding school, in Nganjuk, East Java, on Tuesday. Indonesian police detained 48 students and a teacher from an Islamic boarding school and seized firearms and sharp weapons, a spokesman said Tuesday , in the nation’s latest terror raid. (AFP Photo/Juni Kriswanto)

Approximately 50 students and one teacher affiliated with an Islamic boarding school and allegedly involved in terrorist activities were taken into police custody on Tuesday.

According to Antaranews.com, dozens of fully-armed police officers raided the Pondok Darul Akhfiya school in the Kepuh village of the Nganjuk district in East Java.

Besides hauling in students, officers also arrested Nasiruddin Ahmad, also known as Landung Tri Bawono, the teacher at the institution.

Nganjuk police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Anggoro Sukartono told Okezone.com that police were still trying to determine whether or not the students were being trained to be terrorists.

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Man wears burka to escape terror charges

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Au News Yahoo:

JAKARTA (AFP) – An Indonesian man convicted of terror offences escaped from a high-security jail by wearing a burqa to disguise himself as a woman, police said Thursday.

Roki Aprisdianto, who was serving a six-year sentence for involvement with an Islamic militant group, put on the full-length Muslim garment and walked out of the prison with a group of burqa-clad women visitors, police said.

The 29-year-old prisoner is believed to have made his escape after a visiting woman wearing two burqas passed him one, police spokesman Rikwanto, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, told AFP.

At the time of the escape on Wednesday, the prison, which holds around 70 terror convicts, was being guarded by four members of the elite anti-terror squad and seven other police officers.

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Nine churches and six Buddhist temples shut down under Islamist pressure in Banda Aceh

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ASIA News.It

by Mathias Hariyadi
For the city’s deputy mayor, the buildings were not being properly used. They lacked the proper building permit and were used for “unlawful” purposes. She pledged greater monitoring of minority activities. Local sources say that the crackdown is the result of threats from extremist groups. FPI now wants other cities and towns to do the same.

Jakarta (AsiaNews) – Authorities in Banda Aceh, capital of the Aceh Special Territory, ordered the closure of nine Christian home churches and six Buddhist prayer houses for alleged irregularities in their building permit. According to Deputy Mayor Hajjah Illiza Sa’aduddin Djamal, the buildings were illegal because they lacked the right permit. Under the law, private homes cannot be used “for religious ceremonies or functions.”

“Aceh is a special territory that enforces Sharia,” she said and home churches violate the law because they lack the appropriate building permit (Izin Mendirikan Bangunan in Indonesian).

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Mali, Islamists stone unmarried couple in Aguelhok

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AGI.It

(AGI) Bamako – The Islamists occupying northern Mali have stoned an unmarried couple before a crowd of 200 people.
Offical sources made the report. The execution took place Sunday in the city of Aguelhok. “I was there. The Islamists brought the couple to the center of Aguelhok. The put them in two holes and there they hit them with rocks until they died,” a local official reported. A second functionary confirmed the incident. The Al Qaedist militants have occupied the north of Mali since the end of March. In recent months they have sewn terror in the ancient caravan city of Timbuktu’, destroying the most important mausoleums of the Muslim saints. . .

Indonesia: Mob attacks church, cops haul in Christians

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Examiner:

Timothy Whiteman's photo

Wilmington Conservative Examiner

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From the most populous Muslim nation on earth…

The Banda Aceh region of Indonesia is best known to most Westerners as the main area devastated by the 2004 tsunami which killed hundreds of thousands.

Unfortunately for Christians in the predominantly Muslim nation, Banda Aceh is back in the news.

As reported by the Jakarta Globe, there have been “demands” from local Muslim groups that the government shutdown storefront Christian churches in the area.

As of last month, 16 have since been boarded up on orders from the Jakarta government.

Meanwhile…

A 300-strong mob stormed a Bethel-associated (Protestant) Christian three-story storefront church in Banda Aceh, smashing windows and destroying furniture on the first floor.

According to the Jakarta Globe, the 60 worshippers were on the 3d floor and due to the “quick response” of the local police, none of the Christians were harmed.

As quoted, the Banda Aceh Police Chief Muffan Mudji Kafanti stated:

“the attackers ransacked the place because the church members had not obtained permission to hold Mass in the store.”

Chief Muffan also stated:

“There are regulations if you want to make it a place of worship.

Local residents couldn’t accept it and wrecked it.”

Reportedly, despite an ongoing investigation, there have been no arrests.

However, the Bethel congregation is now suspected of illegally opening a place of worship without governmental approval.

Also, “12 of the Christians were taken to the police station for questioning.”

In a seperate incident, an Indonesian Catholic church was destroyed.

In a seperate incident, an Indonesian Catholic church was destroyed.
Photo credit:
Wikipedia

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‘MODERATE’ISLAMIC INDONESIA: JAIL ATHEIST FOR DECLARING HIS DISBELIEF IN A DEITY

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Remember, this is one of the countries apologists for Islam hold up as a beacon of modernity in the Islamic world.

Indonesian man jailed for two-and-a-half years for writing ‘God doesn’t exist’ on his Facebook page

By SARA MALM

PUBLISHED: 21:34 GMT, 14 June 2012 | UPDATED: 21:35 GMT, 14 June 2012
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An Indonesian man was jailed for 30 months after writing “God doesn’t exist” on his Facebook page.

Alexander Aan, 30, was imprisoned on Thursday for sharing explicit material about the Prophet Mohammed online.

He started an atheist group on Facebook on which he shared comic strips of the prophet having sex with his servant, a court in western Sumatra heard today.

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Mob throws urine at churchgoers

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Herald Sun Australia:

INDONESIA-RELIGION-CRIME-TRIAL

Angry mob: Members of the Islamic Defenders Front, shown here at a protest last year, have been accused of joining a mob that threw bags of urine at a Christian congregation in West Java. Picture: AFP AFP

A MOB of Islamic hardliners has thrown plastic bags filled with urine at an Indonesian church congregation.

The attack, during which stones and dirt were also hurled, occurred on Thursday as around 100 Christians prepared to hold a service at a church in Bekasi, a city on the outskirts of the capital Jakarta.

Members of the Philadelphia Batak Christian Protestant Church have been targeted several times in recent years.

“They attacked when the priest started to speak to the congregation. A crowd of 600 people threw bags of urine and dirty water as they tried to push police,” a lawyer for the church, Judianto Simanjuntak, said.

“Police didn’t even try to disperse the crowd, so they were open to attack us.”

National police spokesman Saud Usman Nasution confirmed there was an incident and that “an investigation has started, although no one has been arrested”.

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moderate Indonesia shuts down 17 churches

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Jakarta Globe:

Church Row a ‘Dark Time’ for Aceh

Banda Aceh. Another Christian house of worship has been sealed off in Aceh Singkil district, bringing the total since last week to 17 and marking a new low for religious intolerance in the staunchly Muslim province, a rights group said on Wednesday.

Agusta Mukhtar, a spokesman for the group Pro-Democracy People, said it was regrettable that the local authorities had sealed off the buildings following a protest on April 30 by hard-line groups including the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), which oppose the buildings.

“The religious peace here has been shattered by this anarchistic action that seeks religious domination for an inflexible faith,” he said in a statement. “This is a dark time in the history of religious freedom and tolerance in Aceh.”

Sixteen of the undung-undungs, small houses of worship not categorized as churches, were sealed off by district officials last week, on the pretext they had been built without proper permits. Another was closed off on Tuesday.

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Indonesian Muslim paramilitary defends Irshad Manji — whether she likes it or not

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From People of Shambhala.

The Indonesian Shi’ite Islamist organization Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) recently defended Canadian-American author and Muslim reformist Irshad Manji from attack. The organization has said that Muslim leaders need to “practice” the “spirit of tolerance,” rather than just talking about it.

The NU has a complicated history. It was founded, in 1926, partly in response to the abolition of the Caliphate by Ataturk, and partly to unite Muslims against nationalism and communism.

It was involved in the mass executions of communists during the 1960s, which led to the ousting of Sukarno, Indonesia’s “puppet master” president, who had retained power by playing the communists and the army off against each other.

Abdurrahman Wahid — who inherited leadership of the NU from his grandfather, and who later became president of Indonesia — apologized for the executions of communists.

Wahid described the NU as being “like Shiite minus Imamah [the belief that certain imams should interpret the Islamic tradition and guide the community]; similarly Shiite is NU plus Imamah.”

Indonesia is predominantly Sunni. As such, the NU represented a minority faith; and in recent years appears to have embraced the nation’s minority faiths more broadly.

AsiaNews.it reports that events spaces and attendees of Manji’s talks were regularly attacked. “Only during a speech at the headquarters of the Free Journalist Alliance in South Jakarta, were there no assaults, thanks,” Asianews.it says, “to the intervention of members of Banser, the paramilitary group of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the Shiite Muslim movement that defends the country’s ethnic and religious minorities.”

AsiaNews.it reports Aan Anshori, a member of the NU, as saying that the problem in Indonesia is that… read more.

Muslims against Lady Gaga

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From People of Shambhala.

A radical Islamist organization has promised to bring “chaos in Jakarta” if a planned concert by Lady Gaga goes ahead.

The Islamic Defenders’ Front (FPI) “is strongly rejecting Lady Gaga’s concert because we know very well how she is during the performing in concerts everywhere,” the organization’s chairman Habib Rizieq said recently.

The Jakarta Post reports that he said that FPI members take to the streets if the concert — scheduled to take place in Jakarta on June 3 — went ahead. Habib said that there would be “chaos in Jakarta” if Lady Gaga performed.

In March the FPI and other hardline Muslim organizations protested in Jakarta against liberalism,which they claim ruins morality.

Indonesian Council of Ulema (MUI) chairman Cholil Ridwan has also said that he believes the Lady Gaga concert is part of a plan, “intended to destroy the nation’s… read more.