Dozens of Muslim protesters, including mothers and children, rallied at the Bogor municipal office on Wednesday to demand that a Christian church under construction be demolished.
The protest, organized by the hard-line Indonesian Muslim Communication Forum (Forkami), was calling for the Taman Yasmin Church, which is being built by the Indonesian Christian Church (GKI), be closed indefinitely and dismantled.
“The government has to revoke the building permit for the construction of the GKI Taman Yasmin Church and also investigate the officials who are responsible for issuing the permit,” said Ahmad Iman, head of Forkami.
The GKI Yasmin congregation has for much of the year been holding its services on the sidewalk in front of the already sealed construction site after years of protracted wrangling with the Bogor administration, which most recently revoked its building permit in March.
The church won an appeal filed against the revocation and the State Administrative Court in June 2009 ordered the Bogor municipal authorities to end the site closure. But the city has since filed a case review and has refused to comply with the court order pending a new verdict.
Bogor authorities have said that the sealing of the church was at the behest of residents who opposed its presence in their community.
Forkami and other Muslim groups have alleged that some of the signatures needed from neighboring residents to gain approval for the construction were falsified.
“We demand that the government take this matter seriously and follow up the sealing of the church with a demolition order,” Ahmad said.
Ahmad said that Forkabi’s demands had nothing to do with religion but was purely based on the legal flaws in the issuance of the building permit.
“We emphasize that the problem of the GKI Yasmin Church is not because of SARA,” he said, using the acronym for ethnic, religious, racial and intercommunal conflicts.
“We are not objecting to Christians conducting their worship or building a church, but the construction of this church is legally flawed because the building permit was issued without the approval of residents,” he added.
A controversial joint ministerial decree issued in 2006 requires the approval of a majority of neighboring residents before new houses of worship can be built.
Rights groups have said the stringent requirements make it virtually impossible for minority groups to get permits.
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