FPI, Activists Clash While Bandung Police Question Rizieq Shihab
Jakarta. Members of the hardline Islamic Defenders Front, or FPI, clashed with the Indonesian Lower-Class Movement, or GMBI, while firebrand cleric Rizieq Shihab was being questioned by police in Bandung, West Java, on Thursday (12/01).
Rizieq, who is the leader of the FPI, and his supporters were mobbed by GMBI members as they left the police headquarters. GMBI members allegedly damaged a motorcycle and a black minivan used by members of the Islamic group.
The two organizations had both been protesting at the headquarters in Jalan Soekarno-Hatta.
FPI members tried to breach the heavily guarded western gate of the complex, while the other group gathered at the eastern gate.
Police secured the premises by installing a barbed wire barricade between the two organizations, but the clash occurred while the groups were being dispersed.
Several West Java organizations previously accused Rizieq of having insulted Sundanese culture by making a pun on "sampurasun," the Sundanese word for "hello," and "campur racun" ("mixed with poison").
Rizieq is facing a string of police reports, ranging from blasphemy and hate speech to defamation.
He was recently reported again to the Jakarta Police for a speech that went viral on social media in which he allegedly claimed that the new rupiah banknotes feature the communist hammer-and-sickle symbol.
Rizieq said he is not worried by the many legal proceedings he faces, arguing he had only expressed "general worries."
Several watchdog organizations and experts have called on the National Police to fast-track the investigations against him.
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