Sunday School remained in prison in the West Java town of Indramayu Wednesday, January 25, after Indonesia’s Constitutional Court rejected a legal challenge to the ruling.
Judges at Indonesia’s Constitutional Court on January 17 said the Child Protection Act on which the sentence was based is in line with the constitution and should not be amended. They rejected a plea filed by Rev. Ruyandi Hutasoit, who had challenged Article 86 of the Act as the basis for sentencing Dr. Rebekka Zakaria, Eti Pangesti and Ratna Bangun to three years in prison on September 1, 2005.
The law forbids "deception, lies or enticement" causing a child to convert to another religion.
The maximum sentence for violation of the Act is five years in prison and a fine of 100 million Rupiahs (about $10,700), according to experts.
The lastest verdict drew criticism from Muslim and Christian communities in the area, who said the children had voluntarily gone to the school and had not changed their religion.
Earlier Indramayu District Court judges claimed that the three Christian women violated the law by persuading Muslim minors to convert to Christianity without their parents’ consent.
CHARGES DENIED
The women have denied the charges, which were brought against them by a local Islamic group. The teachers maintain they had instructed the children to get permission from their parents before attending the local church program, and those who did not have permission were asked to go home.
Zakaria, Pangesti and Ratna launched their “Happy Sunday” Christian education program in September 2003, at the request of a school in the Harguelis sub-district of Indramayu. Muslim children soon began to attend with the verbal consent of their parents, human rights watchers said.
During the trial, defense attorneys reportedly argued that several of the Muslim parents were photographed with their children, during the Sunday school activities, which they claimed proved that parents had allowed their children to attend.
ANGRY CROWD
However Judges were under pressure to rule against the women. When the trial began, truckloads of Muslim youth arrived outside the courtroom shouting "God is Great", waving banners a and using loudspeakers to intimidate the judges and the defendants, eyewitnesses said. At one court session they allegedly brought a coffin with them, warning the judges that the accused must be found guilty.
There is concern that the Christian women will suffer abuse in jail, religious rights group Christian Freedom International (CFI) said recently. CFI President Jim Jacobson, a former While House official who visited them, told BosNewsLife in a statement that he learned the teachers were "cramped in a dirty prison of 437, only 16 of the inmates are women."
There are allegedly eight women sharing a 5 meters by 5 meters cell who sleep all together on top of a hard, wood platform. Blankets and sheets are not allowed, CFI added.
Government and prison officials have promised to watch human rights abuses against Christian minorities in general and to fight Muslim extremism. However CFI and other religious rights watchdogs suggest that process the practice is different amid reports of massive church closures and attacks against Christians, including killings and bombings.
Christians comprise about 8 percent of the 242-million people of Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation, and religious rights groups say the minority has come under increased pressure from Muslim militants. (With reports from Indonesia and BosNewsLife Research).
