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Last year, Faizah spent 20 million she had painstakingly raised over the course of four years to rebuild her home that was destroyed by a mob attack in 2006 only to be turned into ruin again in late 2010.

Faizah, a 30 year-old mother of four, is a former resident of Gegerung village in the West Lombok district of West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) and an avid member of the Ahmadiyah, a minority Muslim sect deemed deviant and constantly harassed by mainstream Muslim groups.

On November 26, more than a hundred people ransacked the village, with police unable to do more than watch.

Speaking to the Jakarta Globe at a temporary shelter which houses around 500 displaced Ahmadiyah members in the province capital, Mataram, Faizah said that although her home was spared in the November incident, people soon looted her possessions after police were no longer there to maintain order.

“Right now, I am too afraid to return home. I heard from some of the neighbors sympathetic to me that there are now people who constantly looting my roof tiles, stealing my wooden beams and taking everything I had,” she said. “I think all there is left is the skeleton of my former home.”

Endless Persecution

This is the third attack against Ahmadiyah in NTB and Faizah survived all three.

Like most of the people in Gegerung village, Faizah and her family moved there from Selong village in the neighboring East Lombok, where hard-line groups reduced the neighborhood to rubles in 2002. The government refused to compensate the losses and the perpetrators went un-prosecuted.

The Ahmadiyah members thought that the more secular and multi-cultural West Lombok would be much better, but they were wrong. Gegerung was first burned to the ground in 2006.

“Before the (2006) incident we live harmoniously with other (non-Ahmadiyah) residents. We prayed at the same mosques. They visited us like neighbors do. Some of them borrowed soaps and kitchen utensils. There was never any tension,” she said.

But Faizah said provocations and propagandas from firebrand clerics had fueled intolerance from the surrounding community.

“There was this one man, Syafii. He used to borrow money from us. We were very nice to him and treated him like a family member. But when the attackers come, he joined them and destroyed our homes,” she said. “I guess the provocateurs brought out the worst in him.”

The only protection the government offered the displaced Ahmadiyah members was to relocate them to Transito building complex in Mataram. The complex was an abandoned facility once used to temporarily house migrant workers from Java coming to Lombok as part of the slowly fading transmigration program.

Limbo

More than 500 homeless Ahmadiyah members were soon cramped into the 600 square meter facility. Four years on, the government seems to have abandoned the refugees as they now live with hardly any running water, proper sanitation, electricity or financial assistance.

What was supposed to be a temporary answer to their situation had now become a permanent solution, with little certainty when the Ahmadiyah members would be allowed to return back to Gegerung.

52 year old Zubaidah, an Ahmadiyah refugee, agreed to show the Globe her 3 by 4 meter makeshift booth which she shares with two daughters, their husbands and six grandchildren.

Her booth is located at the corner of one of the 150 square-meter rooms in the run-down facility. There could be up to ten families occupying in a single room, each with their own booth, partitioned with bamboo polls, cardboards and pieces of fabrics.

With limited space, children were forced to play their bicycles in the small hallway and toddlers were left to lie on the disease infected tile floor as their mothers prepare their meals in a one square meter makeshift kitchen outside.

Each family had their own kitchens constructed from used bamboos and zinc roof covers. Inside, the kitchens were dark, blackened by the fumes of kerosene stoves. Some poorer families had to utilize wooden furnace.

“Five years we had been neglected. In five years, government officials never set foot in this place, to check our condition, to hear our worries. Only once in 2009 did they finally come, and that was to erect a booth as part of the legislative and presidential elections,” Zubaidah told the Globe.

The grim condition of the shelter made some families insisted on returning home to their village, despite knowing that police and the government had refused to vouch for their safety if they do.

“The conditions in the shelter are unbearable to some, so many have reluctantly ventured to other cities and provinces,” Jauzi Djafar, spokesman of the NTB chapter of the Indonesian Ahmadiyah Congregation or JAI said to the Globe.

Jauzi added that the refugees had been marginalized by the local government’s refusal to grant members of the sect ID cards that are obligatory for all Indonesian citizens.

Without an ID card it is almost impossible for the Ahmadiyah members — having already lost virtually all their belongings in the attack — to apply for jobs, obtain a driver’s license or a passport for the Hajj pilgrimage.

The only work the refugees could find was to become hard labor at the local plantations, or like Faizah became a vendor and other odd jobs.

“The city of Mataram refuses to give the refugees ID cards because officially they are listed as residents of West Lombok district, while the district argues that they should apply for Mataram residency because they have been living in Mataram for years,” Jauzi said. “They are left in limbo over their status and fate.”

Diversity?

Governor Zainul Majdi had big plans for Lombok in mimicking Bali’s success as a premium holiday destination by promoting dozens of traditional festivals staged across Lombok Island and putting them on the international calendar.

Zainul, a politician from the conservative Prosperous Justice Party or PKS, enthusiastically talked about the “rice war” festival, a joint celebration observed by Hindus and Muslims in Lombok staged after the holy month of Ramadan in Lingsar temple, less than a kilometer away from Transito.

The governor is eager to make “rice war” as an example of how culturally diverse the province is and a celebration of tolerance. Ahmadiyah however is not part of the grand scheme the governor had envisioned in displaying inter-religious harmony.

“Ahmadiyah had never been a problem. It was only after they formed their own community, maintaining their exclusivity and proselytizing their faith did friction with surrounding areas occur,” he told the Jakarta Globe.

Referring to the refugees as “my Ahmadiyah brothers” Zainul suggested that the only solution for Ahmadiyah is to send them away from the province or isolate them to remote Teluk Sepi, in Lombok’s south.

“Most of the Ahmadiyah members in West Lombok are not even from the area. They come from East Lombok, some are from Sulawesi and Kalimantan. We feel that they should return to where they’re originally from. They should accept compensation based on the land value and move,” he said.

West Lombok district head Zaini Arony who pride himself on being the first district head to impose the controversial 2008 joint ministerial decree prohibiting Ahmadiyah members from proselytizing their faith, also offered another option which is to convert the Ahmadiyah members to mainstream Muslim.

Faizah said that she was more than willing to be relocated. “But does that mean that we would be safe? Does that mean that we won’t be persecuted? Isn’t the government supposed to guarantee our safety and freedom of religion anywhere in this country?” she said when asked about the government’s plan.

Among those who ventured out of the province is Sopwatur Rohman, now 18 years of age. Unable to find school for him, his parents sent Sopwatur to the Khasanah Kautsar boarding school in Tasikmalaya, West Java, established by a local Ahmadiyah community there.

But even 1,000 kilometers away, Sopwatur still finds harassments and discriminations. Hard-line Muslim groups had threatened to burn down the facility and bowing to pressure, the government sealed off the property on December 11, leaving the students trapped inside. To this day, the facility is still sealed off.

Failed State

The seemingly never-ending string of attacks on the minority religious group — at least a hundred against Ahmadiyah alone over the past decade, according to one activist — prompted the International Crisis Group in a recent report to call on Indonesia to adopt a comprehensive national strategy to promote religious tolerance and curb rising sectarian violence.

“There needs to be a long-term vision and strategy. Local officials have been addressing the incidents on a case-by-case basis,” said Jim Della-Giacomathe, the ICG Southeast Asia project director.

“And most of the time, they surrender to those with the loudest voice. If this keeps happening, mob rule prevails.”

Della-Giacoma’s statement highlights an important observation regarding the government’s response so far to the apparent increase in religious intolerance in the country: that the core of the problem isn’t being addressed.

The Indonesian Survey Circle said that the government’s inaction to a string of violence against religious minorities might lead to further unrests, which could descend the country to chaos.

Released in October, a study by the group showed that 30.2 percent of 1,000 respondents in 100 towns and cities across Indonesia supported acts of violence against Ahmadiyah, a sharp increase from a similar survey in 2005 that showed only 13.9 percent of respondents backed such moves.

Ahmadiyah activist, Firdaus Mubarik said that if the government failed to offer protection to Ahmadiyah, Indonesia could become like Pakistan where thousands of Ahmadiyah members are hunted down and slaughtered by mobs.

Mainstream Muslim groups accuse the Ahmadiyah of believing its founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad to be a prophet, a claim that runs directly against a tenet of Islam which professes Muhammad to be the last and final prophet.

The claims are widely disputed by the Ahmadiyah community which said that Mirza was not a prophet but the promised Messiah who brought reform to Islam.

The persecution of Ahmadiyah in Lombok, baffled even the local Mataram residents who is accustomed to living side by side with people from other religion.

“I don’t understand. The relationship between Muslims and Hindus is harmonious. Conservative Muslims also live side by side with other Muslim community which still practices animistic beliefs. How can Muslims be so violent towards Ahmadiyah?” Gusti, a rental car driver and a Hindu told the Globe.