The Economist Europe – July 22-28, 2017

(National Geographic (Little) Kids) #1

20 Asia The EconomistJuly 22nd 2017


1

2 the generals’ 20-year plan on the country
and provides ample grounds to remove
any elected leader whom the army finds
lacking. All this is designed to prevent vot-
ers from electing the “wrong” leaders, in
the army’s view, as they have done at ev-
ery opportunity over the past 15 years.
Democratic institutions are not yet
quite that weak in the region’s two biggest
countries, Indonesia and the Philippines,
but in both liberals have more cause for
fear than hope. Filipino voters, justifiably
frustrated by the way that a few prominent
families dominate politics, and by how re-
cent economic growth has failed to reduce
the high poverty rate, elected Rodrigo Du-
terte as president last year. Alone among
the five candidates, he seemed to care
about ordinary people; his brutal anti-drug
campaign has appalled foreigners but is
popular at home.
Mr Duterte reminisces fondly about the
dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos and
seems to crave dictatorial power himself.
He has declared martial law on the south-
ern island of Mindanao (see Banyan), and
often muses about doing the same nation-
ally. He veers between indifference and
hostility to troublesome principles such as
due process, the separation of powers and
the rule of law—all of which need shoring
up, not weakening.
An election for governor of Jakarta in
April, meanwhile, has harmed Indonesia’s
reputation for religious tolerance (see next
story). Islamist agitators campaigned
against the Christian incumbent, Basuki
Tjahaja Purnama, falsely claiming that he
had insulted the Koran. Anies Baswedan,
one of his rivals, embraced their shameless
attempt to stir up sectarian tension, and
won. Prabowo Subianto, a tub-thumping
nationalist who lost the presidential elec-
tion in 2014, backed Mr Baswedan. The fear
is that Mr Prabowo, inspired by Mr Baswe-
dan’s success, will try to foster similar divi-
sions at the national level.
But it is Myanmar that most encapsu-
lates the region’s democratic reversal.
When the army ceded power last year to
Aung San Suu Kyi, its Nobel-prize-winning
opponent of 30 years, expectations were
astronomically high, even though the con-
stitution the generals had written severely
limited her powers. That has made her gov-
ernment’s craven and repressive acts all
the more bewildering. It has charged more
reporters with defamation than did her
military-backed predecessor. She has been
shamefully silent about the continuing
persecution of the Rohingya, a Muslim mi-
nority, not even admitting, let alone trying
to stop, the army’s well-documented cam-
paign of rape, murder and destruction
against Rohingya villages. It does not help
that since Donald Trump became presi-
dent, America, long the loudest champion
of liberal values in the region, has more or
less letthe subject drop. 7

C


ORNELIS, the 63-year-old governor of
West Kalimantan, a province in Indo-
nesian Borneo, is relaxing in jeans and a
stained white vest at a table piled with
krupukcrackers and other local snacks.
Portraits of the governor and his wife pos-
ing with prize-winning vegetables (both
are keen gardeners) decorate the walls of
the family home in Ngabang, a town in the
hills four hours’ drive from Pontianak, the
provincial capital. But so do crucifixes and
Christian figurines—and it is Mr Cornelis’s
religion, more than anything else, that has
made him the latest lightning rod for the Is-
lamic Defenders Front (FPI), an Islamist
vigilante group.
Around 90% of Indonesia’s 260m peo-
ple are Muslim, butbeyond the island of
Java the population is much more mixed.
Minorities watched with dismay asFPI
and other Islamist groups turned on Ba-
suki Tjahaja Purnama, the Christian and
ethnic-Chinese governor of Jakarta, Indo-
nesia’s capital, over cooked-up claims that
he had insulted the Koran. Mr Basuki,
known as Ahok, was defeated by a Muslim
candidate in an election in April. Soon
after a court sentenced him to prison for
two years for blasphemy.
The government saw all this as an as-
sault on Indonesia’s national motto—“Un-
ity in diversity”—and on the five principles
(known aspancasila) underpinning the
constitution, which protects five officially
recognised religions (Islam, Christianity,
Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism).
Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi, Indone-
sia’s mild-mannered president, has said

that he will “crush” groups that imperil
pancasila. On July 10th he signed a decree
allowing the government to ban organisa-
tions with goals at odds with the constitu-
tion. On July 19th he duly banned Hizbut
Tahrir, an outfit that campaigns for an Is-
lamic caliphate. Rizieq Shihab, FPI’s leader,
is lingering in Saudi Arabia after prosecu-
tors charged him over sexually explicit
messages that he is alleged to have ex-
changed with a woman on WhatsApp.
(The law in question was passed at the in-
sistence of religious parties in 2008.)
In West Kalimantan, however, the Is-
lamists are on the march. They want to
make sure that MrCornelis, who must step
down next year having served the maxi-
mum two terms, is succeeded by a Muslim.
Sixty percent of West Kalimantan’s 4.4m
people are Muslim, but Mr Cornelis is one
of 1.5m Christians, most of them from the
Dayak ethnic group.
Mr Shihab has denounced Mr Cornelis
as a kafir, or infidel. Mr Cornelis, asked
what he thinks ofFPI, stubs out a clove cig-
arette in an overflowing ashtray and says,
“They are not welcome here. If they dare to
come, we will butcherthem.” Such talk is
especially alarming in Kalimantan, where
thousands were killed in fighting (pic-
tured) between Dayaks and Muslim mi-
grants from the island of Madura between
1996 and 2001. Attackers beheaded their
enemies and even ate their organsin ghast-
ly rituals. Back then, the Dayaks allied
themselves with the Malays, a Muslim eth-
nic group, suggesting that the conflict was
not about religion. But these days the di-

Religion in Indonesia

Borneo again


NGABANG, WEST KALIMANTAN
Islamist vigilantes open a new front in their war on tolerance
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