Komnas HAM Urges Govt. to Protect Targeted Former Gafatar Members
Jakarta. The Indonesian government must intervene to protect members of religious minority Fajar Nusantara Movement, or Gafatar, the National Commission on Human Rights said, after hundreds of former members were forced to leave their homes after an arson attack.
The group, deemed "heretical" by a number of leading Islamic groups, has been the subjects of rumors of missing persons joining the group, sparking a nationwide scare.
On Tuesday, a mob ransacked and razed a village in Mempawah district, West Kalimantan, where over 700 people, believed to be former Gafatar members, lived. No casualities were reported after authorities evacuated the villagers to nearby refuges.
Gafatar is believed to be the transformation of another group named Al-Qiyadah al-Islamiyah. Its leader, self-proclaimed prophet Ahmad Moshaddeq was sentenced in 2008 to four years jail for blasphemy.
Maneger Nasution, spokesperson for human rights commission Komnas HAM, said the government must provide protection to current and former Gafatar members as they face increasingly strong alienation and intimidation from majority religious groups.
"They are also Indonesian citizens," he said on Thursday.
Gafatar has sparked nationwide concerns in recent weeks after police on Jan. 11 found a Yogyakarta-based female doctor and her 6-month-old baby in West Kalimantan, where the group is now believed to be based, after they were declared missing on Dec. 30.
Maneger said the government must approach these claims and accusations carefully and investigate on a case-to-case basis and not jump to conclusions that the entire group is illegal.
Law enforcers "must investigate whether individual member of the group has committed crimes," he said.
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