Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Nov. 29th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Order, please. We are the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. Today, November 29, 2012, we are holding our 59th meeting.

We are continuing to study religious freedom in Indonesia. We are joined from Washington, D.C., by John Sifton, who is the advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

Mr. Sifton, we are glad to have you at our committee. I welcome you, and please feel free to begin your testimony.

[John Sifton, Advocacy Director, Human Rights Watch]

Thank you, and thank you for allowing me to testify before the committee.

The subject of your hearing today, religious intolerance in Indonesia, is a very timely one. Human Rights Watch has been working on human rights issues in Indonesia for decades, from abuses during the authoritarian Suharto era to more recent issues raised as the country has transitioned to democracy. Obviously, the country has come a long way since the Suharto era, but Indonesia today continues to be beset by several serious human rights abuses and human rights issues, of which violence, harassment, and discrimination against religious minorities is probably the most serious. The violence, harassment, discrimination, and intolerance of minorities, such as the Ahmadiyya, Bahá’í, Christian, and Shia faiths, is a problem that is now, unfortunately, growing worse.

I'd like to use my testimony to give a few accounts of recent incidents that will be of interest to the subcommittee, and then go on to answer your questions.

I'd like to start with an account of a particularly vicious attack that occurred in February of 2011 in a village called Cikeusik, in western Java. Over 1,000 Islamist militants—over 1,000 men—attacked an Ahmadiyya mosque in which a few dozen worshippers were meeting. It was a vicious mob attack. The men were armed with stones, sticks, and machetes. Some of them were shouting, “You are infidels, you are heretics” as they fell on the worshippers. By the time the attack was over, three of the Ahmadiyya were dead, bludgeoned to death, and five others were severely injured, with massive wounds to their bodies and their faces, requiring major reconstructive surgeries. One of the victims stopped by to see our Jakarta-based researcher just the other day. He's literally had tens of thousands of dollars in reconstructive surgery since the attack. His health insurance has just run out.

This is an attack that has had a huge hangover impact on that community, traumatizing many of the villagers. While this attack in west Java was more gruesome than most, it's nevertheless part of a growing trend of religious violence in Indonesia that we've been documenting over the last two or three years.

According to the Setara Institute, which is a Jakarta-based non-profit that monitors religious freedom, there were 216 cases of attacks on religious minorities two years ago, in 2010—216 cases of attacks on minorities—and in 2011 there were 244, which is a pretty big increase. Already in the first nine months of this year there have been another 214 cases. If things go on track, there will be even more incidents this year than there were last, so that will be a second year with an increase.

Many of these incidents are not violence against people, thankfully; they tend to be attacks on mosques and churches, and mostly arson attacks. But in many of the incidents, local security forces either didn't prevent the attacks, were slow to respond to them, or failed to investigate the attacks. This is a big issue I want to raise, which is the government complicity in these events. In the incident in west Java I just described, police in fact were on the scene when that mob attacked. They withdrew as the mob descended on the mosque and they let the violence occur.

In another incident, on December 20, 2011, some Sunni militants attacked a Shia village in Sampang, on Madura Island, which is a small island near Surabaya. During that attack—it was basically a pogrom—a good part of the village was burned and 500 residents were forced to flee from their burning houses. Police arrested one of the militants; there were hundreds of people and only one person was arrested.

Several months later, on August 26 of this year, at the end of Ramadan, it happened again: hundreds of Sunni militants attacked the same village and burned down another 50 houses. They killed somebody this time, and they seriously injured several others. Again, police were on the scene, but they failed to stop the attack.

The reason I raise this is that in all the research we have done—not just on the violence, but also on discrimination and other harassment, which I will talk about in a moment—there's really no question that Indonesian government entities, on the local and on the national level, are implicated in the violence, intolerance, and discrimination.

I want to stress that these problems with religious intolerance are not just about violence, however. Religious minorities are also being subjected to increasingly widespread discrimination and harassment by government authorities. For instance, religious communities face huge hurdles in overcoming bureaucratic harassment, which they face when they seek to build a new church or buy property for their religious community. They get hung up in all kinds of bureaucratic zoning ordinances and are basically refused permission to build churches.

Senior government officials—the religious affairs minister, the home affairs minister—continue to justify restrictions on religious freedom in the name of public order. They've both offered relocation to affected communities, who have either been attacked by Sunni groups or are being subjected to this bureaucratic harassment. They offer relocation, but do very little to actually protect the rights of the people who are under attack. The religious affairs minister in particular, Suryadharma Ali, has inflamed tensions by making highly discriminatory remarks about both the Ahmadiyya and the Shia at various times, suggesting that they are heretical to Islam. Ahmadiyya and Shia are both part of the Islamic faith, but the religious affairs minister suggests otherwise. In September 2012, Ali stated that the solution to religious intolerance of Shia and Ahmadiyya was for them to convert to Sunni Islam.

President Yudhoyono, in the same month, called for the development of an international instrument or entity to prosecute religious blasphemy, which of course could be used to restrict free expression and religious freedom of minorities. By far the biggest failure of the Indonesian government is simply their failure to reign in abusive forces behind all of this violence and harassment. There are extremist groups, both political groups and just literally mobs, who are fomenting the violence. The government, far from investigating or prosecuting them for threatening and carrying out violence, does nothing, and doesn't use any of the raw power they have, or the police power, or the power of the bully pulpit, so to speak, to stop the violence or prevent it from happening. That is probably the single biggest failure. The reason is it's a human rights abuse and not just a social problem.

In important respects, Indonesia is rightly touted for its religious diversity and the tolerance that is ingrained in its constitution, at least on paper. There are several bumps in the road. There are issues about atheism versus religious sentiment, which are very complicated and also bear some discussion. Among religions, among faiths, there is, on paper, an idea of diversity that is very promising. The end of the Suharto era brought greater freedoms in a general sense. The flip side of this coin has been that many ugly viewpoints—many radical, extremist viewpoints, which have either been long repressed or politically sidelined in one way or another—have now emerged into the open. The Government of Indonesia, in particular its current president, has just not dealt with the fallout of these problems. When the intolerance is expressed through harassment, intimidation, and violence, it creates a climate in which many more attacks can be expected in the future.

I could go on for a while, but with that, I will leave it and take your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you very much for your testimony.

We have to get to another building in time for question period. For organizational reasons, we have to wrap it up without the usual leeway we have.

Saying all of that, I'm going to suggest that we allow six minutes for questions. If it looks like we're starting to run over, because six minutes has become seven, we will cut them down to five.

I will turn it over to Mr. Sweet.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

I'll just mention, sir, before you begin, that we are televised today, so everybody just keep that in mind as you carry on.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you very much for that warning, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Sifton, thank you very much for taking the time to join us electronically. I apologize that I was a little late. I chaired a committee beforehand, so if I ask any questions regarding the testimony you gave that seem redundant, please forgive me beforehand.

We had Irshad Manji here just a couple of days ago giving testimony, and we were, of course, talking specifically about her visit. She really said that within five years there was a radical change.

You mentioned something about religious tolerance being promising on paper, but she said there was actually an atmosphere of good religious diversity and tolerance just five years ago and there has been a substantial change. What do you equate that change to?

First, do you agree with her? Second, what is the impetus of this seemingly radical change?

[John Sifton]

It's a very complicated political science question, and to be perfectly frank, I'm not qualified to answer on the history going all the way back to 1945, when independence started. The short answer is that what you have is a country in which really extremist elements, in the political scene, mostly Sunni, in one way or another were kept under control or were sidelined or were subjugated in one way or another from 1945 until roughly five years ago.

First, the Suharto era ended, but in the fallout from that, what you saw was certain, quite extremist Sunni groups becoming more and more powerful politically, and instead of being co-opted or in some way sidelined or for political reasons softening their tone, they seem to have grown increasingly strident. Unfortunately, many of their followers seem to think that the way to get things done on the local social level is to use kinetic force, to use violence. If there is a Christian church and they don't like it, they'll burn it down.

I won't even get into the more complicated issues or the fact that some of these more extremist groups have enjoyed a kind of uneasy relationship with state security apparatus over the years. There are accounts collected by the International Crisis Group and other NGOs in which police and security and intelligence folks have admitted that essentially extremist Sunni groups were used by the police as their “attack dogs” at various moments for political reasons. That's a whole complex issue in itself, and there's a question to be asked whether the government created a monster by using radical groups to be off-the-books mobs for hire.

At the end of the day, the answer to your question is that about five years ago very extremist groups gained more political power than they've ever had. The current president's religious affairs minister, who I was just talking about, who is so hostile to Shia and Ahmadiyya, was given that position because the president has a coalition government and he needed to give him a position. It's almost like politics was the reason that guy got that position and why we have him now, and why he can't be fired by the current president, no matter how much we complain about him.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

As Indonesia is one of the few countries that...[Technical difficulty—Editor]...for certain, and that position could easily be used as one that could enhance tolerance, but obviously, as you said, it has been the contrary.

You mentioned specifically the Ahmadiyya and the Shia. Of all the religious minorities, are they singled out more...? I'm wondering about the Christian minority. Are they targeted as well? Are they all universally persecuted, or does there seem to be one group that's targeted more than another?

[John Sifton]

Demographically there is one group that's targeted more than the others, just because they're bigger and there are more targets, so to speak, and that is Christians, who make up 9% to 10% of the population. If you look at the 250-odd attacks this year, which by the end of the year will be 280 or something, a lot of them are just arson attacks on churches, but when you look at the most violent attacks, ones in which people actually got hurt and died, those tend to be Shia and Ahmadiyya.

The Ahmadiyya are a very small minority, so the raw number of attacks is quite small because the community is small, but in terms of viciousness of the attacks...they get spoken about the most rudely and the most dismissively by the government.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

So there's more individual violence toward people in the Ahmadiyya and Shia communities and more property damage and wanton destruction toward the Christian community generally. I understand we're generalizing here. With human rights abuses, I don't like to generalize, but it's just to give us a picture of what's going on there.

[John Sifton]

There's the violence too. That's just the violence. There's also the question of harassment and how many churches have asked for permits but have been refused and things like that. It's another way of counting intolerance.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Regarding the Ahmadiyyas, I'm not sure if you know the answer, but do they attempt to proselytize and cause Sunnis to become Ahmadiyya, or are they entirely separate and not seeking to proselytize?

[John Sifton]

There is a lot of talk among Sunni militant groups about Christian proselytizing as a reason why they have to sort of fight back. That, to me, is not the usual argument that's made about Ahmadiyya. The usual argument about Ahmadiyya is that they're infidels and they've sullied the Koran by writing their own version, and things like that. That's the sort of complaint that gets made the most during these attacks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Okay, so that's the basis perhaps on which they are seen as justifying some kind of more aggressive persecution.

[John Sifton]

Yes. I mean, with Shia, it's the same. These radical groups consider them to be heretic Muslims, which I guess for them is worse than folks who aren't even Muslims in the first place.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you.

We go to Monsieur Jacob, please.

[Pierre Jacob, NDP, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Sifton, for coming to testify before the committee and provide us with a portrait of the latest developments in the situation today.

During your presentation, you spoke of 214 attacks being committed. These incidents are mainly attacks against churches and cases of arson. These events have caused deaths and injuries. You talked about government complicity, religious intolerance, inertia in the face of violence and the deterioration of the climate.

My first question concerns the Indonesian judiciary. Does it seem to you to be independent and impartial, particularly in cases of violent attacks against religious minorities, allegations of blasphemy or discrimination on grounds of religion and beliefs? Do the judges seem to you to be free and willing to give objective decisions? Especially when the members of the Indonesian security forces are involved, can they give a decision in complete freedom, without outside interference?

[John Sifton]

There's no doubt there are some problems with judicial independence in Indonesia across the board on all issues. That's just simply a fact.

I think the bigger problem, from a legal, judicial, rule of law point of view, in relation to this problem in particular, is that police and prosecutors don't robustly investigate or prosecute the cases in the first place. When they do, they seek punishment or fines that are way below what would be reasonable to expect in some of these cases.

In the few cases that have been investigated and prosecuted, there have been punishments that are almost laughable in how small they are. I mean, they are literally time served or a fine of $200 and that sort of thing for police who have been found to have killed somebody. I think that's the bigger issue; the prosecutors don't really pursue this stuff very robustly.

One of the things I like to say when I'm there is that Human Rights Watch for a long time had a big set of issues on the human rights front with the Bush administration here in the United States about a number of issues, from Guantanamo to whatever else. One thing we can say that the Bush administration was good about was that after September 11 they set up a very robust prosecutorial unit in the Department of Justice to prosecute hate crimes against Muslims and Sikhs, because there was an uptick after the September 11 attacks.

That's the sort of thing that is completely lacking in Indonesia, the sort of concerted, focused effort to prosecute crimes of intolerance against minorities. It just doesn't exist. There's no effort to focus on that.

[Pierre Jacob, NDP, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you.

My second question is about corruption. Is corruption a serious problem in Indonesia? You spoke earlier of favouritism, and paltry fines and sentences. What effect does corruption have on the ability of all Indonesians enjoying their civil and political rights?

[John Sifton]

One way in which corruption is directly involved in this is that the Ministry of Religious Affairs is a patronage post, but it has a lot of power over some of the ordinary administrative decisions that would impact a religious community, like permission to build a church, permission to expand a church, things like that.

The religious affairs ministry is a patronage post that was handed out by the president to somebody who is a radical extremist Sunni Muslim. Then, to make matters worse, there are all kinds of suggestions of corruption within that ministry, which, among other things, oversees the hajj to Saudi Arabia. That is a complicated thing, but basically the government helps Indonesians travel to Saudi Arabia, and bankrolls some of them, and there is a trust fund for others; there is a lot of money at stake. There is a lot of corruption in that ministry, and having it presumably puts a person in a place where they can actually reap some of the rewards, so to speak. That's one way it's directly involved in this.

On a general level, all I'd say about corruption is that it's just one more piece of evidence about the arbitrariness of the legal system, that if a radical extremist group attacks a Christian mosque, you can be pretty sure they're also going to have enough money to bribe the police to avoid prosecution afterwards.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Your six minutes are now up.

Now we turn to the next Conservative member, Mr. Schellenberger.

[Gary Schellenberger, Perth—Wellington, CPC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Sifton, for your presentation.

In August 2012, new organizations and human rights groups reported that a group of Shi'ite students and teachers were attacked by a Sunni mob, killing at least one person.

In your view, is religious strife and sectarian violence having an impact on children's rights to obtain an education in Indonesia?

[John Sifton]

Yes. That's the village I was discussing earlier. It had already been attacked late in 2011, and then at the end of Ramadan, some of the students in that village sought to go back to Java, to go to their schools. It was as they sought to go to their schools that they were attacked.

It's absolutely the case that Shia children face bigger hurdles getting an education because of the relentless attacks on their mosques and schools and communities. There is no doubt about it, not to mention what religious instruction takes place in churches. I haven't even gotten to churches.

[Gary Schellenberger]

Okay.

In your opinion, has rising religious intolerance had any effect on the ability of women to fully enjoy their human rights in Indonesia?

Would your assessment of the situation of women belonging to religious minorities in the country differ from your assessment of the situation of women practising one of the six official religions?