Yudhoyono aiming to settle plight of displaced Shi'ites
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Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has formed a team to help members of the Muslim Sampang Shi'a community, who have been violently evicted from their homes.
The presidential adviser on human rights, Albert Hasibuan, delivered the promise when he met 10 members of the community, who had ridden bicycles all the way from Surabaya in East Java to Jakarta, as a protest against the eviction.
The protesters had expected to meet the president himself.
The Shi’ites insist that they be allowed to return home instead of being relocated to Sidoarjo, in East Java.
“The president has formed a team led by the coordinating political, legal and security affairs minister [Djoko Suyanto] to settle this issue,” he said after the meeting, while not giving a guarantee of help for the Shi’a community.
In the statement, the presidential adviser also expressed his concerns over the difficulties the Shi’a followers had been facing.
He criticised Sampang Regency and East Java Province for failing to settle the problems. His team issued recommendations, but no response had been forthcoming from the local government, he added.
“The forced relocation of the Sampang Shi’ites, in my opinion, is inhumane and unwise,” he said. “It is a false interpretation of the values of tolerance promoted by President Yudhoyono.”
The 10 cyclists represent about 165 displaced Shi’ites who sheltered at the Sampang sports hall for 10 months, following a clash with the Sunni community.
The government argued that the policy was for their own safety because locals would harass them if they returned to their original village.
The cyclists were disappointed with their failure to meet Yudhoyono and that their two-week journey had come to nothing.
“We are not demanding much. We just want to meet the president to kindly ask him to protect us and our constitutional rights as Indonesian citizens,” said Muhammad Rosyid, one of the cyclists.
Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence coordinator Haris Azhar, who joined the Shi’ites in the meeting, said he had asked the presidential adviser to meet with the National Commission on Human Rights, given the indication that the forced eviction could be seen as a human-rights violation.
“This is the time for the president and his aides to take firm action because the Shi’ites have lost trust in local administrations,” he said.
