Buddhist Woman Jailed for Insulting Islam
She had complained that mosque was too loud.
An Indonesian Buddhist woman has been jailed for complaining that her neighbourhood mosque was too loud. The ethnic Chinese woman known as Meiliana was sentenced to 18 months in prison after being found guilty of insulting Islam under Indonesia’s blasphemy laws.
Prosecutors said the 44-year-old defendant violated the criminal code by committing blasphemy against the religion. Meiliana complained to a member of the public that the volume was too loud near her house in North Sumatra in 2016.
There are hundreds of thousands of mosques across the vast archipelago and most use loudspeakers to play the “azan” or call to prayer, which lasts a few minutes. But many also play lengthy versions of prayers or sermons lasting over 30 minutes, which has been deemed unnecessary by the Indonesian Mosque Council.
The Muslim call to prayer is repeated five times a day.
Following media reports of Meiliana’s comments, mobs burned and ransacked at least fourteen Buddhist temples throughout the port town Medan in 2016.
He added that the defendant had also showed remorse and apologised.
Political activists have warned the country’s stringent blasphemy laws have been used to bully minorities and violate religious freedoms. Bonar Tigor Naipospos, deputy chair of SETARA Institute, an Indonesian-based democracy organisation, said in the case of Meiliana she had been used as a scapegoat because of political pressure. “What Meiliana did could not be categorised as blasphemy,” he said. He also said the Indonesian government needed to revise the laws, or there would be similar cases in the future.