UN envoy slams rights record in Indonesia

November 14, 2012: The visiting UN rights envoy Navanethem Pillay said she was “saddened” to hear of attacks and other abuses against minorities in an assessment that condemned police inaction. Speaking in Jakarta yesterday at the end of a two-day visit, Pillay encouraged the government to abandon the blasphemy law, revise discriminatory legislation against the minority Muslim Ahmadiyah sect and to allow the building of places of worship.

“I was saddened to hear accounts of violent attacks, forced displacement, denial of citizen’s identity cards and other forms of discrimination and harassment against minorities,” she said in a press conference in Jakarta. The UN rights envoy drew particular attention to Bogor, West Java where worshipers have been denied a permit for the building despite a Supreme Court ruling from Jakarta.