Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-07-07-Speech-4-299-000"
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"en.20110707.22.4-299-000"2
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Madam President, as a concerned Protestant I have this week heard from various missionary workers about the social situation of churches and of Christians in Indonesia. If the European Parliament is to put a country on its agenda of human rights violations, that, of course, requires careful handling of the facts on our part.
My initial conclusion from these contacts is that, among the churches, there are concerns, above all, about areas in the Indonesian archipelago with a Muslim majority. As an insider put it, using benign wording – the church is being tolerated, but that could change around very suddenly. From Java, in particular, the noises that are being heard are sombre – the authorities provide resistance to the building of churches and there is intimidation by small radical Muslim groups. To support this I quote a church leader from Bekasi, West Java, who said, ‘Despite a court judgment that we can use our church to hold services, the mayor is prohibiting us from doing so. We therefore now hold our services on the street, where we also baptise our children and celebrate the sacraments. It is a dangerous and undesirable situation. The radicals want to get us to surrender this way. This may go on for some time. Local Muslims who supported our church are also threatened by radical Islamists. We need the support of the international community. There should be freedom of religion for everyone.’
Europe’s institutions must put across this urgent message when they talk to the Indonesian authorities – in a balanced way, of course. We are not talking of general persecution of Christians in Indonesia, my local sources tell me, and they are grateful for the prevailing religious freedom. It is also true, however, that ‘all over the country an Arabification of Islam can be perceived, and this, naturally enough, is greatly worrying for Christians’.
We surely must share these worries, and we need to pass them on to Jakarta."@en1
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