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Indonesian congregation secretly celebrates Easter
Around 60 members of the beleaguered GKI Taman Yasmin Protestant church held a clandestine Easter service at one of its members houses in Bogor on Sunday. The worshipers spread the invitation to the service among church members and a few journalists but withheld the information from the police, who they regard as useless in safeguarding them.Church-goers took a lesson from last years Christmas celebration, where they were disrupted by dozens of hard-liners from the Reform Movement (Garis) and the Muslim Communications Forum (Forkami). Bona Sigalingging, the churchs spokesman, said, "The police were there, but they did not do much to help us. Ever since, we have found no point in telling the police about our activities." Bona said that limiting information to worshipers and trusted journalists was the best way to conduct religious activities without interruption or intimidation. He said, "For this Easter service, we just announced the location on Saturday." Since Bogor Mayor Diani Budiarto suspended the churchs building permit in 2008, the churchs members have gone from one house to another to perform their religious activities. Bona said that some worshipers couldn't bear the uncertain situation and had decided to move to other churches. He said, "We used to have 600 members who regularly came to our church. Now we have only 70 [active] members." Posted by: ryuge 2012-04-08 |
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