Indonesian police swooped on the headquarters of a radical Islamist group yesterday and detained 59 alleged extremists over a violent attack on a peaceful rally for religious tolerance.
Police said the pre-dawn operation involving more than 1,000 officers was in response to Sunday’s attack at the Monas national monument in Jakarta by stick-wielding fanatics from the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI).
“Fifty nine people, including the head of FPI, Rizieq Shihab, were taken to the Jakarta police headquarters for questioning in relation to the incident in Monas on Sunday,” Jakarta police chief I Ketut Untung Yoga Ana said.
The Indonesian government under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had come under strong pressure to act against the radicals after police failed to stop them beating scores of people with bamboo sticks at the rally.
Hundreds of radicals took part in the unprovoked attack, underlining the government’s unwillingness to rein in fringe extremist groups in the world’s most populous Muslim country.
But with the sense of outrage brewing among moderate Indonesians, the police late on Monday issued an ultimatum for the radicals to hand over 10 suspects by midnight or face action.
Scores of officers sealed off their neighborhood around the Front’s central Jakarta headquarters but they encountered little resistance and television stations showed images of detainees being calmly led onto police trucks.
Only three days ago FPI leader Shihab had held a press conference to announce that his followers would resist arrest “until our last drop of blood” but as police moved in yesterday he called for calm.
“Please, there should be no one obstructing the duties of these policemen,” he told supporters at the scene.
“Let us show that we dare to act and dare to take the responsibility for that,” he added before leaving voluntarily for the police station. Shihab filed complaints on Tuesday against 289 people who had signed a petition in support of religious tolerance, a burning issue in traditionally pluralist Indonesia ahead of elections next year.
A day after the attack he announced that his supporters were preparing for war against the minority Ahmadiyah Islamic sect, which the government is considering banning for its “deviant” beliefs.
Yudhoyono has not publicly indicated which way he will go on the Ahmadiyah issue but he has strongly condemned Sunday’s attack and told ministers to examine options for banning the FPI.
As public anger grew, youths affiliated with the party of former president Abdurrahman Wahid raided several regional FPI offices in East Java and demanded the group end its activities, reports said.
Hundreds of protesters reportedly burned FPI flags and other insignia in several towns in East Java, a stronghold of Wahid who has been a vocal critic of the group.
The Front’s militants have been involved in several violent vigilante assaults in what they see as the defense of Islam since 2000.
In 2006 they targeted the US embassy and the office of US magazine Playboy in Jakarta, but the worst incident came four years earlier when about 650 FPI fanatics rampaged through Jakarta nightspots and billiard halls.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS