18.11.08

Indonesia ensures Islamisation of the Moluccas

  • JAKARTA
  • The Indonesian government makes sure that Muslims will be the majority on the Moluccan islands. This is what Moluccan human rights lawyers said yesterday to the Dutch parliamentary delegation of foreign affairs.On the island group, which previously has a majority Christian population, the population is now 60 percent Muslim. "It is logical as the government encourages people to move from the densely populated sparsely populated Java to the Moluccas'' says ChristianUnion MP Joël Voordewind". But according to the lawyers, the government selects at the gate. Christian transmigrants are being denied access to the Moluccas.According to the lawyers, the authorities maintain a rigid birth-control policy in which christians are only permitted to have two children, while muslims are allowed to sometimes have nine children.

  • Copyright 2008 Nederlands Dagblad (Dutch Newspaper)