State Officials’ Entanglement with Vigilante Groups in Violence against Ahmadiyah and Shi’a Communities in Indonesia

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ABSTRACTCommunal violence against the minority communities of Ahmadiyah and Shi’a was on the rise during the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004–14). This article discusses state responses to this violence. Previous studies commonly attributed communal violence in post-New Order Indonesia to the failure of local officials to stop the violence due to the security officials’ kinship and local ties with the perpetrators. Some argue that the violence broke out due to, first, the role of local elites who provoked violence; and second, the role of local state officials who supported the mobilisation of the people by vigilante groups to stage the protests that led to violence. This article expands on these studies by arguing that the state complicity in violence stems from security officials’ entangled relations with vigilante groups. These entangled relationships hampered the officers’ ability to prevent incidents of religious violence before they occurred, and to bring charges against perpetrators afterward. The entanglement was the result of a blurred boundary where police officers and vigilante groups often ended up pursuing areas of mutual material and political interest. This study is based on seven months of PhD fieldwork in Ahmadiyah and Shi’a communities in West Java Province and East Java Province in 2013.