[YAHOO] More than 200,000 Indonesian Moslems prayed in unison and chanted Koranic verses Friday in the second major demonstration against Jakarta's Christian governor, as conservative groups push for his arrest for allegedly insulting Islam.
People in white Islamic robes and skullcaps packed out a massive park in the capital, with over 20,000 security personnel deployed to prevent a repeat of violence that erupted at the last protest against Basuki Tjahaja Purnama.
Purnama, known by his nickname Ahok, is being prosecuted for blasphemy over election campaign comments he made about the Koran, which have sparked widespread anger in the world's most populous Moslem-majority country.
The case is seen in part as a test of religious tolerance in Indonesia, where a reputation for pluralism has been eroded by a surge in attacks on minorities, but critics say it is also about politics as the governor's foes whip up anger to reduce his support.
The decision to prosecute Purnama, Jakarta's first non-Moslem governor for half a century and a member of the country's tiny ethnic Chinese minority, has not been enough to quell anger and conservative groups are now demanding his arrest.
Protesters waved banners that read "jail Ahok" as they marched en masse through the city's streets in the early hours to converge on the park, which surrounds the National Monument, a tall tower that looms over downtown Jakarta.
"Let's defend our religion," Rizieq Shihab, leader of hardline group the Islamic Defenders' Front (FPI), told the crowd as he delivered a fiery ...a single two-syllable word carrying connotations of both incoherence and viciousness. A fiery delivery implies an audience of rubes and yokels, preferably forming up into a mob... sermon.
"Stop all forms of religious blasphemy and put all violators on trial."
President Joko Widodo, an ally of Purnama who has been meeting with Islamic and politicians in recent days to calm tensions, joined the mass prayer, thanking the protesters for being peaceful and urging them to return home.
Jakarta police front man Raden Prabowo Argo Yuwono said more than 200,000 joined Friday's rally, dwarfing the last protest on November 4. He said it had passed off peacefully and protesters were starting to head home.
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[Business Mirror] Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte will not likely meet his forecast of ending terrorism in Mindanao by this month, given the results of the operations against the Abu Sayyaf, which he had entrusted to Armed Forces Chief of Staff Ricardo Visaya with an accompanying explicit order of finishing the insurgent group "to the last man."
Visaya is retiring on December 8 but, not only the campaign against the Abu Sayyaf in Sulu and Basilan, which is being undertaken by 18 battalions of soldiers and six companies of militiamen, is still to reach its full operational tempo.
The problem has even widened with a new front in the anti-terror campaign, due to the Lanao del Sur-based Maute Group. The previously unheralded Maute Group has turned into a full-blown Moro jihadi organization that is in the league of the Abu Sayyaf in less than five months - even bolder, in fact.
The Maute group, which the military initially considered to be aligned with Jemaah Islamiyah, but confined in Lanao del Sur, has steadily built its reputation as a terrorist group that the Philippine government will have to contend in the years to come.
The group has built its memberships from the rosters of young radicalized fighters from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, who shared the same stronghold in Lanao del Sur.
While the Abu Sayyaf has mostly carried out its bombings in Mindanao, the Maute Group ushered its first publicly known bombing right in Duterte's hometown of Davao City in September, killing 14 people and wounding at least 70 others.
On Monday a bomb was recovered near the U.S. Embassy in Manila, which was attributed to the Maute Group, because of the similarity of the bomb with the one used in Davao City.
The Maute was among the three groups, after the Abu Sayyaf and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, that have pledged their allegiance to Daesh.
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[Khaosod] Three men nabbed for plotting bomb attacks in Bangkok were involved in the southern separatist movement, according to senior police officer.
Talmisi Tohtalyon, Mubarih Gana, and Abdullasir Suekachi are accused of plotting bomb attacks in tourist and residential areas of Bangkok, accusations they "half-confessed to, half-denied," said Bangkok police commander Chayapol Chatchaidej.
All three suspects are natives of the southern border provinces. Chayapol said they were linked to the southern insurgency. He said, "Yes, they are. They have a history of staging attacks. They also admitted it to us."
Chayapol echoed deputy police commissioner Srivara Ransibrahmanakul, who said Wednesday the three were involved in previous incidents in the far South, including a 2012 shooting that killed a local teacher and a 2015 bomb attack.
General Srivara said intelligence agencies discovered that the three men were in Bangkok between September and October to plan attacks before returning to Narathiwat province. The military subsequently detained them and turned them over to police Tuesday.
Chayapol said that the Talmisi, Mubarih and Abdullasir confessed to amassing bomb making equipment in several apartments in Bangkok, but denied that they were plotting an attack as claimed by police.
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[Business Mirror] Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte will not likely meet his forecast of ending terrorism in Mindanao by this month, given the results of the operations against the Abu Sayyaf, which he had entrusted to Armed Forces Chief of Staff Ricardo Visaya with an accompanying explicit order of finishing the insurgent group "to the last man."
