Source: World Watch Monitor, January 25, 2019<\/p>\n
Jakarta\u2019s former governor, known widely and simply as \u201cAhok,\u201d walked out of prison January 24 after serving nearly two years for blasphemy.<\/p>\n
He was granted early release, four months ahead of schedule, for good behavior. Outside prison in West-Java he was greeted by his eldest son and Nicholas and a group of supporters.<\/p>\n
In a letter to his supporters last week, the Chinese Christian, whose real name is Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, asked people not to come to prison to welcome him, out of concern \u201cfor the common good\u201d and \u201cfor the sake of public order,\u201d according to the Catholic news service UCAN.<\/p>\n
\u201cAhok will finally be out of prison and reunited with his family, but he should never have been imprisoned in the first place,\u201d Elaine Pearson of Human Rights Watch (HRW) said earlier this week. \u201cAhok\u2019s unjust conviction is a reminder that minorities in Indonesia are at risk so long as the abusive blasphemy law remains in place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since 1968 more than 150 people have been imprisoned and at least six people were convicted under this law in 2018 alone, said the organization.<\/p>\n
\u00bb See full story with links to related news<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00bb Also read Tides Turn against Indonesian Christians<\/a>, which reports a shift in interreligious relations these last two years (Mission Network News).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: World Watch Monitor, January 25, 2019 Jakarta\u2019s former governor, known widely and simply as \u201cAhok,\u201d walked out of prison January 24 after serving nearly two years for blasphemy. He was granted early release, four months ahead of schedule, for good behavior. Outside prison in West-Java he was greeted by his eldest son and Nicholas … Continue reading INDONESIA: Former Governor Released after Two Years in Prison<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8340"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8341,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8340\/revisions\/8341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}