Religious minorities in Indonesia are increasingly targeted by militant Islamists, and the government is failing to take adequate action, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.
Violent attacks on religious minorities rose from 244 in 2011 to 264 in 2012, the group said in a new report, quoting the Jakarta-based Setara Institute, which monitors religious freedom in Indonesia.
"We were surprised and dismayed by what we found," said Phelim Kine, deputy director for Human Rights Watch's Asia division. "We didn't expect to find abuses against minorities to be such a big problem in Indonesia."
The victims are mostly Shia Muslims or members of the tiny Islamic sect Ahmadiyya, which Sunnis consider blasphemous.
Local officials often blame victims for incidents, and perpetrators receive little or no punishment, according to the report, titled In Religion's Name: Abuses against Religious Minorities in Indonesia, and based a two-year study with interviews in 10 provinces.
Kine condemned President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's "empty rhetoric" on religious tolerance.
"The government needs to take a zero-tolerance approach to acts of religious intolerance and violence and the perpetrators should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," he said.
The constitution guarantees freedom of worship, but small but vocal Islamic hardline groups have emerged in recent years.
In 2011, hundreds of fundamentalists attacked a house occupied by Ahmadiyya in West Java, killing three people. The sect regards its 18th-century founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, as the most recent Muslim prophet.
Last year, a Shiite Muslim was killed on Madura island in an attack blamed on Sunnis.
Indonesia is predominantly Sunni, with Shiites making up less than 1 per cent of its 240 million people. Christians are the largest religious minority, accounting for 10 per cent of the population.
The Human Rights Watch report also blamed discriminatory legislation, which only recognizes six religions and allows local residents to veto the construction of houses of worship.
In Bogor town near Jakarta, a group of Muslim hardliners have for years prevented a Christian congregation from worshipping in their church, alleging that the place was built illegally.
The report also said Sunnis in areas of eastern Indonesia where Christians are a majority have also had difficulty obtaining permission to build mosques.