AhlulBayt News Agency

source : Thejakartapost
Saturday

21 January 2012

8:30:00 PM
291994

Shia ask witness protection agency for protection + PIC

A number of Shiite followers from Sampang, Madura, East Java, have asked the Witness and Victim Protection Agency (LPSK) for protection following a recent attack by alleged Salafies in December last year.

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - LPSK member Lili Pintauli Siregar said Shiite representatives accompanied by activists from the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) had visited the agency’s office on Thursday.

“They asked us to provide protection for dozens of Shiite families in their village,” Lili said Saturday as quoted by tribunnews.com.

The protection requested includes legal, physical and psychological protection due to trauma suffered after the clash.

Lili said her agency needed a few days to discuss the request.

Hundreds of Shiites in the area fled their homes after mobs of rampaging Salafies attacked and set fire to a Shia Islamic boarding school and several houses owned by Shiite families last month.

On Tuesday, the district authorities forced some 300 Shiites sheltering at a football stadium in Sampang to vacate the place and return to their village. Four senior clerics and their families were told not to return to their homes by clerics from the local Council of Ulema and went to Malang, also in East Java, instead.

Sign of intolerance: A man throws a stone at a destroyed building belonging to a Shiite family in Karang Gayam, Sampang regency, Madura, on Dec. 29 photo. Nobody was injured in the attack, which was launched by a group of unidentified individuals.

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