According to a Muslim friendly party, the symbol used by the Red Cross in its logo is "too easily identifiable" with the Christian tradition.
But the Indonesian organisation refuses to back down: "The logo will never change."
A war against symbols has been declared in the country with the largest Muslim population in the world.
Representatives of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), it is a symbol that is too “closely identifiable” with the Christian tradition.
But the Indonesian Red Cross is refusing to give in to Islamists: the cross will not be removed from its traditional logo, as any changes to the symbol would be tantamount to “giving in” to fundamentalists.
In the past, Indonesia’s former president, Kalla, a Muslim, had praised the work of the organisation.
The Indonesian Red Cross, or PMI (Palang Merah Indonesia) as it is widely known, announced that it “will never change” the traditional logo that has made it famous around the world, AsiaNews, the news agency of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions reported.
The declaration came as a direct response to the criticisms made against it in recent days by politicians from the Muslim friendly Prosperous Justice Party (PKS).
The party claims that the red “cross” featured in the logo of the Indonesian Red Cross is “too easily identifiable with Christian culture and traditions.”
The criticism was rebuked by Red Cross volunteers and activists who believe that any modification to the logo would mean “giving in to the extremists,” while former deputy head of State, Jusuf Kalla said “the demand is baseless.”
Executive member of the Indonesian Red Cross, Muhammad Muas told AsiaNews that the logo had been “agreed” at the Geneva Convention of 1949, which Jakarta "officially ratified" and must respect.”
The symbol has no ties with Christianity, he added, and “Indonesia is a secular, not a Muslim-based state." It "is a state that respects pluralism," the PMI representative stressed.
Jusuf Kalla, a devout Muslim from South Sulawesi and former vice president in Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's first administration, has defended the logo of the Indonesian Red Cross in the past.
"We should have pride in the PMI's red colour," the former leader of the nationalist Goklar party had said during the celebrations for the 66th anniversary of the organisation in September 2011.
He had also stressed that PMI worked in war zones and in difficult conditions, earning the “esteem and respect” of everyone. Some experts told the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions that at the root of the proposed change, is the alleged wish of certain PKS leaders to give the Islamic symbol of the red crescent moon to the Indonesian Red Cross.
Indonesia has on many occasions recorded cases where authorisation to build temples for Christian worship has suddenly and mysteriously been revoked. One such case was when Nurmahmudi Ismail , a former PKS (the radical Islamic movement) representative and mayor of Depok, a city in the Regency of Bogor, stopped the building of a Protestant Church.
In 2004, a Pentecostal Church in Tanjun Senen, in the city of Bandar Lampung (capital of the Lampung province), was closed down by a local protest movement that had opposed its construction.
In March 2006, the Islamic Defender Front, an Indonesian Islamic fundamentalist movement forced the closure of a “domestic” Catholic church in Sumedang-Garut, approximately 350km from the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, and ordered local faithful “not to look for another place to profess their faith.”
The forced closure of the Church took place on 5 March 2006, when some members of the Front (popularly known as the FPI, Front Pembela Islam) ordered the owner of the house where mass was held every Sunday, to “cease all liturgical activities immediately.”
The assailants demanded one million Indonesian rupees (approximately 100 dollars) in exchange for not going to the press and spreading the word that “local Catholics were breaking the law.”
According to the priest who spoke to AsiaNews (and who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons) “the members of the FPI have come from outside they are not locals.”
In Indonesia, particularly in the remotest parts of the Country, Catholic communities often decide to use a house or a summerhouse (owned by a member of the community) to celebrate the liturgy.
Since there is no real parish, this phase of “stasis” precedes the beginning of an incredibly long bureaucratic procedure to ask for permission to erect a real church.
Straight after their case was closed, a group of local Catholics went to the police to report the case but “for the sake of maintaining peace in the area” they were “advised” not to kick up too much of a fuss.
Two years ago, authorities revoked the building permission that had been issued two years prior to this, for the construction of the Catholic Church of Saint Mary in the District of Purwakarta, in West Java province.
This was a huge disappointment for faithful who had carefully prepared all the necessary documents and had obtained all authorisations needed. According to local officials there had been some “irregularities” in the passages that had led to authorisation being issued.
According to Christians, these irregularities seemed more like a pretext to halt the project. “Ours is a State without power,” the President of the Indonesian Episcopal Conference, Mathinus D. Situmorang, had said a year ago.
During a meeting held by the Union of Catholic University Students of the Republic of Indonesia, the president strongly criticised the inability of the government to defend Christians and their churches from attacks by extremists “who are dominating Indonesia, as foreign colonizers had done in the past.”
Despite the firm opposition shown by the current President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhono, since the beginning of 2009, Islamic fundamentalism in Indonesia has grown exponentially and has managed again and again to intimidate and manipulate authorities.
Fear is not the only thing that is pushing the government to bow down to extremist groups.
Sometimes this is also the result of political calculation, as Fr. Franz Magnis-Suseno, a German Jesuit who has been living in Indonesia since 1955, explains: “On some islands, like West Java, extremists have fuelled intolerance. And the State has failed in its duty to defend citizens in these regions, for reasons of opportunism.”