After court ruling, people want church unlocked

The congregation of the Taman Yasmin Indonesian Christian Church (GKI) asked the Bogor administration to reopen its church after the Supreme Court rejected the government’s request to close it.

“We received the Supreme Court’s ruling last Thursday. There is no reason for the administration to refuse opening our church,” church spokesman Bona Sigalingging told The Jakarta Post over the telephone.

The congregation has held services on the streets after Bogor’s administration locked the gates to their church in 2010, following protests from local Muslims and hard-line Islamic groups.

The administration declined to reopen the church, claiming it had not received notice of the court’s ruling.

(Hasyim Widhiarto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Mon, 02/28/2011 )