REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA – Foreign diplomats living in Indonesia see religious tolerance in Indonesia is improving. Press Attache of German Embassy to Indonesia, Christoph Seeman, sees Indonesian religious tolerance is increasing from year to year. Yet, Indonesia still had to enhance the condition, he said.
“Indonesia must do something,” Seeman said on Wednesday. German, he said, often took part in maintaining tolerance in Indonesia, such as holding interfaith dialogue.
In addition, German Embassy frequently holds student exchange visit to improve interfaith tolerance. Also, German cooperates with government and non-government organizations in Indonesia.
While British Ambassador to Indonesia, Mark Canning, said Indonesia had great achievement in the last decades. The country, he said, had shifted its authoritarian system to democracy and from economic disaster to become a member of G20. He cited British Prime Minister David Cameron who visited Jakarta few weeks ago that Indonesian effort in improving its democracy was complex and challenging.
Meanwhile, Australian Embassy appreciates religious tolerance in Indonesia, its spokesman, Ray Marcelo, says. Australia and Indonesia are co-hosts of Interfaith Dialogue in Semarang, Central Java.
“Australia is very proud to participate in the country which has great history in tolerance and pluralism,” Marcelo said.
Tolerance could be maintained with international dialogue, the Spokesman of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Michael Tene, said. Interfaith tolerance could not be measured quantitatively, he added. The intolerance, he said, was the assessment from non-governmental organizations.
An activist, Yenny Wahid, urged the government to address the intolerance problem seriously. “This is the state’s reputation before the public. Its inability in coping with anarchy issue could undermine the state’s reputation,” she said. According to the survey in Wahid Institute, the intolerance raises by 30 percent with most of them rooted in religious issues.
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