Indonesian atheist arrested for blasphemy

By Mathew Goldstein

English is a compulsory subject in the Indonesian national curriculum for students. Many universities require students in all subjects to show they meet a certain minimum standard of English proficiency before they are allowed to graduate. There are two national English-language daily newspapers, and a number of radio and TV stations produce programs in English. So among Islamic majority countries (Indonesia is around 85% Islamic) Indonesia is a country that is relatively accessible to Americans. It is a country known in its past for respecting religious pluralism. So it is sad to see some of the vile religious extremism that afflicts countries such as Pakistan also making inroads in Indonesia.

In 2008, the government made it illegal for the Ahmadiya, who are Muslims that do not believe Mohammed was the final prophet, to publicly promote their religious beliefs. The Indonesian government restricts the freedom of its citizens to adhere to any religion other than Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Christianity, or Confucianism. Today, it was reported in the English language Jakarta Post that an atheist was detained by police for blasphemy. A police chief is identified as saying that the man was arrested because of his writings on the internet and his direct statements saying that he did not believe in God. He was apprehended by people who entered his workplace, beat him, and then transported him to the police station. If found guilty, he could spend five years in prison.

Islamist supremecist intolerance directly affects other religious minorities as well, even among the five minority religions that are legal, such as Indonesia’s approximately 20 million Christians. It can be difficult to obtain the necessary permits to build a church in some parts of Indonesua. Even when all the requirements have been fulfilled, Christians sometimes cannot gain final approval for the construction of houses of worship. Churches and prayer halls have also been subject to vandalism, and their congregations face various forms of intimidation. Every year the U.S. State Department documents the forced closure of churches by extremist groups, often with government inaction or complicity.

The Indonesian constitution declares that the state is based on, among other things, “the belief in the One and Only God,” while guaranteeing “each and every citizen the freedom of religion and of worship in accordance with his or her religion and belief.". The constitution explicitly guarantees that “Every person shall be free to embrace and to practice the religion of his/her choice“; that “Every person shall have the right to the freedom to hold beliefs (kepercayaan), and to express his/her views and thoughts, in accordance with his/her conscience“; and that “Every person shall have the right of freedom to associate, to assemble and to express opinions.” The document asserts that freedom of thought and conscience, as well as freedom of religion, are “human rights that cannot be limited under any circumstances." Words are cheap, and apparently Indonesia's constitution is worth little more than ink on paper.

Occupying DC and Wall Street in October2011: Humanistic Conceptual Space

By Gary Berg-Cross

October 2011 is simultaneously the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan & when the austere 2012 federal budget kicks in. For this and other reasons October 2011 promises to be an interesting time in DC with the October2011 meeting and the self proclaimed non-violent, peaceful solidarity event Occupy D.C. on the schedule and already in evidence on K street. The broad and gathering movement of “Occupy Wall Street,” was roughly inspired, if not modeled on, the successful and secular Tahrir Square protests.

Corporate media doesn't seem to know how to cover a democratic movement. One of the criticisms of it, such as reported early on by Ezra Klein is that protest's organizers are diffused with many different factions and efforts “to look up their demands online didn't yield much.” This picture of a movement without obvious leaders or an immediate checklist of demands, like "get out of Iraq now" was summed up in the title of a WaPo article "Occupy Wall Street protests gain steam but the movement's goals remain unclear."

With this meme circulating it was heartening to hear about a growing understanding of a broad sense of justice that is driving the movement. The mantra is "We are the 99% and are too big to fail." What some see as an incoherent collection of radicals and a lack of leadership others see as a sweet form of non-hierarchical group democracy. And some mission statements seem to emerging the “Occupy” movement around real health care reform, moratoriums on foreclosure, taxing the rich and changing wall street. It’s not to destroy the financial system, but a recognition of its failure of our traditional system to do the right thing to reform the system. It's more like a financial regime change idea – something the US administrations often talk about and was an underlying idea in Tahrir square. Ben Tripp put it this way in a HuffPo piece - What Are Your Demands?

“the demands all boil down to one thing: we don't want you running the world any more. You're bad at it. Your motives are evil. The future you imagine is a vision of hell.”

I like a positive and constructive message so it was encouraging and enlightening to read about 15 Core Issues that have been identified & articulated by the more hierarchical and traditionally political October2011 group steering committee. A meeting of the whole is taking place in DC now and I hope fleshing out these ideas.

October2011 took this as a time to “light the spark that sets off a true democratic, nonviolent transition to a world in which people are freed to create just and sustainable solutions.” To get a solutions conversation started, they list 15 issues that the Country Must Face. It’s a pretty interesting list for a Liberal Humanist and may get at the complex question of grievances and frustrations, so I reproduce the current list below

1. Corporatism– firmly establish that money is not speech, corporations are not people, only people have Constitutional rights, end corporate influence over the political process, protect people and the environment from damage by corporations.

2. Wars and Militarism – end wars and occupations, end private for-profit military contractors, reduce the national security state and end the weapons export industry. War crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace must be addressed and those responsible held accountable under international law.

3. Human Rights – end exploitation of people in the US and abroad, end discrimination in all forms, equal civil rights and due process for all people.

4. Worker Rights and jobs – all working-age people have the right to safe, just, non-discriminatory and dignified working conditions, a sustainable living wage, paid leave and economic protection.

5. Government– all processes of the three branches of government should be accountable to international law, transparent and follow the rule of law, people have the right to participate in decisions which affect them.

6. Elections– all citizens 18 and older have the right to vote without barriers, all candidates have the right to be heard and to run and all votes should be counted.

7. Criminal justice and prisons –end private for-profit prisons, adopt evidence-based drug policy, prisoners have the right to humane and just conditions with a focus on rehabilitation and reintegration into society, abolish the death penalty.

8. Healthcare– create a national, universal and publicly financed comprehensive health system.

9. Education– all people have the right to a high quality, publicly-funded and broad education from pre-school through vocational training or university.

10. Housing– all people have the right to affordable and safe housing.

11. Environment – adopt policies which effectively create a carbon-free and radio-active free energy economy.

12. Finance and the economy – end policies which foster a wealth divide and move to a localized and democratic financial system, reform taxes so that they are progressive and provide goods, monetary gain and services for the people.

13. Media– airwaves and the internet are public goods, require that media be honest, accurate and accountable to the people.

14. Food and water – create systems that protect the land and water, create local and sustainable food networks and practices.

15. Transportation– provide affordable, clean and convenient public transportation and safe spaces for pedestrian and non-automobile travel.

Committees are forming for each of the 15 issues and interested parties can contact info@october2011.org about participating on them. The group further promises that each issue will be linked to a page which will explain more about the problem, the solutions and resources. More on this as it happens. For background information, you can read about their take on where the majority of people in America stand on the issues.

Starting on October 6, 2011, an Occupy-type People's Assembly event Stop the Machine/October2011 will assemble in Freedom Plaza, in Washington DC to" protest anti-militarism and other things." They plan to occupy the plaza and hold it "awhile". Meanwhile Occupy D.C. plans on being in McPherson Square and the K Street corridor. As WAPO noted since “Occupy DC's demonstration began in McPherson Square on Saturday morning, protesters have marched to the White House two blocks away and held signs on the square's K Street sidewalk. “ It should only take a little marching for the Occupy DC, the October2011 group and Stop the Machine-lead protests to meetup.

It may not to Tahrir Square but it should be interesting. In its first three weeks, the Occupy movement has added some voice to anti-corporate message and a voiced a democratic feeling of restoring some fairness to our society and the loves of ordinary people. Hopefully we’ll be hearing more about a coherent, humanistic vision for the country from a synthesis of these 2 activist group's thinking.

Who Owns Human Rights?

by Carl Coon,

How serious is our disagreement with China over Liu Xiaobo, currently languishing in a Chinese prison? A pro-democracy activist, the Chinese locked him up, the Nobel people decided to give him an award, and the Chinese wouldn’t let him out to receive it. Now the West is indignant and the Chinese are protesting that the Western idea of universal human rights is anything but universal, rather it is a part of the imperialist effort to impose western values on the rest of the world.[1]

This raises the issue, who has the right to define human rights? The prevailing view here in the USA is that the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights, with its emphasis on individual freedom, is the last word, the gold standard as it were. But others. like the Chinese, disagree, and how do we deal with the charge that the values expressed in the UN declaration are culturally biased and don’t represent the values of humanity as a whole? What is the proper stance from a humanist perspective?

As humanists, we start with respect for the value of each individual member of our species. Parse this out and you eventually get to a set of values like the UN Declaration. That statement is undoubtedly thoroughly consistent with what we humanists believe. But is this enough? As a humanist, I also tend to be dubious about anyone’s claim that values as defined in any document are absolute. This sounds too much like religious faith. Let me see if I can reconcile my strong support for the UN Declaration with my discomfort at being asked to accept the validity of any document or doctrine on faith and faith alone.

Part of my reluctance to genuflect before the UN Declaration is my sense that humanity is still very much a work in progress, and we have a long road to travel before we arrive at a state where the kinds of human rights we believe in are accepted by the great majority of humankind. If we are ever to achieve global cooperation and the world at peace we aspire to, we shall need to have a common sense consensus on human rights that will provide a foundation for the shared values that such a world will require. How are we going to get that consensus, by persuasion, or by letting the powerful impose it on the weak?

I’ve had a certain amount of experience dealing with values in societies where they differ from ours. I have found that while the other society quickly adopts technology that lets them make more money, they resist any overt effort to push our values on them. You cannot just go in and tell them they’re wrong and expect them to change. You have show them what our values are and how they work in practice. Eventually they will work out the ways in which the material successes of our culture that they admire are contingent on many of the values they are resisting—and then they will change. But it takes time, and patience.

Another part of my reluctance to go the whole hog with the UN Declaration is my sense that it isn’t necessary to get into a messianic froth over it in order to get the whole world to agree to it. I’m old enough to remember when we were seriously debating whether we could only defeat communism if we fought the Soviet Union and defeated it on the battlefield, or whether there was some other way out. Back in 1969 I predicted that our very different ideologies would converge over time, and that since our system worked better in the long run, the USSR would have to do most if not all of the converging. Fortunately for everyone, my prediction (which was contrary to conventional wisdom at the time) was essentially correct.[2]

This brings me back to China, and the Liu Xiaobo affair. Chinese values emphasize the importance of maintaining harmony where Westerners stress individual freedom.[3] When some incident arises that focuses attention on these differences, we express outrage and they fire back at us. Mutual irritation follows which will probably die down fairly soon, inasmuch as neither side has important interests (as opposed to values) tied up in the dispute. You can chalk the whole incident up as another small step in a learning process where each side gets to understand the other side’s feelings a little better, and hope that the end result will be a beneficial convergence.

Whoa! I hear you saying, do you really believe that values are not important? Well, the point I want to make is that while values are supremely important in the long run, differences in values should not be important factors in the management of daily relations between states. If we manage those affairs sensibly, looking for win-win solutions to problems, and finding them frequently, we can expect that over time there will be a convergence that narrows the gap between our different values, and hopefully eventually eliminates it. If our own values are as robust as we think they are, then the other party will be doing most of the converging, as was the case with the USSR. The world will end up with the kind of respect for individual rights that will lead to the world at peace we all aspire to–a world congenial to our values.

/1/ Boston Globe, December 18, 2010, “Human Rights are Absolute” by Rene Loth

/2/ My thesis when a student at the National War College, class of ’69.

/3/ Article by Dai Bingguo: “Persisting with Taking the Path of Peaceful Development” 12/6/10

Posted for Carl Coon

Originally posted  on his blog, Progressive Humanism  January 21, 2011 

url:  http://www.progressivehumanism.com/topical-issues/who-owns-human-rights/

Universal Declaration of Human Rights & People's Freedom

With events continuing to unfold in the “Near East” (see footnote) and the near West of Wisconsin memes on freedom and rights are running through people’s minds and a topic at the dinner table. One thought that I’ve seen in the discussion of communication rights. The idea is that when Mubarak’s people cut off internet access violated it Egyptian people's “human rights” (see http://vereloqui.blogspot.com/2011/02/is-internet-access-human-right.html. The conservative view on this issues was expressed by Martin Cothran this way:

“What does it mean to say that Internet access a right? What is a right? And what is a human right?

It can only mean one of two things to say that something is a right. A right is either legal or metaphysical. If it is legal, then there ought to be some kind basis for it in a written statute or in some kind of case law. If it is a metaphysical right, then it ought to have some kind of rational or revelatory basis.”