Human Rights Group Urges Action on Behalf of Indonesia's Christians

The director of a Christian human rights group says persecution of Christians is on the rise throughout Indonesia. Ann Buwalda, director of the Virginia-based Jubilee Campaign, says recent developments in that country have heightened concerns for her and her staff.

Jubilee Campaign, which monitors countries known for persecuting Christians, reports that rapid growth of Christianity across Indonesia has caused Muslims to claim that Christianity must be resisted with force. In recent years the government of Indonesia has closed more than 150 churches in the capital city of Jakarta and throughout the island of Java, the country's most populous island.

Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population, and that nation's government has been cited in the U.S. State Department's report on international religious freedom as among those nations that have enacted discriminatory legislation or policies prejudicial to certain religions.

Buwalda says Jubilee Campaign is asking Christians in America "to write their congressmen and their senators and encourage efforts to protect the Christian minorities."

Believers in the free world need to put pressure on their own government's leaders, Buwalda suggests, asking them to advocate on behalf of Indonesia's persecuted believers. U.S. leaders could urge that Southeast Asian country's leaders to let Christians in Indonesia "have churches to worship in and permit them to have religious freedom in the country," she says.

"The Indonesian government has given a lot of lip service to their minorities, yet there has not been a lot done to actually protect them," the Jubilee Campaign spokeswoman says. "There's legislation that is now enacted in Indonesia that could shut down hundreds of churches across the country. We would ask people to pray and write their congressmen and senators to take an interest in what's happening there."

A bill proposed by lawmakers in the Province of Aceh would impose Sharia law on all non-Muslims, and Buwalda notes that other legislation recently passed by the Indonesian government could be restrictive to Christians. She says government officials in Indonesia have not stood behind the state's promises of greater freedom for its religious minorities.