Indonesian sect members seek Australian asylum

16/05/2008 16:59:59

Six members of the Ahmadiya Islamic sect in Indonesia are seeking asylum in Australia, saying they can no longer live safely in Indonesia after being declared heretics and threatened with a government ban.

In July of 2005, Indonesia's highest council of Muslim scholars issued a fatwa declaring the Ahmadiya sect of Islam heretical because they said the sect's beliefs challenged Mohammad's status as the last prophet.

Since then attacks against Ahmadis have increased.

In 2006 their mosques and houses were destroyed on the island of Lombok, and now six members of the group displaced by that violence have approached the Australian Consulate in Bali seeking asylum in Australia.

They were told to direct their enquires to the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.

An influential Indonesian intergovernmental agency recently recommended the Ahmadiya sect be formally banned by the Indonesian government.

Adherents driven from homes
The group had travelled from Lombok, where they were part of a group of more than 100 people living in temporary shelters in the island's capital, Mataram.

Members of the sect have been living in shelters since being driven from their homes by the 2006 mob attacks.

One of the six who sought asylum in Bali, Sulhaen, says the group was too frightened to return home.

"We've been living in terror, [and] it will get worse if the government officially bans Ahmadiyah," he said.

"We are here to demand political asylum cause we don't feel safe living in our own country."

Sulahen says the six Ahmadis were unable to meet officials from either consulate, and planned to approach other countries, including the United States, for asylum.

The group is understood to have around 200,000 followers in Indonesia and has been in the country since the 1920s.

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