Ministry denies plan to demolish Hindu 'pura'

Ministry denies plan to demolish Hindu 'pura'

JAKARTA (JP): The Ministry of Public Works has guaranteed it
will not demolish the Aditya Jaya Pura, and asked the Hindu
community to remain calm in accepting such reports.

Ministry Spokesman Bambang Utoyo also confirmed that the
ministry had no intention of swapping or transferring the
ownership of the plot to other parties.

"The ministry has just started to measure the land where the
pura is standing. The measurement is in line with Presidential
decree No. 16/1994 and the Ministry of Finance decree on the
inventory of state property. We have never planned to demolish
any structure there," Bambang told The Jakarta Post yesterday.

He said two meetings between officials from the Ministry of
Public Works and Religious Affairs, Bakorstanas (the Agency for
the Coordination of Support for the Development of National
Stability) and the pura management had agreed that reports of the
demolition plan were not correct. The first meeting was at the
Ministry of Public Works on Jan. 15, 1996 and the second took
place at the Ministry of Religious Affairs on April 3, he said.

The Hindu community at the pura said in a separate interview
yesterday that it had been confused by officials' statements on
the future of the pura.

Budi Andhyana, a leader of the Bali branch of the Indonesian
Hindus Youth Association said many Hindus in Bali and several Non
Governmental Organizations only heard about the threats to the
temple from vague media coverage, exacerbated by conflicting
official comments.

"We are trying to seek clarity from the various inconsistent,
conflicting and intolerant statements made by the officials,"
Budi added.

Earlier, when the rumor of the temple's demolition started,
the East Jakarta mayor, Sudarsono, said that the temple will not
be destroyed until a new site has been found.

Bali Post had earlier quoted Secretary of State, Moerdiono as
urging the public not to overreact to the temple's relocation
because many mosques and churches have also been relocated.

"Is it not because of development that places of worship are
relocated?" Moerdiono was quoted by the daily as saying.

According to Budi, Hindus objected to what they perceived as a
a lightly-taken approach to relocate the temple and the lack of
consideration of spiritual factors such as the landscape's
propriety for having a temple and the most suitable time to
build.

"Some officials' comments reflect the attitude of putting more
importance on economic growth than spiritual grounding," Budi
added.

On Tuesday some 50 people from Bali and Jakarta, claiming to
represent Hindu, Moslem and Christian organizations, went to the
House of Representative seeking clarification on the demolition
reports. Yesterday they went to the National Commission on Human
Rights for a similar purpose.

A spokesman for the group, Made Prenata, said that if the
Ministry of Public Works wanted a plot of land, the Hindu
community in Bali would give it a plot twice as large as the plot
where the pura is currently standing. "The pura is meaningful to
us, we want to keep it" he said. (sur/14/03)