State Officials’ Entanglement with Vigilante Groups in Violence against Ahmadiyah and Shi’a Communities in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Communal violence against the minority communities of Ahmadiyah and Shi’a was on the rise during the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004–14). This article discusses state responses to this violence. Previous studies commonly attributed communal violence in post-New Order Indonesia to the failure of local officials to stop the violence due to the security officials’ kinship and local ties with the perpetrators. Some argue that the violence broke out due to, first, the role of local elites who provoked violence; and second, the role of local state officials who supported the mobilisation of the people by vigilante groups to stage the protests that led to violence. This article expands on these studies by arguing that the state complicity in violence stems from security officials’ entangled relations with vigilante groups. These entangled relationships hampered the officers’ ability to prevent incidents of religious violence before they occurred, and to bring charges against perpetrators afterward. The entanglement was the result of a blurred boundary where police officers and vigilante groups often ended up pursuing areas of mutual material and political interest. This study is based on seven months of PhD fieldwork in Ahmadiyah and Shi’a communities in West Java Province and East Java Province in 2013.

KEYWORDS:

• Communal violence
• vigilantism
• Ahmadiyah (Ahmadiyya)
• Shi’a
• Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
• minority faiths
• Indonesia

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions. I would also like to express my special thanks to Dr Ross Tapsell, Associate Professor Greg Fealy, Professor Ariel Heryanto and Associate Professor Julie Chernov Hwang for their comments and feedback on earlier drafts of this article. This article is part of my PhD dissertation project titled “State Complicity in Violence against Ahmadiyah and Shi’a Communities in Indonesia”. Fieldwork for this project was conducted in Ahmadiyah and Shi’a communities in Kuningan and Sampang Regencies in Indonesia over a seven-month period in 2013.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Human rights groups, such as the Setara Institute and the Wahid Institute, reported that incidents of intolerance and violence against minority faiths, especially Ahmadiyah and Shi’a, were significant between 2007 and 2014. The Setara Institute found that 135 incidents occurred in 2007, 265 in 2008, 200 in 2009, 216 in 2010 and 244 in 2011 (Hasani & Naipospos, 2012, p. 28). The data from the Wahid Institute (2014, p. 29) shows that 121 incidents occurred in 2009, 184 in 2010, 267 in 2011, 278 in 2012, 245 in 2013 and 154 in 2014. The incidents of violence took the form of attacks on places of worship, attacks on houses belonging to minorities, forced evictions targeting minorities, and the banning of religious activities.

2 Attacks against an Ahmadiyah community in the Cikeusik area, Banten Province, in 2011 resulted in the deaths of three Ahmadis. Another five Ahmadis were seriously injured.

3 It is common in Indonesia for the police to hold regular public events to destroy drugs or alcoholic drinks they have confiscated.

4 Its chairman, Suhaya Jati Prakarsa, claimed in 2006 that it had a membership of 3 million (Tempo, 2006). However, the figure seems exaggerated, given that that number was 7.5 per cent of the total population of West Java in 2006. A more realistic figure is 26,000: earlier, Manaf Suharnaf, chairman of GIBAS Kuningan Regency, stated that GIBAS would mobilise 26,000 members and sympathisers across West Java and Banten to participate in the function that would see presidential hopeful Prabowo Subianto appointed chairman of the GIBAS honorary body in Bandung, the capital of West Java. Of the total, GIBAS Kuningan would contribute 1,000 members and sympathisers (Pelita, 2008).

5 Manaf is a civil servant at the Kuningan Education Office.

6 The Kuningan Regency government and the Kuningan Police and Prosecutor’s Office signed a joint decree in late 2004 that banned Ahmadiyah from publicly conducting religious events based on Ahmadiyah teachings in the village and prohibited Ahmadiyah from disseminating its teaching in the regency. The decree states that the violation of its provisions will result in legal proceedings. The decree was to accommodate demands by anti-Ahmadiyah groups.

7 Given Ahmadiyah’s substantial population in Manislor village (some 3,200 people, including women and children), they easily thwarted the threat from the authority to close their mosques.

8 In the 2010 protest, the Manislor organisations (GERAH and RUDAL) facilitated the organisation of istighosah [gathering to ask Allah for assistance in times of crisis] as a final push to realise the demands of the anti-Ahmadiyah camp. The event provided an opportunity for invited Muslim figures and leaders of the vigilante groups to justify heresy charges against Ahmadiyah, as well as to provoke the participants through fiery speeches to mount attacks against Ahmadiyah mosques and property.

9 The presence of vigilante groups can be traced to a lawsuit filed by the Karanggayam Association of Islamic Boarding Schools against Tajul Muluk on 16 October 2009. In the course of the Sunni–Shi’a crisis, however, the role of the association was never mentioned in academic or press reports, or in the author’s conversations with residents of Nangkernang hamlet, Karanggayam village and Gading Laok hamlet, Blu’uran village.

10 Police internal presentation by Adj. Sr. Comr. Solehan, then chief of Sampang Regency police, in a session called Analysis and Evaluation. The presentation, a soft copy of which was made available to the author, is titled “Presentation of chief of Sampang Regency police related to horizontal conflict between Kiai Tajul Muluk & Kiai Rois in Karanggayam village, Omben district and Blu’uran village, Karangpenang district”. The data can also be found in a report jointly written by members of the National Commission on Human Rights and other state institutions (Fact Finding and Recommendation Team, 2013, p. 2).

11 They were local economic bosses, thugs, influential politicians, civil servants or religious groups.

12 The number of internet users in Indonesia in 2013 was 71.19 million (Jakarta Post, 2013). By 2017, however, the number had risen significantly to 143.26 million people (APJII, 2018, p. 3).

Additional information

Funding

Fieldwork funding for this project was provided by the School of Culture, History and Language (CHL), College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University.