Indonesian police arrest two in fatal attack on Muslim sect

Feb 8, 2011, 6:17 GMT

Jakarta - Indonesian police said Tuesday that they had arrested two people in a fatal attack on members of a Muslim sect.

Hundreds of radical Muslims stormed into a house where members of the Ahmadiyya sect were staying Sunday in the western Java district of Pandeglang, killing three people and injuring several others.

Local media said the attackers wielded machetes and other crude weapons.

'We are investigating two people as suspects,' national police spokesman Anton Bachrul Alam said.

Sunday's raid was the latest in a series of attacks against members of the sect that has been branded heretical by many Muslims because it teaches that its founder, Mirza Gulam Ahmad, was the final Islamic prophet instead of Mohammed.

The Ahmadiyya movement, founded in 1889 in India, has an estimated 200,000 followers in Indonesia, which has more Muslims than any other country.

Local and international human rights activists have condemned the government for failing to protect followers of the sect despite past attacks.

Amnesty International urged officials to investigate the killings.

'This brutal attack on Ahmadiyya followers reflects the continued failure of the Indonesian government to protect religious minorities from harassment and attacks and to hold the perpetrators accountable,' said Donna Guest, Amnesty's Asia-Pacific deputy director.

The organization said authorities had in the past failed to punish the attackers and tended to blame the group for 'deviant views.'

Rights groups said the attacks were fuelled by a 2008 joint ministerial decree forbidding the sect from promoting its activities.

'The Indonesian government should end this wave of hate crimes and immediately revoke the 2008 anti-Ahmadiyah decree, which encourages these vicious attacks,' New York-based Human Rights Watch said.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said he regretted the attack and ordered the national police chief, General Timur Pradopo, and the minister of religious affairs to investigate.

More than 150 Ahmadiyya members have lived in temporary shelters on Lombok Island since attackers burned their homes in 2006.

Muslims argue that Ahmadis should renounce their allegiance to Islam and form a separate religion.

Indonesia boasts a long tradition of religious tolerance, but an upsurge of Islamic conservatism in recent years has led to the emergence of tiny but vocal fundamentalist groups seeking to impose their strict interpretations of Islam.

Moderate Muslims and human rights groups have criticized authorities for not taking stronger action against such radical Islamic groups despite violence by their members.

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