About 3,000 Indonesian teachers have flooded the grounds of
parliament in protest against a bill on religious teaching in schools.
The teachers shouted and waved placards urging the government to scrap an
article in a new bill, which stipulates all students, even in religion-based
schools, have the right to receive instruction in their own religion.
An Education Ministry official said the bill, expected to be passed in May,
would apply to all schools.
Religion-based schools which are open to children from other faiths will in
future have to provide religious teachers for those faiths.
Schools based on religions such as Catholicism or Islam have expressed
reservations, saying the move would obscure their original mission.
Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim-populated nation with some 90 per cent
of its 212-million people following Islam.
But Islam is not the state religion and other faiths are respected.