ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses state officials’ responses to the violence against the followers of the minority faiths (Ahmadiyah and Shi’a) during the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004–2014). Previous studies argue that communal violence in the post-New Order Indonesia was attributed to the failure of local state officials to stop the violence, due to the security officials’ kinship and local ties with the perpetrators. Others argue that the violence broke out due to, first, the role of local elites who provoked violence; second, the role of local state officials who supported mobilization of people by vigilante groups to stage protests that led to violence. This chapter expands on these studies by arguing that the state’s complicity in violence stems from security officials’ entangled relationships with vigilante groups, which hampered the officers’ ability to prevent incidents of religious violence before they occurred, and to bring charges against perpetrators afterwards. The entanglement was the result of a blurred boundary where police officers and the vigilante groups often ended up pursuing areas of mutual material and political interest.
