(AKI/Jakarta Post) - Mobs destroyed three churches in Indonesia's Central Java, province on Tuesday in violence that broke out following a blasphemy hearing.
The angry crowd torched the Bethel Church and Pantekosta churches in Temanggung and threw stones at Santo the Petrus and Paulus Church.
Stores in the city were closed and traffic was reportedly chaotic because of the violence.
The violence broke out as prosecutors had demanded that a local court sentence defendant Antonius Richmond Bawengan to five years in prison for his alleged blasphemy against Islam via books and articles in October 2010.
Islamic hardliners have repeatedly targeted minority Christian churches in Indonesia in the past few years.
In September last year, two local church leaders were savagely attacked in Bekasi, West Java. In that attack, local church leader ST Sihombing was left in a critical condition after being stabbed in the stomach and local priest Luspida Simanjuntak was hit on the head with a wooden plank and beaten.
In late January 2010, hundreds of Christians fled their homes in North Sumatra province following attacks against two Protestant churches and a pastor’s home amid tension between Muslims and Christians over the presence of unregistered churches in the area.
About 1,000 Muslims set fire to two churches in Sibuhuan, in North Sumatra's Padang Lawas district. The attack, the first in the history of North Sumatra where both Muslim and Christian communities live together, caused no serious injury or fatalities.
Indonesia's president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in September last year broke his silence and condemned the attacks on churches.
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