01/12/2011 Indonesia (Jakarta Globe) – In the long-running battle for churches to open houses of worship, some are asking whether a solution will ever come.
 
“We have exhausted ourselves trying to report the case to the Human Rights Commission [Komnas HAM], the Judicial Commission, the House of Representatives and even the vice president,” the Rev. Palty Panjaitan said. “But nothing has changed. We can only wait for the Bekasi government’s kindness and hope that God hears our prayers.”
 
Palty’s church, the Filadelfia congregation of the Batak Christian Protestant Church (HKBP) in Bekasi, is in the same boat as the GKI Yasmin church in Bogor.
 
It submitted an application for a building permit in 2007, but Palty said that despite meeting all the requirements, including the agreement of its neighbors, a permit was not issued.
 
The congregation worshiped on its own land in a semi-permanent building while waiting for the permit. But on Dec. 31, 2009, the Bekasi government banned it and on Jan. 12, 2010, it sealed the building.
 
Just as in the case of GKI Yasmin, HKBP went to the Administrative Court and won. The case went all the way up to the Supreme Court and, like in the GKI Yasmin case, the court sided with the church in June 2001.
 
But also like the Yasmin church’s case, the Supreme Court ruling has yet to be implemented.
 
Palty said there was nothing more the church could do.
 
“Just look at the GKI Yasmin case. They did not lack in efforts to get what was rightfully theirs,” Palty said. “They have gained no significant results.”
 
GKI Yasmin spokesman Bona Sigalingging maintained that his church would continue its fight.
 
“We will not give up,” Bona said. “If we agree with the Bogor mayor to move the church to a new site, it will have domino effect on other cases, such as on the Ahmadiyah. Other local governments will destroy the supremacy of the law by disobeying the highest court decision and pressuring the minority.”
…
[Full Story]