Fears of attacks by Islamic militants are forcing some Christians in Indonesia to abandon traditional churches in favor of more discreet and secure venues this Christmas.
With foreign governments warning of holiday terror bombings, thousands of churches in major Indonesian cities will hold services this year in office buildings, hotels and even movie theaters, church leaders say.
"It puts us at a lower risk for being a target for religious persecution," said Pastor Steve Lunn, originally from Seattle, Washington, whose International English Service holds worship for 1,000 people in a downtown Jakarta office building.
"People tell me they feel safer," he said. "The facility itself is not the most important thing. It's just a place to gather. The most important thing is being together and worshipping God together."
Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of more than 13,000 islands and 210 million people, is the world's most populous Muslim nation. The vast majority of Muslims practice a moderate version of the faith.
But attacks against Christians, who are just 8 percent of the population, have become more frequent since ex-dictator Suharto's downfall in 1998, and amid a global rise in Islamic radicalism. Suharto enforced secularism as part of national security policies.
Four years ago, suspected militants from the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah terror group bombed 11 churches on Christmas Eve, killing 19 people.
The group was also blamed for the 2002 nightclub bombings that killed 202 people on the resort island of Bali, a 2003 attack on the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta and a blast at the Australian Embassy in September.
This year, more than 140,000 police will be deployed at churches, shopping malls and hotels where Westerners gather during the Christmas period, a police spokesman said.
"People are still afraid," said Pastor Hengki Ompi, whose church was attacked earlier this month by suspected Muslim gunmen on the central Indonesian island of Sulawesi. "We hope the attacks stop so we can celebrate Christmas without fear."
Plans to build new churches are sometimes met with violent protests from Islamic groups, which view them as an attempt to convert Muslims. Church leaders also say a decree requiring religious leaders to get neighborhood approval before building new places of worship is being used to discriminate against them.
Some church leaders say these obstacles are understandable given the country's Muslim majority, and acknowledge Muslims face similar problems in the few pockets of Indonesia where Christians dominate. But others say the restrictions reflect a growing intolerance of religious minorities.
"We have a lot more liberties than say Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the fact is that Christians are second-class citizens," said Pastor Bill Heckman, a Dutchman who has tried for six years to build a church in Jakarta.
Sporadic fighting between the Muslims and Christians in central and eastern Indonesia has reportedly killed more than 10,000 people since 1999.
Muslims say evangelical Christians are partly to blame for rising religious tensions. They say hundreds of foreign-funded evangelical groups are using churches in Muslim-dominated neighborhoods to convert locals -- a claim some Christians acknowledge is true.
In response, the government has proposed a law barring Indonesians from attending religious ceremonies that do not reflect their faith -- making it much harder for them to switch. It would also criminalize interfaith marriages and adoptions. Christians are lobbying the government to scrap the 35-year-old decree that can restrict churches from being built.
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS