Sickening Attack Leaves Disabled Ahmadi Severely Injured

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Sickening Attack Leaves Disabled Ahmadi Severely Injured

Jakarta Globe | November 10, 2011

Ahmadi children playing at the Transito shelter in Mataram, Lombok, in September this year. (Antara Photo)

A disabled member of the Indonesian’s minority Ahmadiyah religious sect survived a brutal attack by an unknown assailant but had both his ears partially severed with a machete, it was reported on Thursday.

The victim was identified as Sadarudin, a resident of the run-down Transito shelter in Mataram, Lombok, that has been home to almost 150 persecuted Ahmadi for the last six years.

Metro TV reported that the victim, who is deaf and mute, was collecting wood near the shelter on Wednesday when he was attacked.

Local police said that according to witnesses, the attacker attempted to behead the victim but was scared off when other Ahmadi heard the commotion, according to the report.

The victim, who would not have been able to call for help, suffered serious head injuries and is fighting for his life in the Mataram General Hospital.

It is understood the assailant had approached his intended victim and asked to borrow his machete before using it in the attack.

The Transito (transit) shelter is home to 138 members of the beleaguered sect who struggle to survive.

The electricity to the shelter was cut off more than three years ago, food aid from the government — which has perpetuated their limbo by refusing them the right to return home or register as residents — was halted last year, and sanitation facilities are non-existent.

A stipend from the state was stopped in 2007.

Not being registered residents, they have been denied the free gas stoves distributed by the government to all citizens, and they now resort to gathering scrap to burn as fuel.

Copyright 2010 The Jakarta Globe
URL: www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/sickening-attack.../477524

Idul Fitri Brings Little Cheer to Ahmadi Shelter

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Idul Fitri Brings Little Cheer to Ahmadi Shelter

Fitri | August 27, 2011

Ahmadiyah families in Transito shelter, Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara.

Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara. Nothing has changed at the Transito shelter in the five and a half years that it has served as home to 138 members of the beleaguered Ahmadiyah Islamic sect.

A sixth successive Idul Fitri in cramped conditions without even the most basic of amenities beckons, with no word on when they will be allowed to return to their home village of Gegerung in West Lombok, from where they were driven out by fellow Muslims in February 2006.

The electricity to the shelter was cut off three years ago, food aid from the government — which has perpetuated their limbo by refusing them the right to return home or register as residents of Mataram — was halted last year, and sanitation facilities are non-existent.

A stipend from the state was stopped in 2007. Not being registered residents, they have been denied the free gas stoves distributed by the government to all citizens, and they now resort to gathering scrap to burn as fuel.

“It’s the durian season now, and people are throwing out lots of durian husks. We’re collecting those to fire our stoves,” says Munikah, one of the shelter’s inhabitants. “We can’t afford to use kerosene because it costs Rp 12,000 [$1.40] a liter.”

The women band together in preparing the predawn and sunset meals during Ramadan, crowding the shelter’s corridor as they toil over smoky stoves. The meals themselves are basic, heavy on starchy ingredients to mask the lack of vegetables or meat. However, they carry on fasting like most other Muslims.

Clothes for the Kids

The rest of the country may be in a festive mood with the approach of Idul Fitri — and its attendant indulgences such as family reunions, hearty meals and the buying of new clothes — but at Transito, it will be just another day of trying to scrape by.

All that Munikah is hoping for before then is that her husband can bring home a little more than the Rp 25,000 per day he typically makes through cutting hair at a nearby market.

“It’d be nice if he got a little something extra for Idul Fitri so we could at least get the kids some new clothes,” she says. “But if that doesn’t happen, they won’t be too disappointed.”

After living so long at the shelter, the Ahmadiyah children have grown more accepting of their situation, says Basir Aziz, a local Ahmadi elder. “There are 50 children here, 16 of whom were born in this shelter,” he says.

“This year they seem a lot more resilient and upbeat. They don’t feel marginalized. They’re showing a tremendous passion to study and practice their faith, despite all they’ve been through.”

The life at the shelter is the only one that 6-year-old Ida knows. Asked if her parents had bought her new clothes for the holiday, she responds with a maturity beyond her years. “I’ve got the clothes from last year. They’re still fine,” she says with a smile.

Nor do they complain about the partially collapsed ceiling in their prayer hall, or the fact that all 33 families here are forced to share crowded living quarters, with only flimsy partitions of cardboard and rags mounted on bamboo frames giving privacy.

No More Tears

“When the kids play, they’re never sad,” says Hairudin, an Ahmadi who earns Rp 5,000 a day as a coolie at the local market.

“They’ve become used to all this after almost six years. We’ve got no more tears. We have to take what we get.”

For Hairudin and the other Ahmadis, sorrow is an emotion they dare not indulge. “If I broke down in sadness just thinking about how we got hounded out of our homes, I wouldn’t be able to go to work each day, and that would be the biggest problem for my family,” he says.

“That’s why we don’t think about that anymore. Tears are a luxury we can’t afford. All we can do now is just think about how to get through each day.”

H. Mahmulludin, an Ahmadi elder, agrees there is no use being bitter about the past.

He bears no grudge against the local authorities, who last year raised the ire of human rights activists with a plan to exile all Ahmadis in West Lombok to a remote island and bar them from plans to develop the region as a top tourist draw.

“The governor has resolved all the differences between us in a peaceful manner,” he says. “The violence against us has stopped, and that helps a lot.”

What also helps, Mahmulludin says, is a weekly stipend from local community leaders.

But that pales in comparison to what they would have received if the government had agreed to compensate them for the homes they left behind in Gegerung.

In what activists have highlighted as just another example of discrimination against the Ahmadis, they have been denied compensation or the option of selling their homes, even as the government bars them from going back to inhabit them.

Continuing Pogrom

Despite this, there have been several attempts by some of the Ahmadis to return and farm their land while keeping a low profile. However, they have been routinely chased out by other villagers, who have branded them “a stain on this village” that “must be cleaned out.”

In the most recent incident, last November, local authorities themselves led the pogrom of the Ahmadis, forcing men, women and children to flee with their belongings.

Those who remained behind had their homes burned by a mob, while others vowed to keep coming back to farm their land.

“If I farm, at least I’m making a living, whereas at Transito I have no hope for a meaningful life,” said Sarim, one of the Ahmadis targeted last November.

Nobody was prosecuted for the attack, and the local administration did not compensate for losses, which the victims estimated at Rp 735 million.

For Munikah and the other mothers forced to watch their children grow up in what has become a refugee camp, the hope that there will ever be a resolution to the community’s plight and that they may one day return to their homes has dwindled along with the sadness.

All that remains, Munikah says, is a sense of resignation and just an iota of optimism that maybe — just maybe — Idul Fitri this year will herald a change for the better.

Copyright 2010 The Jakarta Globe
URL: www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/idul-fitri.../462042

No Respite for Lombok’s Ahmadiyah Community

Jakarta

No Respite for Lombok’s Ahmadiyah Community

Fitri | September 05, 2010

Jakarta. After having spent five consecutive Ramadans in a shelter and in light of the renewed comments by officials seeking the disbanding of their sect, Ahmadiyah members in Lombok say they can only resign themselves to whatever the future will bring.

Since having been forced to leave their village, West Lingsar, in West Lombok district, in February 2006, at least 22 Ahmadiyah families have been staying at the Transito shelter in Mataram, the capital of West Nusa Tenggara province.

Founded in India in 1889, Ahmadiyah holds that the group’s founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was the last prophet — a belief that contradicts a tenet of Islam that reserves that position for the Prophet Muhammad.

The rooms where the 133 people are staying are only separated by curtains.

To make matters worse, the government has now halted the provision of food aid for the displaced Ahmadiyah members. Electricity supply to the building was cut two years ago.

“If we have to be disbanded, then we can do nothing else except surrender and wait for God’s trial because God’s justice is much better than human trials,” Zulhair, one of the displaced, said on Sunday.

Zulhair was commenting on remarks made by Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali last week. The minister had said that Ahmadiyah should be banned because it had angered mainstream Muslims and if they were allowed to practice their beliefs, conflict would escalate.

A 2008 government decree named Ahmadiyah a deviant sect. Though it stopped short of banning the sect completely, it banned its members from publicly practicing their faith and spreading their beliefs.

Zulhair said that his community has made every possible effort to convince the rest of the country that their teachings are not different from those of mainstream Muslims.

“So, if they still consider us to be deviant, then we’ll just wait for God’s justice.”

Nurhidayati, 30, said that she and the rest of her community will stay faithful to the sect’s teachings, even if that means they will become outcasts.

Nurhidayati’s one-year-old daughter Melati is one of five babies born at the shelter, including a pair of twins named Transiti and Transita.

“The other children were having a very hard time in the beginning at school because they are Ahmadiyah children. For instance, those kids only got a piece of paper as their report while other kids would receive a book,” said Nurhidayati. “But, after a long fight, our kids now finally get the same treatment as other children.”

For Nuratun, a 47-year-old mother of three, life has also been tough. She said that for Idul Fitri, a lavish feast for most Muslims, she could only fry some flour-coated peanuts for her children.

“This is the fifth Idul Fitri in this shelter, the fifth Lebaran we have had to spend in this very sad place,” Nuratun said.

Nuratun and the other Ahmadiyah women sell goods at traditional markets to make a living, but they make just enough money to buy rice for everyday consumption. “

We totally depend on our husbands to pay for the kids’ schools because we no longer receive any help from the government,” she said.

Copyright 2010 The Jakarta Globe

URL: www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/no-respite-for-lomboks-ahmadiyah-community/394768