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HRW: Oppression must end
[Straits Times] INDONESIA is letting radical Islamists trample the constitutional rights of minorities, leading to inter-communal violence, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.The New York-based watchdog called on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to repeal laws that it says have given extremists from the dominant religious group the legal space to launch violent attacks on people of other faiths. 'When the Indonesian authorities sacrifice the rights of religious minorities to appease hardline Islamist groups this simply causes more violence,' the group's Asia director, Elaine Pearson, said in a statement. Hundreds of Muslim extremists tried to attack a mosque belonging to the minority Ahmadiyah Islamic sect in Kuningan district of West Java province last week, resulting in clashes with police and the sect's followers. A government decree adopted in 2008 under pressure from Islamic conservatives bans the sect from spreading its faith, which includes the belief that its founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was the final Muslim prophet. Orthodox Islam holds that Mohammed was the final prophet, leaving the Ahmadis open to charges of heresy and blasphemy, which are punishable by up to five years in jail under a controversial 1965 law. Posted by: Fred 2010-08-04 |
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