 |
Catholic legal expert Fr Franz Magnis Suseno has told a review of Indonesia’s blasphemy law that the state should not have a say in whether religious teaching is deviant.
The Constitutional Court on Wednesday heard experts’ testimonies in a judicial review of the 1965 Blasphemy Law, the Jakarta Post reports.
Five experts, comprising religious leaders and professors of religious study, shared views on the controversial law.
Four of the experts were presented by the government. Fr Franz Magnis Suseno, a Catholic intellectual and professor, came as the only expert witness from the petitioners’ side.
“The state cannot say which is true between, say, the Catholics and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, even if the Catholics have hundreds of times more followers than the latter,” Fr Suseno told the court.
Earlier in January, several NGOs and backers of pluralism requested the Constitutional Court review several articles they believed discriminatory toward religious minority groups.
The contentious articles, they said, regulate the government’s authority to dissolve religious groups whose beliefs and practices are deemed blasphemous by religious authorities.
Under the law, the government also has the authority to charge leaders and followers of suspected heretical groups with an article in the Criminal Code, which carries a maximum penalty of 5 years’ imprisonment.
SOURCE
Court hears experts testify on Blasphemy Law (Jakarta Post)
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ...227 words
Share this article:
Subscribe to our feed (RSS)
Share a story with us
Follow us on Twitter