A Protestant church was set on fire in the province of Western Sulawesi in the early morning of July 4. Residents learned of the incident when they arrived for Sunday service.
Attacks on Christians and places of worship have been happening more often in recent months, said residents, adding that authorities hardly looked into the incidents.
“No Jakarta government official commented on the vandalization of the church,” an AsiaNews report quoted a resident.
“There have been no messages of support even from the Indonesian Commission for Human Rights or the Synod of Indonesian Protestant Churches,” the resident added.
Sunday’s incident happened in Mamasa on the island of Sulawesi. There was no report of casualties although chairs and benches were burned and window panes were broken.
A 40-year-old man who was arrested by authorities said he set fire to the church after seeing his deceased father appeared in a dream and “ordered” him to burn the building.
On June 27, a Protestant church in East Batang Uru Village also in Mamasa was burned in the wee hours of the morning.
The still-unidentified perpetrator reportedly vandalized the church, destroyed chairs and tables, and broke the church’s windows before setting it on fire.
In March, suicide bombers targeted a Catholic cathedral in South Sulawesi, injuring 19 people who attended Mass.
Police said the Islamist radical group Jamaah Ansharut Daulah were responsible for the attack.
In a statement, the country’s Catholic bishops expressed “concern, prayer and deep sorrow for the attack.”
The attack “degrades human dignity, destroys human values and adds to the long list of acts of terrorism in our beloved archipelago,” said the statement signed by Bishop Yohannes Harun Yuwono, chairman the Commission for Inter-religious Relations of the Bishops’ Conference of Indonesia.