The executive secretary of the Indonesian Bishops’ Conference’s Commission for Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs today criticized Monday’s arrest of two human rights activists in Sampang district in Madura, East Java province.

Both activists — Andreas Harsono, an Indonesian, and Tirana Hassan, an Australian — work for New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Police arrested them while they were interviewing local Shia Muslims about discrimination and intolerance shown by local people against the Indonesian minority group.

“The arrests were regrettable, because what they were doing isn’t illegal,” Father Antonius Benny Susetyo said.

The interviews were important as they covered rights issues, he said.

The Institute for Democracy and Peace also denounced the arrests.

“There is no legal basis for local police to conduct an interrogation,” Bonar Tigor Naipospos, the institute’s deputy head, said yesterday.

Following their arrests, Harsono and Hassan were interrogated by police for about nine hours.

Harsono has since been released, but Hassan, who did not have her passport on her at the time of her detention, was taken to the immigration office in Surabaya, the provincial capital where she remains.

Hoping immigration officials will not deport the Australian activist, Naipospos said: “It must be understood that asking questions on rights issues should not be an excuse to accuse someone of breaking immigration rules.”