INDONESIA A NEWS

Greenpeace boycott Palm oil products Duta Palma

2013-04-29T13:19:00.002+07:00

Environmental organization Greenpeace India has demanded that all Indian palm oil importers and corporate consumers immediately stop palm oil sourcing from Indonesian companies like Duta Palma who make palm oil by destroying forests and tiger habitat in Indonesia.

An investigative report issued by Greenpeace Indonesia released on Thursday links India's growing palm oil imports and corporate apathy to Duta Palma's destruction of hundreds of acres of Indonesian rainforests and tiger habitat in complete disregard of Indonesian government&# 39;s moratorium on such activities in the rainforest.

Big Indian corporates like Ruchi Soya, Adani -Wilmar, Godrej Industries, Parle, Britannia are among many who use Indonesian palm oil in their products on a large scale.

"Duta Palma's dirty oil could well be entering into their supply chains. Yet, so far, no Indian company has taken any visible steps to clean up their supply chain, to delink their brands from the large scale deforestation, " said Greenpeace.

"It is astonishing to witness the apathy and absolute irresponsibility in the Indian corporate sector. Indian companies are not only destroying tiger habitats and forests in India for coal mining but now they are going a step further by importing palm oil from questionable sources in Indonesia like Duta Palma. Indian companies should adopt a zero deforestation policy instead," said Nandikesh Sivalingam, forest campaigner for Greenpeace India.

Greenpeace India estimates India imports about 9 million tonnes of palm oil in 2012-13. India is the largest importer of palm oil in the world.

Field investigations by Greenpeace International reveal that Duta Palma annexed and cleared hundreds of hectares of forest outside the official boundaries of one of its concessions in Sumatra, Indonesia.

Investigators found that Indonesia' s Ministry of Forestry has not permitted the company to operate in this particular area, which is mapped as peatland, tiger habitat. This is a clear violation of the current forest moratorium.

The company has failed to answer Greenpeace Southeast Asia's requests for further information about its operations, the organization said.

Duta Palma has a long history of deforestation, community conflict, illegality, and non-compliance with Roundtable on Sustainable Oil (RSPO) regulations.

"Sustainabilit y certificates are only worth the paper they're written on if they're not enforced and trusted. Unless repeat offenders such as Duta Palma are sanctioned or expelled and the standard is tightened to stop deforestation, the RSPO and its standards will rightly be seen as a toothless tiger," said Wirendro Sumargo, Forest Campaigner, Greenpeace Indonesia.

atheists in religious life Indonesia

2013-04-27T16:10:00.000+07:00

Karina is an atheist, but her friends jokingly call her “the prophet.” That is because she is helping nurture a community for unbelievers in predominantly Muslim Indonesia, where trumpeting one’s disbelief in God can lead to abuse, ostracism and even prison.

“It’s very normal for atheists to be paranoid because the environment does not support them,” said Ms. Karina, 26, who uses only one name. But, she said, “in this group people don’t need to be afraid.”

Indonesian Atheists was founded with a Facebook page in 2008 and now holds regular gatherings. The Internet has offered its members a safe space to air their opinions, and the feeling of community has made them braver about gathering in public. But recent prosecutions of people who made online comments deemed blasphemous by the country’s courts have stoked fears that they too could come under attack.

“Members’ growing outspokenness and courage does not indicate that other people increasingly accept us,” said Karl Karnadi, 29, the group’s founder. He lives in Germany and is candid about being a nonbeliever on Facebook and Twitter. Inside Indonesia, atheists are circumspect about their views, he said, and refrain from public criticism of Islam or any statements that could run afoul of the country’s blasphemy law. Still, he said, that is an advance from a time when people were fiercely secretive.

“At first people think they’re alone,” Mr. Karl said in a Skype interview. “But after we meet each other, we feel like we’re accepted. We’re together if anything happens to us, and that feeling of community is very valuable.”

While the Indonesian Constitution enshrines freedom of religion, legal protection is afforded only to six official faiths — Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism. Citizens are required to list their religion on national identity cards. Violating the country’s blasphemy law by insulting or interfering with the practice of one of the official faiths can bring a five-year prison term.

Concerns about the application of that law against religious minorities have risen amid an increase in religiously motivated violence that rights campaigners say is threatening a tradition of tolerance in Indonesia.

A recent report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch said reported cases of religious violence in Indonesia had increased by 20 percent since 2010. The Setara Institute, a research organization based in Jakarta, documented 264 attacks on religious minorities last year.

Those perpetuating the violence are largely militant Islamists who have an “uncompromising view of religious purity,” said Phelim Kine, a deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch. “Compounding that is a complete failure by the Indonesian government to confront this violence and put a stop to it.”

Officials say that while, under the Constitution, each citizen is entitled to whatever private belief he chooses, religious activities outside the home must be controlled by the state to maintain public order.

“Someone who belongs to one particular religion has also to respect other religious communities,” said Nur Kholis Setiawan, head of the center for research and development of religious life at the Ministry of Religious Affairs. “The state has an authority and an obligation to manage religious life in the public forum.”

It has done so, however, through several regulations that Mr. Kine says have been used against religious minorities, including a ministerial decree that has prevented Christian groups from opening churches and the 1965 blasphemy law, which courts have used more than a dozen times since 2005 to prosecute Shiites, Christians and atheists.

Last year Alexander Aan, a civil servant in West Sumatra, was charged with blasphemy for posting “God does not exist” along with cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad on a Facebook page he administered dedicated to atheism. Months later another man, Sebastian Joe, was charged under the same law for insulting Islam, also on Facebook.

Both men were eventually sentenced to prison under a separate electronic communications law that prohibits the transmission of defamatory information through the Internet. Mr. Alexander was sentenced to two and half years for “disseminating information aimed at inciting religious hatred.” Mr. Sebastian was sentenced to five years.

A report by the International Humanist and Ethical Union, a global organization representing atheists and freethinkers, listed Indonesia among a number of Muslim-majority countries, including Bangladesh and Egypt, that have stepped up prosecution of religious expression in social media. According to the group, which submitted its report to the U.N. Human Rights Council on Feb. 25, more than a dozen people, in 10 countries, were charged with “blasphemous” statements on the Internet in 2012.

Despite concerns about attack or arrest, Ms. Karina is among the more than a thousand members of Indonesian Atheists, many of who are increasingly speaking out. In 2011 some members started another group, You Ask Atheists Answer, a forum that aims to facilitate discussions about atheism in the hope of breaking down hostile stereotypes.

Because the forum is open, many Indonesian Atheists members use aliases to post comments that might offend militant Islamists who have attacked those they consider apostates.

Members’ paths to atheism have varied. Some say they are from families whose unbending embrace of religion caused them to rebel, others say their more moderate upbringing allowed them to question religion’s role in their lives. Most say the Internet has been a gateway to readings and discussions that have affirmed their disbelief.

Offline, they say the group is more than a collection of like minds. It is a source of friendship, a support network and a safety net. When Muhammad Ikhwan, who goes by Matthew Edison because his birth name is “so Islamic,” needed money to repay a debt to his estranged father, he said members collected 30 million rupiah, or about $3,000, to help him.

As the community has grown, however, so has the attention. An administrator of You Ask Atheists Answer said that he receives death threats and frequently gets messages demanding that he dissolve the group. He now uses a pseudonym on Facebook.

Some atheists say that if militant Islamists can violently attack other Muslims they deem heretical — referring to raids on Shiite villages and members of the Ahmadiyah sect — worse things could happen to them. “We cannot expect that the government will protect us,” Mr. Edison said.

In February 2011, for example, hundreds of militant Islamists attacked an Ahmadiyah community in West Java and beat three people to death. A district court sentenced 12 of the perpetrators to jail terms of three to six months. The following month the same court sentenced an Ahmadiyah man wounded in the attack to six months in jail for inciting the violence. More recently, officials in Bekasi, West Java, sealed an Ahmadiyah mosque in a crackdown on what they called a “deviant” branch of Islam.

“The government is doing something wrong by not protecting constitutional rights,” said Philips J. Vermonte, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. The state has an obligation to defend the rights of minorities, he said. “But that’s what we don’t have right now in Indonesia.”

Mr. Karl, who said he had gradually renounced Christianity after years of reading books about science and religion and disillusion with religious groups who use faith to justify intolerant behavior, says that, as long as the law is used to attack those outside the religious mainstream, Indonesian atheists should be careful.

In the meantime, said Ms. Karina, group members will continue to gather, in the manner she applies to her own life. “I’m open,” she said, “but I’m not broadcasting.”

Nine of Indonesia’s 11 richest families have found shelter in tropical tax havens

2013-04-13T16:51:00.001+07:00

Billionaires Among Thousands of Indonesians Found in Secret Offshore Documents

By Nicky Hager

April 9, 2013, 8:15 pm

Nine of Indonesia’s 11 richest families have found shelter in tropical tax havens, holding ownership of more than 190 offshore trusts and companies, secret records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists show.

The nine families, worth an estimated $36 billion among them, are at the top of a wealthy class that dominates Indonesia’s politics and economy.

Six were closely tied to the late dictator Suharto, who helped a special circle of Indonesians grow rich during his 31-year rule by granting economic fiefdoms to family and friends.

The billionaires are among nearly 2,500 Indonesians found in the files of Singapore-headquart ered offshore services provider Portcullis TrustNet, which ICIJ has been analyzing and began reporting on last week.

Although there is no evidence in the files of illegality by any of the nine families, they are part of a wider Indonesian economy riddled with secret offshore companies and resources draining away to offshore bank accounts.

Danang Wirdaus of Indonesian Corruption Watch said that after Indonesia' s 1998 financial crisis many Indonesian tycoons moved to Singapore and Hong Kong. "Offshore companies were essential because they are not Indonesian companies any more," he said.

However he said that for other very rich Indonesians as well, "whenever their companies become bigger and bigger, they can use offshore companies to reduce their tax and increase profits."

On its website, the Indonesian tax authority says that taxpayers and companies resident in Indonesia are subject to taxation on their worldwide income. This includes in tax havens. It says there are special tax forms to declare transactions occurring in tax havens.

In December 2012 the Washington-based research organization Global Financial Integrity estimated that Indonesia had lost over $10 billion in “illicit financial outflows,” including tax evasion, each year between 2001 and 2010. This placed it 9th out of 150 developing countries for the quantity of money disappearing into offshore tax havens. These outflows of “dirty money” deprive nations of investments in healthcare, education and infrastructure, GFI said in a statement.

However there are also legitimate uses for offshore companies. Service providers like TrustNet allow companies and individuals to do business, diversify their investments and forge alliances across political borders. They also help individuals who live in multiple countries to manage their affairs.

The files analyzed by ICIJ show how wealthy Indonesians have embraced the anonymity offered by the offshore world. The Riady family, for instance, owners of the conglomerate Lippo Group, had at least 11 offshore companies and trusts, records obtained by ICIJ show. But TrustNet cautiously refers to the Lippo companies in internal correspondence as “Client A”. Company records explain that “the client does not want to be seen dealing offshore.” Their agent Gary Phair instructed the TrustNet staff to “delete any reference to ‘C/- [care of] Lippo Group’” from all contact addresses in Client A records.

Phair also asked that his own name not to be used in issuing invoices: “Please do not mention Gary Phair’s name,” the TrustNet staff wrote. “We are to refer to him in an invoice as either ‘the company representative’ or ‘your representative.’ ”

The tiny Cook Islands in the South Pacific have been a preferred destination for many Riady family offshore entities, from 1989 until at least 2009, the files indicate.

The Riadys and Lippo were at the center of a foreign political cash scandal during American President Bill Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign, with the company admitting dozens of violations of U.S. campaign law and the family’s scion, James Riady, pleading guilty to fraud and paying an $8.6 million fine.

A spokeswoman for Stephen Riady, James’ brother, declined to discuss the family's offshore entities. She said there was “nothing illegal or improper in protecting the privacy of one’s own information” and no adverse implication should be drawn from the group doing so.

Some Riady (“Lippo”) group companies were publicly listed companies, so information regarding them was publicly available. “Other companies in the group are privately owned, so information concerning these companies is private and will only be disclosed to the appropriate regulatory authorities, as and when required by law.”

Phair also declined comment, citing “strict obligations of confidentiality to my clients and former clients regarding their business affairs.”

One of Indonesia’s big tobacco families also used the Cook Islands. On May 18, 2005, Philip Morris International completed the purchase of 97 percent of the shares of the Sampoerna tobacco company. It paid the Sampoerna family, Indonesia’s 10th richest, $2 billion for their minority stake. Two weeks later, on May 31, TrustNet established an offshore trust called Strong Castle Trust in the Cook Islands.

Sulistiani Sampoerna is listed in the TrustNet files as “trust settlor”, possibly indicating it was her money the trust was to hold. She did not respond to a request for comment. Two other Indonesian tobacco billionaires, Susilo Wonowidjojo and Peter Sondakh, also have multiple offshore companies.

Eka Tjipta Widjaja

Four more of Indonesia’s very richest are known for their role in clearing vast areas of tropical rainforest. Eka Tjipta Widjaja, the Salim family, Sukanto Tanoto and Prajogo Pangestu built their fortunes after they obtained licenses to log and clear rainforest during the Suharto years.

Between them they have over 140 offshore companies, mostly in the British Virgin Islands.

More recently Widjaja, Tanoto and Pangestu have invested heavily in palm oil plantations. A series of reports earlier this year from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting described palm oil as one of the most controversial commodities on earth. Palm oil plantations have replaced “swathes of rainforest the size of small countries”.

The documents obtained by ICIJ show that as Suharto’s rule came to an end in 1997-98, the number of new TrustNet companies and trusts set up for Indonesians spiked.

TrustNet’s employee Stephen Breed arranged a trip to Jakarta in late 1997 to speak with at least one important client about the services TrustNet provided. He made an appointment to meet with Marimutu Sinivasan, chairman of Texmaco, an Indonesian textile and industrial conglomerate.

Sinivasan was a favorite of Suharto, and state banks and government agencies extended some $2.2 billion in loans to Texmaco, much of it in the dictator’s final months in power. TrustNet incorporated a Cook Islands offshore company on April 4, 1997, named the Pipeline Trust Company Limited and transferred its shares to Sinivasan’s name on Aug. 13, 1997.

The Pipeline Trust Company used the TrustNet subsidiaries Directcorp and Secorp as its director and secretary. Sinivasan was the sole shareholder. TrustNet later sent Sinivasan a power-of-attorney document on Dec. 11, 1997 that entitled him to open bank accounts and transfer money in and out of the accounts in the name of the company.

Sinivasan could not be reached for comment.

Other members of prominent Indonesia families set up offshore companies using TrustNet at this time. In September 1998 TrustNet set up a secretive offshore company called Pico Trading Limited. No real directors or owners were recorded. Invoice records show dozens of payments – usually tens of thousands of dollars each – made from Pico Trading’s bank account. More than $30,000 went to someone called “Yanti Rukmana,” the same name as Suharto’s oldest daughter. But, as the secretive record-keeping intended, there is no way of knowing from the documents if it was actually her.

Suharto was finally forced from power on May 21, 1998, and was replaced by his deputy B.J. Habibie, who promised to increase transparency compared to the Suharto years.

Yet even Habibie’s own sons used offshore companies, records reviewed by ICIJ show. His younger son Thareq Kemal Habibie was part of the rush of Indonesians setting up offshores in 1998. He formed two British Virgin Islands companies in the last weeks before Suharto had to resign. A decade later another son, Ilham, personally organized at least seven TrustNet companies to provide an offshore base for enterprises inside Indonesia, including exploration and mining. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Most of Indonesia’s 240 million people have barely heard of the offshore world. But for wealthy and powerful Indonesians, it is still a routine part of managing their business and finances.

The right of women to sit astride

2013-01-23T20:17:00.002+07:00

Rights groups urged the Indonesian government yesterday to block a proposed law banning women from sitting astride motorcycles in deeply Islamic Aceh province, where the position is deemed “improper”. The mayor of Lhokseumawe city in Aceh, where sharia law is enforced, circulated a letter Monday explaining the obligation for women to sit side-saddle was “to avoid immoral acts”. “Adult women who are riding on the back of a motorbike… cannot straddle unless in an emergency,” mayor Suaidi Yahya’s letter read, adding that the ban included women straddling female drivers.

The official explained last week that women sitting astride motorcycles would “provoke the male driver” and that it would be against Islamic law. The letter also proposed banning men and women from hugging and holding hands while on vehicles, and banning tight or scanty clothing in public.

The move comes after leaders from Aceh, the country’s only province ruled by strict sharia law, drafted a series of new bills including banning women from wearing tight trousers, stoning adulterers and flogging homosexuals. Local women’s rights activists have rejected the proposed ban “because it completely ignores the safety principles for driving,” said Roslina Rasyid from Indonesian Women’s Association for Justice legal aid in Lhokseumawe. “Sitting astride guarantees better safety, and I’m sure most people can only side-saddle for 15 minutes. What if the person is overweight and causes an imbalance? It could cause an accident,” she added. National Commission on Violence Against Women activist Andy Yentriyani said the policy was “part of discriminative policies on women in this country in the name of religion and morality”.

But the central government said it could not review the straddling ban because it was not yet formalised as a bylaw and did not include punishments. Local media reported the interior minister saying he would review the bylaw if it passed. But the ministry’s regional autonomy director-general Djohermansyah Djohan, who would oversee any revision, said: “We’ll just leave it to people of Aceh to decide whether to accept it or not.

Debate Islam in Indonesia

2012-12-09T19:11:00.000+07:00

http://www.thejakar taglobe.com/ opinion/interloc utors-of- indonesian- islam/560447

Interlocutors of Indonesian Islam

Ahmad Najib Burhani | December 08, 2012

A few months ago, the Japanese anthropologist Mitsuo Nakamura told me that studying Nahdlatul Ulama as an organization was beyond the imagination of any American scholar from the 1950s to the ’70s. But he is not the only academic to have noticed this. George McT. Kahin of Cornell University stated the same thing. Even NU-expert Martin van Bruinessen was not expecting to study NU as his primary focus when he came to Indonesia for the first time in the 1980s.

During the early decades of Indonesian independence, NU was relatively unorganized and its management was largely based on the authority of religious teachers ( kyai ). Of course there were a number of scholars who studied NU-affiliated religious schools ( pesantren ) and its kyai, but not NU as an organization.

Even though NU was one of the winners of Indonesia’s first legislative elections, in 1955, most of the academic work during these years focused on modernist movements, like Muhammadiyah. But since the 1980s, there has been a dramatic shift, especially visible in American scholarship on Indonesian Islam, toward a more NU-centric approach.

Weber and the Protestant Ethic

Most of the early academic work on Indonesian Islam was done by Christian missionaries and colonial officials. Before World War II, American scholars relied heavily on Europe, particularly the Netherlands, when they studied Indonesian Islam. But this changed after WW II when Americans wanted to see for themselves what was going on in Indonesia, a key player in the Non-Aligned Movement.

The main characteristic of the early US scholarship on Indonesian Islam was the influence of Max Weber. This can be seen clearly in the work of Clifford Geertz, Harry J. Benda, Lance Castles and also that of Nakamura.

Fred Inglis wrote in 2000 that Geertz, who would become highly influential, came to Indonesia in the early 1950s with an intention to find a local variant of the Protestant ethic in Muslim societies — inspired by Weber’s famous “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.” Other scholars did likewise, like Robert N. Bellah in his “Tokugawa Religion.”

A good example of the influence of Weber in Geertz’s work is the santri-priyayi- abangan trichotomy — similar to Weber’s distinction between the urban middle class, warrior nobilities and peasants.

How come Weber was so influential in Indonesian studies?

The dominance of the Weberian perspective among US scholars in general at the time was one factor. Geertz was a student of Talcott Parsons, and Parsons was the one who introduced Weber to American academia by translating “The Protestant Ethic” into English.

But of course Geertz’s choice to use the Weberian perspective was not simply because of this teacher-student relation. The most important reason was because he tried to find the relation between religious ideas and human conduct, politics and economic development — between religion and social change. For this analytical endeavor, Weber provided very useful tools.

Recent studies have been trying to uncover whether there were any other motives behind the Weberian approach in Indonesian studies — political ones perhaps. Inglish among others has argued that US scholars visiting Indonesia at the time were greatly influenced by the idea that capitalism was to be promoted to counter to Sukarno’s “Asian socialism.”

As the Cold War was raging, Sukarno was among those taking the initiative to establish the NAM. Furthermore, although Sukarno was a leader of the so-called non-bloc nations, he was also a good friend of communist Cuba’s Fidel Castro and close to the People’s Republic of China. To challenge Sukarno’s hegemony, the US government needed to promote and support capitalism in Indonesia. Coincidentally, modernist Islamic movements at that time were opposing Sukarno. This is presumably one of the reasons why American scholars focused on modernist movements and neglected NU — a Sukarno ally in promoting his Nasakom (nationalism, religion and communism) ideology.

From an academic perspective, another reason for not looking closely at what was going on within NU was that many scholars believed this organization would be left behind by modernization. Modernism and rationality, they believed, had no place in NU. And if Indonesia were to be become a modern country — like the United States — then it had to follow the Protestant ethic and especially the spirit of capitalism. “New Indonesia,” using a term coined by Geertz, would thus only appear with the help of Muhammadiyah and other modernist movements.

New era of scholarship

James Peacock’s work is the culmination of American scholarship on Indonesian Islam from a Weberian vantage point and seeing Muhammadiyah as the incarnation of the Protestant ethic in the Muslim world. But Peacock’s books were published almost at the same time as Edward Said’s “Orientalism” (1978), which marked the beginning of a new era of scholarship on Islam all over the world.

New generations of American scholars of Indonesian Islam were no longer unconsciously trapped by the Weberian perspective — look at Robert Hefner, John Bowen and Mark Woodward.

There are four factors that have contributed to this paradigm shift.

The first is — using Edward Tiryakian’s term — “Durkheim’s religious revival.” Among other things, this trend was due to a new translation of Emile Durkheim’s “The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life.” It was also stimulated by a broad swing in social science toward cultural analysis, structuralism and post-modernism. Interestingly, Geertz was also a pioneer in this regard.

The second factor that contributed to the shift away from Weberian scholarship on Indonesia was the decline of the modernist paradigm in universities, mainly thanks to critique from post-modernist and culturalist circles.

A third, related factor that gave rise to a new era of scholarship is the fading away of the orientalist tradition. We can see this for instance in the references used in scholarship since the 1980s. Researchers started to quote Marshal Hodgson, Talal Asad, Charles Taylor and Michel Foucault — instead of Christian missionaries and colonial officials. But not only did scholars start to use other sources as part of their move away from orientalism, there was also a change in their perception of Indonesian Islam.

Before the ’80s, scholars almost unanimously considered Indonesian Islam as a peripheral, or superficial form of the faith. This was a consequence of the binary perspective used by orientalists, who approached Islam in a normative way and used the Middle East as their point of reference.

The final factor leading to the paradigm shift were the dynamics of Indonesian Islam itself — particularly under the influence of longtime NU-leader Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid.

He successfully transformed NU from a traditionalist to a more progressive movement. He also played a key role in changing the image of Indonesian Islam — from the “peripheral Islam” of the orientalists to an “authentic Islam” no less orthodox than forms of the faith practiced in the Middle East. NU no longer feels inferior in the face of modernism and has even been able to become a trendsetter in the Indonesian Islamic discourse — at times even critiquing Muhammadiyah.

Combined, these four factors changed for good the way scholars all over the world approach religion in the largest Muslim-majority nation-state. Yet they also remind us of the non-academic considerations that over time have shaped the endeavors of Islam’s interlocutors.

Ahmad Najib Burhani is a researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI).

is that true in Indonesia there freedom of religion?

2012-07-21T06:09:00.000+07:00

The problems began shortly after Tajul Muluk, a Shiite cleric, opened a boarding school in 2004. The school, in a predominantly Sunni Muslim part of East Java, raised local tensions, and in 2006 it was attacked by thousands of villagers. When a mob set fire to the school and several homes last December, many Shiites saw it as just the latest episode in a simmering sectarian conflict — one that they say has been ignored by the police and exploited by Islamists purporting to preserve the purity of the Muslim faith.

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, has long been considered a place where different religious and ethnic groups can live in harmony and where Islam can work with democracy. But that perception has been repeatedly brought into question lately. In East Java, Sunni leaders are pushing the provincial government to adopt a regulation limiting the spread of Shiite Islam. It would prevent the country’s two major Shiite organizations from organizing prayer gatherings and sermons.

Mr. Muluk is part of an increasingly threatened minority. Last Thursday, he was sentenced to two years in prison for violating a 1965 presidential decree against blasphemy by promoting a heretical interpretation of Islam. He denies the charges. Analysts say that Mr. Muluk challenged the Sunni-led power structure in his village, making him a target of local leaders.

“Most conflicts are hitched to local politics,” said Ken Conboy, a security consultant who has tracked rising religious intolerance in Indonesia. “They’re based in communal, ethnic, tribal differences, but it’s something that can be wielded by community and religious leaders.” Only one person has been tried in connection with the arson attack, and he received a sentence for time served, leading to his immediate release. Days after the fire, the local branch of the Indonesian Ulema Council, or M.U.I., an influential group of Muslim clerics, issued a fatwa, or decree, against Mr. Muluk, saying his teachings “tarnished” Islam.

“In Islam you have to be clean, focused and unified,” said Bukhori Maksum, the chairman of the council in Sampang. Throughout his blasphemy trial, Mr. Muluk appeared both stoic and incredulous. His wife, Ummu Kulsum, sat in the back of the courtroom. “People in the village are trying to force us to join their religion,” she said. “We will hold out, because it is our right.”

Mr. Maksum said that Shiites in Sampang practiced Islam in a way that disturbed society. “M.U.I. Sampang has the obligation to respond to this situation because if we did not, there would be bigger problems,” he said.

Intolerance has also led to attacks on Christians, whose churches have been closed under pressure, and on members of the Ahmadiyah, an Islamic sect many mainstream Muslims consider heretical. The Wahid Institute, a liberal Islamic research organization working with some national lawmakers to draft a law on the protection of religious minorities, reported a 16 percent rise in cases of religious intolerance between 2010 and 2011, Including threats of violence, arson and discrimination.

Rights advocates accuse the police of turning a blind eye to such actions and accuse the national government of yielding to Islamic hard-liners for political gain. They point to a 2008 presidential decree that prohibits “proselytizing” by the Ahmadiyah.

Officials, however, deny that the 2008 decree or any of the recent anti-Shiite fatwas contravene the Constitution, saying they are necessary to prevent social conflict. “If individuals practice a different form of religion, which is against the principles of other religions, this creates disunity and animosity,” said Teuku Faizasyah, a special adviser to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Indonesia has opened up over the last 15 years, but the advent of democracy and the decentralization of power have also allowed a greater assertiveness by local religious leaders. Analysts say many senior officials, including Mr. Yudhoyono, are reluctant to crack down forcefully on intolerance for fear of appearing un-Islamic.

“Five years ago this trend was only in the big cities,” said Ahmad Suaedy, the executive director of the Wahid Institute. “But it’s spreading very fast because the government has ignored this situation.”

a story of the militant Islamic Movement of Indonesia

2012-07-10T06:45:00.002+07:00

I'm almost packed and about to get on the plane for the Middle East, so I've been thinking a lot about Hizbullah. No, not the Shiite militia and political party that runs much of Lebanon; the Hizbullah here, in Indonesia. It was a Muslim militia created by the Japanese to fight the Allies in World War II.

Now, you're probably familiar with the thread winding from al-Qaeda's attacks on America in 2001, back to the CIA's (Central Intelligence Agency) funding for the Mujahedeen who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. But that's just part of a broader story about outsiders oppressing, fostering and flirting with local Muslim forces. And it stretches from the battle scarred streets of Beirut and Baghdad, across the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, all the way to Bali.

The most important name in this Indonesian chapter of the story is Kartosuwiryo. He was an Islamist leader who first got involved in politics in the 1920s and, to this day, he's an inspiration for Islamist activists and terrorists alike.

Like many others, Kartosuwiryo agitated against Dutch colonial rule. Just another nationalist at first, over time he became a hardliner fighting for an Islamic state. He established his own school in West Java in 1940, teaching a mixture of Islam and politics. In fact when I was interviewing the notorious cleric, Abu Bakar Ba'aysir, in his holding cell a couple of years ago, I didn't know it at the time, but I was talking with a modern day version of Kartosuwiryo.

After the Japanese invaded in 1942 they set about marshalling the local population to the war effort. They also established a couple of secular and Muslim peak organisations, playing them off against their varying dreams of independence.

Then, in 1944 the Japanese established the Muslim militia, Hizbullah. Kartosuwiryo was appointed to lead a local Hizbullah unit and in West Java. He was already an important political player and he took up a key political role to boot. He had a power base in the area and this turned out to be an important chance for him to build a regional network.

When the Japanese lost World War II and withdrew from Java, Kartosuwiryo kept fighting the Dutch. But he also fought Indonesian nationalists who he thought were making too many concessions to the Dutch, and he pressed on towards his goal of an Islamic state.

The Hizbullah militiamen under his command would become core members of a new group called Darul Islam, which grew strong enough to defy the new republic and establish a mini Islamic state in West Java. Obviously it didn't last.

While Kartosuwiryo was captured in 1962 and then executed, his lieutenants were offered an easier path. They were co-opted by the Indonesian government and even offered support to help with the cost of living; which is exactly what the police do with terror convicts today.

By 1965 the Darul Islam movement had been defeated but that same year, the Communist Party was accused of fomenting a coup and the military, and General Suharto began one of the biggest massacres in history. As it turned out, the army wasn't above arming a small hard core group of anti-Communist Darul Islam fighters and allowing them to play a small role in the mass murder.

Suharto's regime even tried to use Darul Islam to bolster its political machine in the early 1970s. Almost inevitably, though, Darul Islam went covert once more. But along the way it picked up followers like Abdullah Sungkar, one of the founders of Jemaah Islamiyah and, you guessed it, Abu Bakar Ba'asyir.

By 2002, Kartosuwiryo had been dead for 40 years but his legacy lived on. When a young radical named Iqbal wrote to his friends and family in his home town in west Java he urged them to remember, quote, "how our imam, SM Kartosuwiryo, built and upheld and proclaimed the independence of the Islamic State of Indonesia with the blood and lives of martyrs, not by relaxing and fooling around as we do today."

He also urged those who want to see the Islamic State of Indonesia rise again to shed their own blood. And, after that Iqbal picked up a bomb. He walked into Paddy's bar and he and the other Bali bombers wrought terrible carnage in Kuta.

So on Tuesday as I fly across Iraq, I'll note that the Iranians and Saudis are still at play and the sectarian death squads still on the prowl. And as the arms, money and intelligence flow from all sides into Syria, I'll be sure to remember Indonesia's Hizbullah, the power of ideas and the unpredictable path of rebellion and insurgency.

the Coalition's policy of forcing asylum boats back into Indonesian waters

2012-07-07T18:35:00.003+07:00

A SENIOR Indonesian official has confirmed Indonesia would object strongly to the Coalition's policy of forcing asylum boats back into Indonesian waters. ''It's exactly like you going to someone else's house and throwing dirt there,'' the official said, on the condition of anonymity. ''Why would we take something that is not our property?''

There are also practical problems with the turn-around policy, the official said. Unless the boats were to be abandoned on the high seas, or handed over to the Indonesian navy mid-ocean, they would need to be towed to land. But there is no safe port on Java's southern shore because the seas are too high and dangerous.

This would mean the Australian navy towing an asylum boat to Tanjung Priok, Jakarta's commercial and military port, which is many hours' sail away on Java's northern shore. The source said the Australian navy would never be given permission for this kind of incursion into Indonesian waters. ''It's impossible for a military ship to get security clearance and border clearance,'' the source said.

On the face of it, the boat that signalled its distress last Wednesday would have been a candidate for tow-back. It was clearly within Indonesian waters, and the Indonesian search and rescue agency, Basarnas, was in charge of the rescue.

Communications between the Australian Rescue Coordination Centre and Basarnas reveal the Australians initially asked Basarnas to ''advise which Indonesian port is being prepared to receive survivors''. But an Australian vessel, HMAS Wollongong, reached the area first, and the asylum seekers refused to return to Indonesia. They were therefore accompanied to Christmas Island.

A Basarnas spokesman, Gagah Prakoso, said this was standard procedure in search and rescue. ''The implicit understanding is that whoever helps the boat will take it to their country, not get the boat and take it to another country,'' he said. Mr Prakoso would not comment on the Coalition policy.

However, Basarnas has now committed to buying a fast, ocean-going catamaran to help its rescue efforts. The 60-metre vessel, which will supplement its smaller 36-metre fibreglass-bottomed boats, will be able to effect rescues in open ocean for the first time, Mr Prakoso said. The head of Basarnas admitted last month that it was ill-equipped to respond to vessels in distress in the often rough seas off Indonesia's southern coast.

Nevertheless, the new boat, which is to be bought from Singapore, will be based in Jakarta's port, which means it will be 11 hours sailing, in good conditions (and 20 hours in bad conditions) from the mid-point of Java and Christmas Island.

Meanwhile, boat interceptions continued. Australian authorities last night boarded a boat believed to be carrying 31 people west of Christmas Island. And police in Sri Lanka stopped 41 people setting out on a treacherous 3000-kilometre journey across open waters to Australia - only days after the country complained it was being exploited as a ''transit point'' for smuggling.

Are we now making the same mistakes with West Papua?

2012-06-27T10:15:00.001+07:00

As violence escalates in West Papua, one cannot help but recall East Timor and wonder how much worse it must get before Australia and the international community will act.

Tensions are at breaking point in the easternmost province of Indonesia after the police shooting of independence activist Mako Tabuni.

Human rights activists report Tabuni was unarmed when shot six times by the Australian-trained Detachment 88 forces. Tabuni was deputy chairman of the West Papua National Committee, an organisation advocating independence and the right to self-determination under international law. Tabuni had also been campaigning for an investigation into a recent spate of military killings.

The shooting follows years of violence. At least 16 people have been killed in the past month, according to human rights groups, and hundreds of homes raided, with many burnt to the ground. Thousands are reported to be evacuating, seeking refuge in the forest or heading for refugee camps in Papua New Guinea. Credible reports of human rights violations by Indonesian security forces have emerged, including torture, excessive use of force and extrajudicial killings.

Yet Indonesia's State Intelligence Agency chief, Lieutenant-General Marciano Norman, placed blame on the Free Papua Movement, ''foreign agents'' and local residents for the violence. The President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, played down the events. As Indonesia obfuscates and Australia remains silent, West Papua bleeds. While most Australians are proud of our role in ending 24 years of bloody Indonesian occupation in East Timor, we should not forget it came after a long history of accepting Indonesian assertions of sovereignty while ignoring human rights abuse on our doorstep.

After East Timor, we cannot claim any wide-eyed innocence regarding West Papua.

Australia is now bidding for a place on the United Nations Security Council on the basis of our alleged ''human rights-based foreign policy'', highlighting our role in East Timor while trying to keep a lid on our history of inaction there.

The federal Attorney-General has refused freedom of information requests for the release of diplomatic cables dating to the 1970s - cables that a University of NSW professor, Clinton Fernandes, says will show Australian complicity in concealing the mass starvation of Timorese.

Are we now making the same mistakes with West Papua? Few are aware of Australian and UN involvement in West Papua 30 years before the intervention in East Timor. Like East Timor, West Papua was annexed by Indonesia in circumstances that violated international law. Comparisons are made, and with good reason. Both territories are made up of distinct minorities. Both are rich in natural resources. Both have struggled for self-determination. Like East Timor, West Papua had a UN vote for self-determination, only the outcome could not have been more different.

In 1999, East Timor got a proper vote and won independence (not before an estimated 200,000 Timorese had died). But in 1969, West Papua got a sham vote and became part of Indonesia.

Last month, East Timor celebrated 10 years of independence or, as the Timorese say, 10 years since the international community recognised their independence. But an estimated 400,000 Papuans have now been killed after more than 40 years of Indonesian oppression and abuse.

This year, Indonesia faced international condemnation for the imprisonment of West Papuan leaders for peacefully calling for independence. When asked if Australia had raised concerns with Indonesia, the Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr, responded by admitting that ''before I could raise the subject … the Indonesian Foreign Minister nominated that they have a clear responsibility to see that their sovereignty is upheld in respect of human rights standards'', and Carr ''was impressed by that''.

In responses eerily similar to statements made by Gareth Evans about East Timor during Indonesian rule, Carr warned members of Parliament ''against foolishly talking up'' West Papuans' right to self-determination because it ''threatens the territorial integrity of Indonesia'' and ''would produce a reaction'' towards Australia. It would be a foolish foreign affairs minister who did not learn from our mistakes in East Timor.

Australia should, at a minimum, reconsider military aid to Indonesia and call for them to allow media and international organisations access to West Papua to investigate abuses and facilitate peaceful dialogue.

East Timor should remind us of the hefty price of turning a blind eye to repression in the mistaken belief that it serves stability in our region. As a Deakin University academic, Scott Burchill, has long argued, it is not only ''a dereliction of our ethical duty, it is politically short-sighted and usually results in blowback''.

Blasphemy in the name of religion

2012-06-09T18:44:00.001+07:00

The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) wishes to bring the attention of the Human Rights Council (HRC) to violations of the right to the freedom of expression and opinion that are being engendered through the use of Indonesia’s legal provisions prohibiting blasphemy.

Religious blasphemy is prohibited in Indonesia under Law No. 1/PNPS/1965, with such provisions also being later adopted within the Penal Code (KUHP) under Article 156a. Paragraph (a) of this article uses vague language, which opens the door to abusive uses of this provision, to prohibit any acts and expression of views considered to be blasphemous, and carries a maximum punishment of five years imprisonment. A similar maximum punishment is also carried by paragraph (b) of the article, which prohibits any acts and expression of views calling for others to embrace atheism.

Alexander Aan is an atheist currently undergoing a trial at the Muaro Sijunjung District Court, West Sumatra. According to his lawyers from LBH Padang, Alex has been charged under paragraphs (a) and (b) of Article 156a. He is being charged with blasphemy for allegedly posting a note stating that “The Prophet Muhammad was attracted to his own daughter-in- law,” and a comic entitled “The Prophet Muhammad had been sleeping with his wife’s maid,” which have been deemed insults to the Prophet as well as to Islam. His Facebook status update that reads “if you believe in god, then please show him to me,” as well as the fact that he is an atheist and a member of a Facebook group, Minang Atheists, have led to him being charged concerning dissemination of atheism prohibited under KUHP Article 156a paragraph (b).

Alex was caught by an angry mob who visited him in his office after learning that he had put the “insulting” posts on Facebook. He was threatened by the mob and risked being lynched before the police took him to a nearby police station for his own safety. The police, however, have failed to take any measures against those who intimidated and threatened Alex.

As atheism is a form of belief protected under Article 18 paragraph (1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Indonesia is a State Party, atheists enjoy protection under the ICCPR. The propagation of atheism, therefore, should not be seen as a criminal act but, rather, an expression or manifestation of opinion by individuals who do not embrace the theistic belief. This is not only protected by the right to freedom of religion but also the right to freedom of expression enshrined in Article 12 paragraph (2) of the ICCPR. The article protects the right to freedom of expression in any form, including electronic and internet-based modes of expression.

Although freedom of expression is not an absolute right, restrictions imposed on it should meet the cumulative requirements established by Article 19 paragraph (3) of the ICCPR. The restriction should be prescribed by law which is compatible with the aims and objectives of the ICCPR, formulated clearly, and issued by the legislative body of a state. Moreover, freedom of expression should only be restricted when there is a threat to posed by it to the rights or reputations of others, national security, public order, health or morals. Propagation of atheism, as allegedly carried out by Alexander Aan, does not pose a threat to any of these. Criminal punishment should therefore clearly not be imposed as a result. The criminalisation of atheism, as stipulated under Article 156a paragraph (b) of the KUHP, is therefore an illegitimate, arbitrary and disproportionate restriction, not only to the freedom of religion, but also to the right to freedom of expression.

In addition to the case cited above, Tajul Muluk, the leader of an Islamic Shia boarding school (pesantren), is being tried for religious blasphemy. He is being tried by Sampang District Court, East Java, having been charged with religious blasphemy for asserting that the current version of disseminated Quran is not the original one. In his indictment, the prosecutor also highlighted the difference of Shia Islam with the Sunni tradition (which is embraced by most Muslims in Indonesia) concerning the five pillars of Islam (rukun Islam) and six pillars of Islamic faith (rukun iman) and has labelled what Tajul has taught as being “wrong”.

Previously, in December 2009, an anti-Shia group burned Tajul’s pesantren in Sampang and its Shia members also received death threats. Despite the fact that the arson and threats were carried out by a group of persons, the police named only one person, known as Musrikah, as a suspect in the case. He was later tried by Sampang District Court, which sentenced him to 3 months and 10 days imprisonment. The sentence given by the Court matched the duration of Musrikah’s detention, and he was therefore immediately released after the Court pronounced him guilty.

The use of legislation prohibiting blasphemy is in itself flawed, and prosecutions and punishments under it are resulting in violations of persons’ procedural and fundamental rights, including those concerning deprivation of liberty and the freedoms of expression, opinion and belief. The legislation is also enabling the issuing of discriminatory decrees against minority groups. Joint Decree No. 3 of 2008, issued by the Minister of Religious Affairs, the Home Minister and the Attorney General, which prohibits the religious activities of members of the Ahmadiyah faith in Indonesia, for instance, refers to both Article 156a of KUHP and Law No. 1/PNPS/1965. A similar reference can also be found in the West Java Governor Regulation No. 12, of 2011, concerning the prohibition of religious activities of the Ahmadiyah in West Java. Although the law and decrees do not actually overtly encourage attacks or intimidation against the members of religious minority groups, they are misinterpreted by several mainstream religious groups as legitimising their persecution. Before attacking the Ahmadiyah Baitul Rahim Mosque in Singaparna, for instance, a leader of the Islamic Defender Front (FPI) stated that the act that they were about to carry out was in accordance with the aforementioned decrees.

In 2010, several human rights organisations in Indonesia requested that the Constitutional Court review and repeal the religious blasphemy law, arguing that it is in violation of the 1945 Constitution, which guarantees and protects the rights to the freedom of expression and religion, as well as the right to be protected from discrimination. However, the Court refused their arguments and stated that: “the Indonesian Constitution does not give any room for the freedom to encourage people not to have a religion, to promote anti-religion and to insult or stain religious teachings or books which are the sources of religious faith or to stain God’s name. This element is what distinguishes the main difference between Indonesia’s concept of state law and the Western one.”

A Joint Declaration on Defamation of Religions, and Anti-Terrorism, and Anti-Extremist Legislation issued in 2008 by the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, the OSCE Representatives on Freedom of the Media, the OAS Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and the ACHPR Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information, establishes that the concept of religious blasphemy is not in accordance with international human rights standards. The Joint Declaration further asserts that religious blasphemy is an illegitimate restriction of freedom of expression which should only be limited in scope to the protection of overriding individual rights and social interests. Views expressed in the Joint Declaration have also been reiterated by the Special Rapporteur on the protection and promotion of freedom of opinion and expression in his joint report with the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance in 2006.1

The issue of discriminatory laws, decrees and by-laws in Indonesia was raised by several states during Indonesia’s recent Universal Periodic Review, on May 23, 2012. New Zealand explicitly recommended that the Indonesian government “Review existing laws and policies and repeal or amend where necessary to ensure their compatibility with the right to freedom of religion or belief, in line with Indonesia’s Constitution and its international obligations.” A similar recommendation was made by Norway, which called on Indonesia to “ensure that all ministerial decrees regulating religious life, as well as all local religiously founded bylaws, are in conformity with international human rights law.” Switzerland also called on the Indonesian government to “review laws and decrees currently in force restricting the freedoms of religion, opinion, and of expression, in order to prevent any risk of discrimination.” The Indonesian government accepted these recommendations, and the ALRC urges the government to immediately begin taking steps to ensure that these are implemented.

Indonesia also accepted a recommendation made by the Republic of Korea concerning the need to facilitate a country visit by the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression and opinion, and the ALRC urges the government to ensure that this visit can take place without delay or obstruction.

The ALRC is, however, disappointed that the government of Indonesia did not accept a specific recommendation by the government of Denmark, which, if implemented, would likely have a concrete, positive effect on the protection of the freedoms of expression and religion. This recommendation calls on the government of Indonesia to “amend or revoke laws and decrees that limit the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the 1965 Blasphemy Law, the 1969 and 2006 ministerial decrees on building houses of worship and religious harmony and the 2008 Joint Ministerial Decree on Ahmadiyah to bring these laws into line with international human rights standards.”

Given the above, the Asian Legal Resource Centre requests the intervention of the members of the Human Rights Council as well as its Special Procedures, notably the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of freedom of expression and the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, with the government of Indonesia, in order to urge it to:

a. Comply with its international obligations, notably under the ICCPR, concerning freedom of expression, by revoking Article 156a of the KUHP as well as Law No.1/PNPS/1965, which criminalise religious blasphemy and the dissemination of atheism, as well as by putting an immediate halt to all prosecutions against individuals and members of religious minority groups under these provisions;

b. Ensure effective, impartial and prompt investigations into all allegations of threats, acts of intimidation and attacks against members of religious minority groups, and ensure the prosecution of those responsible and adequate reparation to victims, in line with international laws and standards;

c. Ensure full and effective cooperation with the Human Rights Council’s Special Procedures, including by issuing a standing invitation to all its mandates and enabling a country visit by the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of freedom of expression as a priority.

d. Ensure immediate action to begin the implementation of recommendations concerning the freedoms of expression and religion that were accepted during Indonesia’s second cycle of the Universal Periodic Review, notably those made by New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland.

e. Accept without delay and ensure the swift implementation of the recommendation made by Denmark during the UPR, concerning the need to amend or revoke laws and decrees that limit the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the 1965 Blasphemy Law, the 1969 and 2006 ministerial decrees on building houses of worship and religious harmony and the 2008 Joint Ministerial Decree on Ahmadiyah, to bring these laws into line with international human rights standards.

religion is used as a political tool to cover up the government's weaknesses

2012-06-01T20:08:00.002+07:00

Some Indonesians opposed Lady Gaga's scheduled performance, accusing her of being a 'devil worshipper' [EPA] "Little monsters lost to big monsters", wrote an Indonesian television anchor on his Twitter account shortly after Lady Gaga cancelled her biggest concert in Asia, a sold-out event scheduled to take place in Jakarta on June 3.

The pop star's fans, which she affectionately calls her "little monsters", now have to accept that the woman they saw on Indonesian television, or discovered in DVD shops, cannot visit their country because of safety concerns.

Although a small group of Islamic hardliners rejoiced over the news of Gaga's concert cancellation, many Indonesians started to wonder who really has gone gaga here. gguIn fact, this incident does not have much to do with the American singer. Instead, it illustrates a far deeper conflict that is dividing Indonesia.

The Lady Gaga saga started a few weeks ago, after some Indonesians opposed her visit, citing her exposed body parts and "devilish" lyrics.

The pop star soon became the centre of a debate between those who see her as a symbol of freedom, and those who see her as a symbol of evil. The fact that the Islamic Defenders Front (IDF) was successful in repelling her from Indonesia shows that threats of violence can pay off.

"The fact that police can't guarantee security of the concert shows that our state is weak towards groups that promote intolerance, " said Hendardi, head of the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace. "It's up to the authority of the state to guarantee freedom of expression and security as outlined in our constitution. "

Eroding freedom

In recent years, Indonesia has seen a number of attacks by those who oppose the country's newly regained freedoms. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression only re-emerged in 1998, after longtime dictator Suharto was forced to step down. Many Indonesians, mostly young people, fought hard for these freedoms.

"In our so-called democratic era, religion is used as a political tool to cover up the government's weaknesses like corruption." Many fear those freedoms are now starting to erode.

The downside to the democratic reforms is that they allowed groups that use violence in the name of religion to gain a louder voice in the public space. Some argue that this emerging voice has to do with a weakening government.

Indeed, Lady Gaga was initially refused a permit to perform in the country because the police bowed to pressure. Others describe this refusal as evidence of extortion, a democratic system strained by intimidation and fear. In addition to the police extortion, the majority of the more than 200 million Muslims in Indonesia chose to keep silent on the whole affair, fearing for their safety.

Musdah Mulia, from the Indonesian Conference on Religion and Peace, said she has lost faith in her country. "This shows how our reforms after 14 years have failed. During the Suharto era, the military ruled. Now, in our so-called democratic era, religion is used as a political tool to cover up the government's weaknesses like corruption," Mulis said.

Exact numbers are unknown, but it is estimated that the IDF, along with with other similar groups, only make up around one-tenth of the Indonesian population. Though a minority, they managed to gain a huge influence on the nation because of their violent actions and threats.

Local authorities stopped issuing permits for churches after the groups loudly and violently opposed them. Christian congregations are forced to hold their services on public roads because they are not allowed to build a church.

Terror tactics

Members of the Islamic sect Ahmadiyah, an Islamic reformist movement, have faced serious restrictions since the IDF launched a campaign against them. In February 2011, three members of the sect were publicly butchered to death in the town of Cikeusik.

The IDF has managed to bring a hardline conservative element to a country that has historically been known for its plurality. Interestingly, there are reports that the IDF often refrains from terrorising groups when they pay them a sum of money. This is a public secret: the IDF and other similar groups are founded by former police and army generals to be used as thugs for hire.

An earlier Al Jazeera investigation found that the groups still had ties with retired generals who were using them to put political pressure on the government. Now that the 2014 election season has started, it is not surprising that the IDF is loud and active again.

Patience, however, seems to be running out.

The silent majority is less quiet. Leaders of the IDF were prevented from entering a town in Kalimantan after traditional Dayaks, the indigenous population of Borneo, prevented the group from landing their aircraft.

A movement on Twitter has been calling on the government to ban the IDF. Recently, a member of the IDF was murdered by someone who disagreed with its extremist positions. As the population increasingly takes matters into its own hands, the government can no longer hide behind the argument of democracy.

The Lady Gaga saga has ended with the pop star herself writing on Twitter: "There is nothing holy about hatred." Many Indonesians believe it is this "hatred" that the government should be most worried about.

Indonesia's duty to support the development of East Timor and its people

2012-05-22T05:27:00.002+07:00

The Nobel laureate Jose Ramos-Horta declared that ''freedom is justice'' as he stepped down as East Timor's president during an emotional ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of the country's independence.

Dr Ramos-Horta told more than 100,000 Timorese who packed a beachside area on Dili's outskirts early yesterday that their greatest achievement was fighting for and achieving their freedom after hundreds of years of foreign occupation and war during which a quarter of the population were killed or died from starvation or disease.

Among dozens of foreign dignitaries who witnessed the ceremony was Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Indonesian President, who earlier stood alongside East Timor's Prime Minister, Xanana Gusmao, the former guerilla fighter who spent years in Indonesian jails, and spoke about Indonesia's enhanced co-operation and growing people-to-people ties with East Timor.

Dr Yudhoyono said it was Indonesia's duty to support the development of East Timor and its people. ''It is our intention to bury the past in a spirit of co-operation between our two countries,'' he said.

Dr Ramos-Horta, who lost elections earlier this year, handed over the presidency to Taur Matan Ruak, a former guerilla fighter who had commanded East Timor's armed forces.

As Mr Ruak promised to improve the lives of Timorese, who are among the world's poorest, fireworks lit the sky and Timorese cheered their new leader. He called for a change in the economic system upon which the country is based, including ''reducing our dependency from abroad on oil and gas''.

Mr Ruak said the economy should be diversified to reduce external dependency by strengthening the national private sector and by using national resources ''in a rational and sustainable way''.

The role of president in East Timor is largely ceremonial but Mr Ruak's comments were seen as a spur to Mr Gusmao to boost funding to help almost 80 per cent of the population in rural areas who are still living in poverty 10 years after East Timor gained its independence.

Mr Gusmao's four-party coalition faces elections in July.

Mr Ruak said it is urgent ''to pay greater attention to those areas of our country where the presence of the state is not felt and where social, physical and economic development is lagging''.

Known as ''two sharp eyes'' when he led a guerilla movement fighting Indonesia's 24-year occupation, Mr Ruak has promised to introduce national service and has spoken about strengthening ties with Australia. The Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, was one of the first foreign dignitaries to congratulate Mr Ruak after he formally took over.

Mr Yudhoyono's visit to East Timor for the ceremony followed several years of warming relations between the countries. The Timorese voted overwhelmingly for independence from Indonesia at a UN-sponsored referendum in 1999.

During his four-year presidency, Dr Ramos-Horta strongly resisted calls for the setting up of an international tribunal to prosecute Indonesians responsible for 1999 violence that left 1500 people dead and destroyed most of the country.

Perhutani still has full responsibility over the forests

2012-05-16T13:17:00.003+07:00

The world’s largest producer of teak, an Indonesian state-owned company on the island of Java, has again been awarded sustainable forest management certification. But the company has a long and sometimes contentious relationship with forest communities in the area, and the forest rights of indigenous communities remain a potential cause of conflict.

“Land rights have long been a source of violence on Java,” Rhett Butler, a leading environmentalist and creator of a leading environmental news website told IRIN. Perhutani (Indonesian state forestry company) exploits 2.4 million hectares of forests in Java - 7 percent of the island area - with earnings of around US$400 million in 2011.

Although Perhutani agreed in 2011 to the voluntary process that promotes eco-friendly management in order to obtain certification, it controls a huge area of forest once used by indigenous communities, many of whom still depend on the forests for their livelihoods.

The company needs FSC certification to access high-value wood markets in the US and Europe, said Muhammad Firman, director of the Forest Utilization Department under Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry.

SFM balances the present use of forests with their preservation for future generations. Certification started in the 1980s and is granted to forest companies by around 60 independent organizations under two main umbrella groups - Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), the world's largest forest certification system, and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) - with 20 to 30 percent of North American and European forests having certification, and Asia lagging far behind with only 2 to 4 percent.

However, many activists believe SFM certification is geared less towards local communities than towards the environment and facilitating trade between forest companies and Western wood buyers

“When indigenous people have been denied the right to use forests in the traditional way, no ‘inclusion’ programme can fully match their loss. It is not a question of ‘exclusion’ or ‘inclusion’,” said Deddy Raith, from the Jakarta-based NGO, WALHI-Friends of the Earth Indonesia.

“Today, Perhutani still has full responsibility over the forests,” said Ambrosius Ruwindrijarto, president of the local NGO, Telapak. “What we want is to mainstream community logging as the new trees-management regime in Indonesia.”

Martua Sirait, a policy analyst in Aceh Province for the Nairobi-based World Agroforestry Centre, maintains that the management of forests has ignored the customary land rights of some 40 to 60 million people since the 1960s.

Large-scale illegal loggers were often active in the forests, and local inhabitants were exposed to danger by sometimes becoming involved, or being caught in the crossfire. Between 1998 and 2008 Perhutani’s armed patrols were accused of killing 32 people and injuring 69 in the fight against illegal timber operators, The Forest Trust (TFT), a Geneva-based international charity, reported.

Perhutani lost its SFM certification in 2002 and required TFT’s assistance to define a course of action to regain it, said Scott Poynton, TFT’s executive director.

The program, ‘Drop the Guns’, began in 2003, with Perhutani providing a share of timber sales and non-timber forest products to forest communities. In exchange, villagers took on a new role as guardians of the forests. But both parties only laid down all their weapons in 2009, which explained why the deadly fights continued until 2008, Poynton said.

“Peace remains fragile because the underlying cause of unequal forest rights is unresolved. Perhutani can better sell its products, but villagers have received too little,” said Hasbi Berliani, a programme manager at the national good governance NGO, Kemitraan, quoting an ongoing evaluation by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, which shows that poverty among indigenous households has yet to be alleviated.

“Villagers have been given $19 million between 2005 and 2010,” said Bambang Sukmananto, chief executive officer of Perhutani, noting that the 2011 SFM certification was recognition of the company’s efforts.

Providing greater forest rights to indigenous people is a growing trend across Asia, aimed not only at safeguarding the livelihoods of villagers but also at improving environmental protection.

Why is Umar Patek lying?

2012-05-15T11:30:00.002+07:00

As Hisyam Alizein, alias Umar Patek and a cadre of the Southeast Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiah (JI), rose to speak during his trial in the West Jakarta district court on March 7, few would have expected the 45-year old hardcore terrorist to apologize to the victims of the 2002 Bali bombings that claimed the lives of 202 people.

The JI had indeed surprised many by its rise and ability to organize repeated high profile symbolic attacks in the early 2000s. Patek, being one of last remnants of the outfit offered asurprise yet again - this time confirming the rapid decline of the outfit since the Indonesian authorities executed the Bali bombers in 2008 - both in terms of its existence and ideology. Nothing else could have been a more convincing statement on the decline of Islamist terror in the archipelagic nation, with larger implications on the entire Southeast Asia.

"I ask for forgiveness from all the victims and their families. Those who lost their lives and those who experienced material losses, Indonesians as well as foreign nationals", Patel told in his statement. He downplayed his involvement in the incident, narrating how his role in the attack was minor. "I was very sad and regret the (Bali) incident happened, because I was against it from the start. I never agreed with their methods. I totally had no idea about the target of the bombing," he added.

His statement indeed contradicts all that is known about him and executed JI senior leaders like Imam Samudra, Mukhlas and Amrozi who took active part in the bombings. His emotions now betray the conviction of the leaders in the justness of their perpetrated act - a necessary ingredient in all acts of terrorism.

For the judges and the world outside the court, believing Patek would be difficult. Knowledge about his role in the bombings is derived from extensive interrogation of the JI cadres, including those who were given death sentences. Unlike Patek, many of them had spoken openly and candidly about the way they went about carrying out the attack. They described in detail the role played by each of the actors, including Umar Patek.

It is beyond doubt that each one of them was perfectly aware of their own contribution to the bombings. JI worked as a close knit organization and it is impossible to believe that the senior leaders including Patek were not in know about the things they were doing. Moreover, Patek's role as a link between JI and al-Qaeda until his arrest in 2011 in Abottabad, when al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was in hiding in the Pakistani city, was in perfect order of a loyal and committed cadre of the outfit rather than one who resented being a part of an operation that killed so many people.

So why is Umar Patek lying? One, Umar Patek realizes that the acceptance of his known levels of involvement would either mean a death sentence for him, just like the other JI cadres involved, or even deportation to a country like the United States, which has a US$ 1 million bounty on him, or Australia, which lost 88 of its citizens in the 2002 bombings. Patek wants to avoid both. Secondly, he probably realizes that there is no point going down as a martyr for a terrorist organization that has lost much of its sheen over the years. JI is almost dead in Indonesia and has been replaced by the Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT). The chief of Indonesia's National Counter-Terrorism Agency described the JAT as the "new camouflage of JI".

More significantly, Umar Patek's remorse could provide leeway to the Indonesian authorities, who were not keen on his deportation from Pakistan to begin with. The 2002 bombing is almost a decade old and putting Patek in front of a firing squad may not be easy for the authorities. While the other bombers were executed in 2008 without much public angst, death to Patek may stoke anti-American feelings in Indonesia, create a backlash, and also act as a force multiplier for the fortunes of the JI or any other similar organization.

Umar Patek's remorse may not sound the death knell for Islamist terrorism in Indonesia, which has manifested itself in recent times into newer forms. Last year suicide attacks were carried out inside a mosque (April 15) and outside a church (September 25), terrorists planned to carry out attacks on Singaporeans leaving the nation's high commission building in Jakarta, and terrorists have also been involved in several failed missions to loot banks with an intention of financing their activities. Containment would require sustained efforts both internally as well as at the regional level. However, it is without doubt that Patek's remorse and apology will be a restraining factor for individuals inclined to use terror to articulate dissent.

Water problem in Jakarta

2012-04-27T21:10:00.000+07:00

Once again, itâ€™s that time of year when areas of Jakarta find themselves hip-deep in water, the victims not so much of the seasonal downpours but of poor sanitation, lagging infrastructure and substandard drainage.

It is estimated that the health of as many as 5 million of Jakarta official 10.1 million residents are being threatened by river water that is polluted by household and industrial waste. As many as 50,000 people die annually in Indonesia, attributed to poor sanitation and hygiene, according to a March, 2008 study by the World Bank, which estimates that as much as 6 million tonnes of human waste are released into Indonesia inland water bodies without treatment.

Unfortunately, Jakarta is far from alone. As cities have grown to unmanageable size in third-world countries, the problem is being compounded by climate change, which climatologists believe has increased the number of adverse weather events. Another World Bank study published in March and titled Cities and Flooding pointed out that over the past 18 months alone, destructive floods have hit Pakistan, Australia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Brazil, Bangkok, the Mississippi River in the United States and other areas. In 2010 alone, according to the report, 178 million people were affected by floods.

As Jakarta has grown, it has become a textbook example of what happens when urbanization meets flood risk. The city population has continued to rise inexorably as millions of its 237 million people seek economic advancement by moving to the city. In that, it is at one with the rest of the world. In 2008, for the first time in human history, half of the worl population lived in urban areas, with two-thirds of this in low-income and middle-income nationsThe worldâ€™s urban population is estimated to rise to 60 percent in 2030 and 70 percent in 2050 to a total of 6.2 billion, or double the projected rural population for that time, according to the World Bank study.

Jakarta catches floods as badly as anywhere, unless itâ€™s Manila, where typhoons in the past two years have dumped massive amounts of water on low-lying areas and paralyzed the cityâ€™s administrative services, so that flood damage went unremedied for weeks, or Bangkok, where residents regularly have to wade home.

Like most other coastal cities, Jakarta was built on a flood plain because when the city was founded, water was the main method of transport. The city is criss-crossed by 13 rivers, which are silting up without dredging, which began in 2011 on three of the rivers. Some 40 percent of the city now lies below sea level, and continues to sink as subsidence continues as groundwater is sucked out for urban use. Concrete has replaced green space, so that the ability of rainwater to penetrate into the soil is lost.

But dredging the rivers is only part of the problem. In a country best by vast numbers of provincial administrations and interlocking jurisdictions not only in Jakarta but throughout the country, mitigation has to start near the riversâ€™ headwaters, not in the low-lying areas where the floodwaters are more difficult to control.

Hendri Bastaman, the Deputy Minister of the Indonesian Environment Ministry, told IRIN, the reporting service of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, that pollution in West Javaâ€™s rivers is worsening, particularly in the Ciliwung and Citaruma areas.

â€œMuch of the waste is dumped into rivers from households,â€� said Bastaman. â€œPeople are using these rivers as personal toilets. Weâ€™ve also found mercury in river water, which we suspect is coming from companies or those running small-scale mining activities close to the rivers.â€�

Muhammad Rez Sahib, advocacy coordinator of KRuHA, a Jakarta-based coalition of more than 30 Indonesian NGOs focusing on safe water access, also told IRIN that none of the capitalâ€™s rivers could be viewed as safe for human use.

â€œEven the water suppliers in Jakarta donâ€™t use the water here because it is so polluted,â€� he was quoted as saying. â€œInstead, they use water from the Citarum River, which is also heavily polluted. Even after this water is treated itâ€™s still unsafe to drink.â€� The Citarum flows north from Bandung, the capital of West Java, for approximately 300km to the Java Sea.

Safe water alternatives for poor communities are â€œfew and far betweenâ€� Sahib said. â€œMany will turn to use ground water, but due to a poor sewage system and open defecation, 90 percent of ground water in Jakarta is contaminated by E.coli bacteria. Many infant deaths are caused by this bacteria - E.coli is the main threat to human life from these rivers.â€�

Edward Carwardine, spokesperson for the UN Childrenâ€™s Fund (UNICEF) in Indonesia, told IRIN that in West Java the use of â€œimproved waterâ€� - obtained from taps, boreholes, covered wells and springs - falls below the national average, with only half of the population (approximately 20 million) able to access it.

â€œWhen families donâ€™t have access to improved water sources, disease is much more likely,â€� said Carwardine. â€œNearly a quarter of all deaths amongst children under five in Indonesia are caused by diarrhoeal disease.â€�

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that nationwide more than 20,000 children in this age group die every year from diarrhoea. Dengue fever and malaria, both spread by mosquitoes that thrive in stagnant water, account for an additional 3 percent of overall child deaths, according to Carwardine, who said more focus is needed to end the widespread practice of defecating in the open.

The Environment Ministryâ€™s Bastaman said the government is using educational campaigns to raise awareness of the dangers of unsafe water and to end defecation in rivers.

â€œFor the Ciliwung we have a 10-year plan to restore the riverâ€™s health,â€� said Bastaman. â€œBut for the Citarum, itâ€™s impossible to get it back to the way it was prior to being polluted. The pollution is just too much.â€�

This disaster is a reminder of God

2012-04-15T07:58:00.000+07:00

"Things happen for a reason" ... Rizni Aulia believes this week's earthquake, like the one in 2004, was a warning from Allah.

"Things happen for a reason" ... Rizni Aulia believes this week's earthquake, like the one in 2004, was a warning from Allah. Photo: Michael Bachelard

WHEN pentecostal pastor Danny Nalliah thundered that the 2009 Victorian bushfires were caused by God's wrath at that state's decision to decriminalise abortion, he was an outlier even among radical Christians.

But in Aceh, Indonesia's most devout province (and its most disaster prone), it's not just common but mainstream to believe that Wednesday's terrifying earthquake, like the tsunami before it, was a messages from Allah that people were not taking their religion seriously enough.

Like many, Acehnese man Rizni Aulia's suffering from the 2004 tsunami was profound. Of his family, only he and his wife survived the wave. Together they watched from the second storey of their house as their three-year-old daughter and many other family members drowned outside, trapped in the family car.
Advertisement: Story continues below

The horror of that day came alive again on Wednesday as an earthquake shook the region, prompting fears of another deadly wave .

Mr Rizni, like thousands of other Acehnese, took refuge at the mosque. ''Some people went to the mosque because it is quite high, 16 metres,'' Mr Rizni, 32, said yesterday. ''But it's true that during the afternoon and the evening prayers, they all prayed, through all the aftershocks, they stayed there, some praying, some reading the Koran, all the mothers looking after the children.''

In Islam, he believes, natural disasters are ''little doomsdays''.

''It's about warnings from God to his people about the mistakes they have committed, the wrongdoing they have committed,'' he said.

Imam Nurcholis Muhammad Yunus, of the Al Kawa Kib village mosque, on the outskirts of Banda Aceh, is by no means a radical preacher.

He is not surprised that people flocked to places of worship to find safety.

''Since we were kids our parents taught us that the biggest protector is Allah and the mosque is Allah's house on earth,'' he said.

But, as well as faith, he said, good sense intervened. Nobody came to his mosque because it is built on a low, flat piece of land that is only protected from the sea by high walls. ''We don't blindly believe things. We also use logic,'' he says.

He believes the 2004 tsunami and Wednesday's earthquake were God's comment on the lifestyles of the people of Aceh.

''We have the rooms of some very respected clerics here, sacred people … but despite that, people here were drunk and had drugs and women, and so that is why … God was angry,'' Mr Nurcholis said.

''Now with the earthquake, the same thing has happened again, because only a few people implemented Islamic sharia.''

Of all places to attract God's wrath, Aceh is perhaps the least likely. It's Indonesia's most devout province, known as the verandah of Mecca, and the only place in this moderate Muslim country to practice sharia. Offences such as drinking, gambling and unmarried people being close to one another are punished by caning.

But Mr Rizni says most of his friends and most of the people in Aceh agree with the Imam.

They are not angry with God for the tsunami or the earthquake. Rather, they try to accept its lessons.

''I am becoming more devout compared with the way I was before the tsunami of 2004, because I believe things happen for a reason,'' Mr Rizni says.

''I think God wants us to be stronger.''

stupid subsidies and the poor make the Indonesia government confuse

2012-03-04T11:29:00.000+07:00

IT HAS become something of a ritual in Indonesia: the panicky stockpiling of cheap petrol ahead of a mooted price rise. Fuel prices here are not dictated by the vagaries of the world price - they are dictated by the government, which subsidises them heavily to keep them affordable.

But the cost to the national budget of subsidies on both oil and coal is huge. About 15 per cent of the government's entire budget - or $US20 billion ($A18.5 billion) - is spent just to maintain low prices. It's more than the combined health and education budgets, says Australian National University economist Hal Hill, and when the world oil price increases, the cost to the national budget also jumps.

So, last week, Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Jero Wacik announced a plan to increase prices in April by up to 33 per cent. Yesterday, as a crowd protested outside, he met legislators of the House of Representatives, whom he must convince to vote for it.

In Jakarta, one of the most polluted and traffic-snarled cities in the world, drivers pay just A46¢ per litre for petrol. This policy would increase it to about A62¢. It's the third proposed price rise in six months. In December, at budget time, and again in January the government planned an increase but decided to exempt motorbikes, to protect poorer commuters.

However, strong public pressure forced it to pull back even from that policy. Politicians are wary of public anger on this issue. A big fuel price rise in 1998 was one of the triggers that saw the dictator Suharto overthrown. The latest iteration of the policy has seen the stockmarket plunge amid fears it will drive Indonesia's inflation rate above 5.5 per cent this year.

In a poor country, inflation means economic pressure for tens of millions as price rises inevitably flow through to the cost of rice. The Minister for State-owned Enterprises, Dahlan Iskan, conceded that point, saying: ''We haven't found [a solution] yet, but we will.'' But it's a diabolical problem. The subsidy primarily benefits rich car drivers and owners of airconditioners and keeping it high means Indonesia has less for the health, education and infrastructure that south-east Asia's largest economy is so short of. ''If Indonesia wants to improve its social indicators, it needs to get rid of fuel subsidies,'' said Professor Hill.

The Indonesian Consumers Protection Foundation agrees. Its head, Sudaryatmo, said subsidies would ''create a burden on the … budget, then very slow economic growth, before poverty eventually arrives''. He said the government should have ''a long-term policy to bring fuel subsidies to zero'', adding: ''It's always been an ad hoc policy. If it was long-term policy, the people could anticipate it.'' Residents, meanwhile, stock up on cheap fuel while they can.

FPI is SUCK

2012-02-28T05:13:00.000+07:00

Since its founding in 1998, hardline vigilante group the Islamic Defenders Front (known by its Indonesian acronym FPI) has perpetuated violence in the name of Islamic morality. Now, Indonesians are calling for an end to the intimidation and intolerance, signaling growing rejection of the group's and its supporters' radical religious ideology.

Palangka Raya, the capital of Central Kalimantan province, was in the national headlines two weeks ago when its residents stopped FPI leaders from landing at the town's airport. Four FPI leaders had flown there to officiate the opening of a new provincial FPI branch but in an act of defiance a crowd of about 800 people staged a protest.

A few hundred, mainly indigenous Dayak people, forced their way onto the airport's apron and runway to confront the FPI officials. Protesters dispersed only when airport officials convinced them that the FPI members would remain on board the plane and would travel on to another destination.

Local people said they feared FPI's presence could destabilize the province, where the Muslim majority shares religious space with Christians, Hindus and native animists, said Lucas Tinke, a Dayak tribal spokesman involved in the protest.

In Jakarta, the national capital, hundreds of Indonesians, including civil activists, students and professionals, staged their own anti-FPI protests. The demonstration was peaceful until three men, later identified as FPI members, grabbed a banner and beat one of the demonstrators. The case is now under police investigation.

The anti-FPI movement spread to Surabaya, another major metropolitan area where people referring to themselves as "Surabaya Residents Against Violence" held a similar rally on February 17. Although the group did not specifically refer to the FPI in its addresses promoting non-violence, yells of "Indonesia without FPI, Indonesia without violence" could be heard from the gathered mass, according to local press reports.

FBI is Bad Evil.

FPI was founded in 1998 by Saudi Arabia-educated Islamic leader Muhammad Rizieq Syihab in the wake of former strongman Suharto's downfall. Whereas radical Islamic groups were stifled under Suharto's 32-year authoritarian rule, FPI has exploited the country's new democratic space to push for the implementation of Islamic Shariah laws and challenge secular traditions. The group's members have often openly advocated the use of violence to push its hardline Islamic agenda.

From its stronghold in Central Java, FPI has quickly spread through a branch network to other parts of the archipelago. There are currently an estimated 5,000-6,000 committed FPI members around the country. FPI claims that its funding solely comes from its members, which include religious leaders and businessmen who share its radical ideology.

FPI has been held responsible for hundreds of violent incidents, including destructive attacks on entities considered in violation of Islamic values such as bars, brothels, massage parlors and gambling halls. Every year, FPI carries out raids on restaurants that operate during the Ramadan Muslim fasting season, forcing them shut while terrorizing their owners.

FPI has also directly targeted minority religious groups. For instance, FPI members have frequently interrupted prayer services in Christian churches and assaulted adherents of the Ahmadiyah, a minority Islamic group. There are also records of FPI attacking ethnic and sexual minority groups, including Indonesian Chinese-owned shops, or lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual groups. In the past two years, the FPI has been responsible for 34 serious breaches of laws across five different provinces, according to the police spokesman Saud Usman Nasution.

Notwithstanding those incidents, FPI exists more as a destabilizing influence than a serious security threat due to its lack of conventional weaponry and limited number of paramilitary members, according to a recent report by Jane's Defense. A recent International Crisis Group (ICG) report on hardline groups in Indonesia referred to FPI as an "urban thug organization" .

Despite FPI's regular and well-documented abuses, police seldom act against the group. ICG noted that the group has backing from the military and police generals, including former armed commander General Wiranto. FPI is seen by security officials as a useful "attack dog" for various purposes, ICG said.

US diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks claim that FPI receives funding from the police, including from Sutanto, former police head who now leads the Indonesian intelligence agency BIN. He reportedly stopped his funding activities after FPI attacked the US Embassy in Jakarta in February 2006 to protest the publication of cartoons in US media that depicted the Prophet Muhammad.

In a speech in Central Sulawesi in 2006, FPI leader Rizieq Shihab said the FPI and the police were "like husband and wife", both committed to upholding public order. "Whoever has money can hire FPI for political purposes, but no one outside FPI can control Habib Rizieq, who remains boss to himself," a US diplomatic cable said.

FPI has more recently denied the US cables' allegations and insists that it's self-funded with donations from its own members. "FPI never receives funds from anywhere else, neither the government, the military, the police, or businessmen. All funds come from our own pockets," FPI Jakarta head Salim Alatas recently said.

FPI is Very Suck.

Last week's organized opposition to FPI represented the first major public defiance against the radical group. No individual or group had previously openly challenged FPI, due mainly to fear of violent reprisal and the risk of crossing unknown powerful members of government and the security forces.

The only high-profile anti-FPI case occurred last year when a group of housewives in Medan, North Sumatra, vandalized the car of Darma Bakti Ginting, FPI's provincial head. Ginting and his FPI supporters had earlier torn down a local resident's house that had allegedly been built on his land. Some analysts believe that grass roots resistance served as motivation for the recent protests.

"Resentment against violence that is often employed by the FPI is already widespread in society," claims Noor Huda Ismail, a terrorism expert at the Institute of International Peace Building, a local organization that works to rehabilitate former Islamic radicals. "But this time, the silent majority are capable of reaching to the megaphone and extend their anti-violence, anti-FPI message to the wider public," he said.

Before last week's rallies, Indonesian authorities had handled the FPI mainly with kid gloves. Last year, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called for mass organizations to adhere to the law or risk disbandment but refused to mention names.

"Organizations in Indonesia are allowed to operate on the basis of freedom of speech and freedom of action," he said. "[But] any organization that violates the laws must face due legal process, with no exceptions," he said. In response to that vague statement, FPI threatened to overthrow Yudhoyono's government if he "dares to disband mass organizations, including the FPI".

"FPI will be like Ben Ali [Tunisian leader who led a bloodless coup d'etat in 1987] and Indonesia will become Egypt. We will activate the mass to overthrow [the president] for diverting issues," FPI spokesman Munarman said at the time.

Belated response

There are signs the government's position may be hardening. After last week's anti-FPI rallies, home affairs minister Gamawan Fauzi said he would not hesitate to freeze mass organizations that disturbed public order. "If they keep on breaking the law we will certainly freeze them in accordance with the 1985 Law on Mass Organizations, " he said.

That law stipulates that a mass organization can be suspended if it has received at least two warning letters from the ministry. FPI was most recently warned after it vandalized the home ministry's offices in Jakarta last month during a protest against a decision to revise several regional bylaws restricting the sale and distribution of alcohol.

During a visit to the Religious Affairs Ministry last week, Shihab said that FPI would fight for justice and corruption eradication only through peaceful means. "The [attack on] Home Ministry and various other incidents are no longer the group's hallmark. FPI has left that paradigm," he was quoted as saying by the Antara news agency.

Momentum is also building against the group among more moderate religious leaders. A recent gathering of Islamic scholars in Karawang, West Java province, urged the government to disband the FPI, saying the group's violent tendencies are not reflective of how Muslims should behave. Mass Muslim organizations, such as the Nadlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, both of which have tens of millions of members, have consistently distanced themselves from FPI.

It is not clear, however, that disbandment would uproot the radical Islamic sentiment FPI has tapped and mobilized, analysts say. "Radical groups such as the FPI have very strong ideologies - disbanding one will only bring out splinter groups," said Ismail. "Compared to NGOs or civil activists that have higher turnover or whose activities depend on availability of funding, the former would have stronger stamina to survive," Ismail said.

"FPI can easily find sympathizers because it is strongly against things that are considered sinful by many Indonesians such as prostitution or gambling," he said. "FPI's consistent message calling for a clean government that is free of corruption is especially attractive when the people think they can't trust the existing government."

APP must be responsible for deforestation in Sumatra

2012-02-25T15:24:00.000+07:00

The survival of Sumatra's tigers, elephants, orangutans, rhinos, as well as indigenous communities, is threatened by the "world's fastest deforestation rate", caused by the pulp and paper industry, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

WWF in a recent report named Indonesian-based Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) as "responsible for more forest destruction in Sumatra than any other single company". APP and competitor Asia Pacific Resources International Ltd (APRIL) have consumed the majority of the wood harvested from commercial forest clearances and agriculture conversion.

"In central Sumatra, the impact of APP's operations on wildlife has been devastating. The company's forest clearing in Riau Province has been driving Sumatran elephants and tigers toward local extinction," the report said.

The companies have also begun clearing peat swamp forests. According to Indonesian Ministry of Forestry estimates, deforestation associated with peat decomposition and burning totals 1.2 gigatonnes of carbon emissions per year, making Indonesia the world's third-largest greenhouse gas emitter.

"Products made with APP fiber linked to forest destruction are flooding the US market and landing in grocery stores, other retail chains, restaurants, hotels, schools and municipalities in the form of toilet tissue, paper towels, copier paper, stationery, paper bags and paper-based packaging," WWF reported.

Two of APP's products identified in the US are Paseo and Livi tissues. APP products are distributed and marketed in North America by a variety of subsidiaries and affiliates including Solaris Paper, Mercury Paper and Papermax.

Despite concerns raised by environmental groups, APP claims to be "committed to being socially, environmentally and economically sustainable throughout its operations". When Indonesia's Eyes on the Forest released a report on APP clearing Sumatra's Senepis Tiger Sanctuary, the company fired back saying the allegations were "clearly false".

Philip Rundle, chief executive of Oasis Brands, which market Paseo and Livi, wrote in a letter that their products are "100 percent sustainable. [made from] plantation-grown, rapidly renewable fiber supplied by APP."

"It's plainly ridiculous, profoundly untrue to claim that anything APP produces is environmentally sustainable. To me, it borders on false labeling," Andrea Johnson, director of forest campaigns for the Environmental Investigation Agency, told IPS. "There are maps, evidence. It's incontrovertible that some of the practices APP engages in are not sustainable. "

APP is engaging in a "very strong campaign" to "greenwash" their activities and to assert they are actually doing everything legally, Johnson said. APP's declarations include asserting that only "degraded" land is being cleared, that only a little of Indonesian land is allocated for mills, and emphasizing APP's donations to environmental foundations.

What APP calls "degraded land" is what WWF calls "tiger habitat", WWF forest program manager Linda Kramme told IPS. She believes many of the sustainability statements made by APP and Oasis are misleading. Suggesting APP is only impacting a small amount of Indonesia is like saying the recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill only impacted a small amount of the US, she said.

"[WWF] believes they are mischaracterizing their practices happening on the ground. Many U.S. customers and companies don't have the ability to go to Indonesia and see what's happening, so it can be easy for them to read materials that APP and companies that market their products like Oasis say - that they have different certification, that they are doing things with conservation. But our teams for two decades have seen impacts on ground and we see and obligation to raise the questions and to raise the facts," she said.

WWF started engaging with APP in 2001 to introduce the company to long-term sustainability practices. However, WWF cut off ties with APP after the company broke its promises to stop using natural forest fiber despite signing a letter of intent.

Legally, bills such as the Lacey Act in the US in principle should create various incentives not to buy illegally logged products, Johnson said. However, greenwashing campaigns and complicated supply chains make prosecution harder.

"APP has been increasingly using subsidiary companies and resorting to opening mills under other names in countries like the US and Canada," Johnson said. "It's not that difficult to start another company and put another name on it and use the same fiber. You see that tactic increasingly being used by companies. I think that structuring on part of the company is very intentional in order to make traceability almost impossible, which obviously makes it difficult to enforce the law."

In 2010, APP was affected by the US Commerce Department imposing anti-dumping duty orders for certain coated paper imported from Indonesia. "Dumping" is a predatory pricing practice in international trade that allows companies to sell their imported products at very low prices, driving out the competition.

"There is an environmental component to the fact that [APP products are] less expensive. One of the reasons they can afford lower costs is because they are getting fiber illegally [by illegal logging, for example]," Johnson said. "They are not engaging in the kind of business practices which cost a little bit more if you want to do things legally and that result in lower prices."

The US can prosecute companies like APP only if the government of the producer country has criminal penalties for the same activity. Therefore, it's the responsibility of the Indonesian government to effectively implement conservation laws, activists say.

Johnson says a strong case can be made that Indonesia has effectively subsidized the pulp and paper industry by not enforcing its own law

The complicated policies to overcome congestion in Jakarta

2012-02-06T09:11:00.000+07:00

A young woman, carrying her infant son in a sling around her neck, stands in the shadows of a decaying concrete pylon, her hand extended in the hope that a passing motorist will pick her up. Maya Sari, 23, and one-year-old Muhammad are ''jockeys''. Jakarta motorists pay to carry them in peak hour traffic, because to legally travel on the city's best roads, cars need three occupants. Babies count, and they cost less to hire than an adult, so on feeder roads all over the city, women and their young children stand touting for business. One ride with them costs the driver about 20,000 rupiah, or $2.15.

As Jakarta's population grows in wealth, 565 more cars and 3006 more motorbikes clog its roads every day. According to one official report, this city with a daytime population of 11 million is just nine years away from being gridlocked. When it rains and the roads flood, many areas are there already. It's the most immediately obvious of Indonesia's profound infrastructure problems that economist Chatib Basri says are cramping the growth rate of south-east Asia's largest economy. It should be growing at 9 per cent, like its rivals China and India. Instead it's 6.5 per cent.

There is no quick fix. Jakarta's authorities introduced the ''three-in-one' ' rule to reduce the number of cars, but it has only succeeded in creating entrepreneurs like Maya.

She brings Muhammad on the train to Jakarta twice a day from her village of Parung Panjang to stand with dozens of others in both peak hours among the exhaust fumes and the noise, to ride in the vehicles of strangers. Her nine hour day on the roadside provides her family's only income and with five mouths to feed, they are glad to have it. ''With a child it's very difficult to find a job,'' she says. ''This is the only one I can do and keep my child with me.''

The huge concrete pylons are testament to a transport failure of a different sort. They were built to carry a monorail to augment the city's desperately inadequate public transport system. But it was abandoned without explanation in 2004. The steel reinforcing rods are rusting and all the pylons carry now is advertising.

There are signs of inadequate infrastructure countrywide. Trucks regularly park in line for hours, even days, at Merak Port on the western tip of Java, waiting to cross the Sunda Strait. Ferries provide the only transport between the two most populous islands, Java and Sumatra and bad weather often slows the service or even halts it entirely. A feasibility study for a 30 kilometre bridge between the islands was announced this week. But long-planned projects often fail to materialise here.

A Malaysian investor was last month forced to cancel plans to build a hydro-electricity plant in West Kalimantan because the surrounding roads were not up to the construction task. Social infrastructure, too, is lacking. The CIA World Fact Book puts Indonesia near the bottom of global rankings for access to hospital beds, with just 0.6 beds per 1000 population compared to 3.82 in Australia, and it spends 2.8 per cent of GDP on education, compared to Australia's 4.5 per cent.

Indonesia's economy should be in the ''sweet spot''Dr Basri, a consultant and government adviser says. But without huge investments in infrastructure, it will miss the opportunities that a young population and bullish investors offer. National and local governments appear to have heeded the message. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has made spending on infrastructure development a top priority, promising to spend $160billion by 2015, with almost half coming from private companies through partnerships. But corruption, red tape, problems with land acquisition and uncertain public finances often thwart projects before the foundations are even laid. ''The policy decisions are fine, it's the implementation that can be a problem,'' Dr Basri says.

The government last week cancelled a planned $1.3billion public-private partnership to upgrade the country's biggest port - the colonial-era Tanjung Priok port in Jakarta. Companies that had tendered for the work were left in limbo after authorities announced they could not afford the $389 million required for access roads and bridges. None of this surprises the 11 million Indonesians who live in and around the capital. Ratna Utami, 32, who works in the city and lives in middle class Depok, in West Java, must leave at 5.30am to catch a bus if she hopes to be at the office by nine. A few minutes late leaving home and it ''would be a blessing'' to make the office by 10am. Home time is 12 hours later, 10pm.

For commuters there are few alternatives to the private car or the sea of motorbikes. Designated bus lanes have limited success in speeding up a trip as motorists illegally drive in these lanes if they think they will get away with it.

The trains are so crowded that people resort to riding on the roof, prompting the state rail company to hang large concrete balls from overpasses to stop them. Even walking is hazardous. Pedestrians must first find a footpath - not so easy on Jakarta's streets - then it's a question of dodging huge, open drainage holes, uneven surfaces and the motorbike riders who routinely use them to beat the traffic. The brave souls from pedestrian lobby group Koalisi Pejalan Kaki are trying to reclaim the footpaths; they often lie down in front of the motorbikes to make their point. ''I've been called crazy and yelled at and argued with,'' activist Anthony Ladjar says, ''but the pedestrians have rights for safety.''

The government is also talking up its plan for a new above-and-below ground rail system, Jakarta MRT [mass rapid transport] that when completed would be 111 kilometres long and carry up to 960,000 commuters a day.

Jakarta's governor, Fauzi Bowo, known as ''Foke,'' told the Herald the idea for MRT had been around for 20 years, but ''it was hindered by budget limitations' ', particularly to the regional budget. But now it is a priority and construction is due to start in September. But Jakartans are sceptical. ''I've been living in Jakarta for over 30 years,'' says a Twitter-based pedestrian activist Glenn Marsilim, who posts as @JalanKaki. ''I try to be optimistic. But sometimes it's hard.''

2007, Indonesia stop sending maids to Saudi Arabia

2012-01-30T11:52:00.000+07:00

Indonesia is looking to stop sending its nationals to work as maids abroad by 2017, under a "roadmap" it is drawing up to reform and formalise its domestic worker sector. Under the Domestic Worker Roadmap 2017, it wants to ensure maids are treated like other workers when they work abroad - earning minimum wages, getting leave and working fixed hours, for example. The plan is part of a larger aim to raise the skills of the thousands of Indonesians going overseas to work, according to the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry.

If it is carried out, however, it could mean a massive shortage of maids for places like Singapore and Malaysia, both of which rely heavily on domestic workers from Indonesia. Indonesians account for almost half of Singapore's 200,000-plus maids, and 80 per cent of Malaysia's 350,000 maids.

"Under the roadmap, we target zero sending out of domestic maids," Manpower and Transmigration Minister Muhaimin Iskandar was quoted by news reports as saying yesterday. He acknowledged, however, that the task would be a challenging one, as most Indonesians seeking jobs abroad are low-skilled.

Some criticised the idea for being difficult to implement. The roadmap comes amid ongoing efforts by Jakarta to address maid abuse abroad.

In 2009, Indonesia banned maids from going to Malaysia following a spate of abuse cases. The ban was lifted last year after Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur hammered out an agreement on a slew of measures to better protect maids working in Malaysia. Jakarta was also reported to be reviewing which countries it will allow maids to work in.

About 650,000 Indonesians leave home every year to work as maids abroad, many of them from East Java and West Nusa Tenggara provinces. Under the roadmap being drawn up, Jakarta could require host countries to spell out job specifications for maids clearly.

"They should be placed in specific positions such as cook, housekeeper or caregiver," Mr Muhaimin was quoted by Bernama as saying. He added that these workers should also enjoy the usual rights that their formal counterparts get, such as predetermined working hours, leave, minimum wages and "social guarantees". But the minister also acknowledged that Jakarta would have to deal with several challenges when implementing the plan, including providing alternative jobs in Indonesia. Some 45 per cent of the country's 120 million-strong workforce have no more than primary school education, the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry noted.

Mr Muhaimin said the government was working to enhance the skills and competency levels of the country's workers in the industrial and creative economic sectors. Critics, however, said the roadmap was unworkable.

Activist Syaiful Anas at the Jakarta-based Migrant Care, a non-governmental group that looks out for migrant workers, said the government should improve the protection of maids instead of trying to stop them from going overseas to work. The plan, he charged, contradicts a recent statement by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono that Indonesia recognises maids as belonging to a proper profession.

"It's hard to believe Muhaimin made such statements.. . we all know there are still many who need to be maids," he told The Straits Times. Mr Rusjdi Basalamah, who owns and runs an agency that sends maids overseas, also doubted that the plan would work. "We now have a moratorium in place on the sending of maids to certain Middle Eastern countries, but many have still gone there illegally and the government could not do anything about it," he said.

Redenominate Rupiah and viability Indonesia economic

2012-01-24T09:47:00.000+07:00

Draft legislation to redenominate Indonesia's currency is expected to gain momentum this year as lawmakers and monetary authorities push to drop the last three zeros from the nominal value of the rupiah. While the paper change will be largely cosmetic, analysts are divided on whether a redenomination could spark inflation and sow confusion among the public.

The rupiah currently trades at 9,200 to the US dollar and is the second-lowest priced currency in the world, trailing only the Vietnamese dong. The rupiah collapsed amid the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis and despite economic and financial recovery still trades at a fraction of its pre-crisis value.

Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo said last month that the government was prepared to submit the draft law to the House of Representatives (DPR) for approval. The central bank, Bank Indonesia, has backed the move for various reasons, including the need to simplify accounting standards for transactions that now often exceed trillions of rupiah to the national pride that will be supposedly restored through a lower nominal currency value.

If the bill is passed, as is expected, Bank Indonesia has said it will need one to two years to introduce the concept to the public and explain how to adapt accounting and information systems. During the proposed transition period, prices of goods would be labelled with both the old and new rupiah rates. Old notes would later be recalled and replaced by new notes where one rupiah would be equivalent to 1,000 of the old bills, according to the proposed plan.

Certain financial analysts wonder if redenomination could be used to mask a devaluation of the currency to improve export competitiveness. If so, the policy motivation isn't abundantly apparent: Indonesian gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 6.5% last year, up from 6.1% in 2010. That represented the fastest growth clip seen since 1996, the year before the Asian financial crisis hit and bankrupted the national coffers. GDP growth is projected to hit 6.3% this year.

In December, Fitch Ratings was the first of the three major credit agencies to raise Indonesia's sovereign rating from junk status to BBB minus, based on the country's steady economic growth, low debt and strong macroeconomic position. The upgrade represented the first time Indonesia has achieved investment grade status since the economy collapsed during the 1997-98 financial crisis.

Moody's followed suit this week, raising Indonesia's rating from debt to investment grade. The credit rating agency said Indonesia's cyclical resilience to large external shocks pointed to sustainably high trend growth over the medium term.

"A more favorable assessment of Indonesia's economic strength is underpinned by gains in investment spending, improved prospects for infrastructure development following key policy reforms, and a well-managed financial system," Moody's said in a public statement.

Fundamental strengths

The rupiah was relatively stable against the US dollar during last year, a troubling economic and financial period around the world, with the local unit trading between 8,500-9,000 to the greenback.

That stability would seem to indicate that the proposed redenomination plan is not being driven by urgent economic problems, as has been the case in the past. Inflation was a manageable 3.79% in December, marking a 20-month low, although there are indications that exports are slowing amid economic turbulence in Europe and the United States and slowing growth in China.

Bank Indonesia deputy governor Budi Rochadi has acknowledged that a redenomination of the rupiah would be "disastrous" if the transition was attempted during a period of high inflation. He has said that three requirements must be met to redenominate successfully, namely a stable economic environment, low inflation and a government guarantee of price stability. He has said that all three conditions are currently and securely in place.

Mika Martumpal, a currency analyst at Commonwealth Bank based in Jakarta, believes that the redenomination plan carries few economic risks.

"It's not an overnight change. Bank Indonesia has planned to have a transition period that may run for years in which both currencies - existing rupiah and new rupiah - are accepted as legal tender. Consequently, the public will have time to accept the new currency," he said.

Martumpal notes that Turkey dropped five zeroes from the lira and had two currencies in circulation for four years before dropping the word "new" from the replacement currency in 2009. Turkey has often been cited as a success in using redenomination to fight inflation and simplify economic transactions that were previously denominated in terms of billions, trillions and even quadrillions, Martumpal notes.

The key to avoiding a sudden currency devaluation during redenomination is public education, according to Johannes Ginting, a market analyst at Monex Investindo Futures. "Preparing the public to accept the new rupiah will take time. During the transition period, prices of goods have to be clearly marked with two currencies to ensure that psychologically people will understand that the value of their money has not dropped," he said.

Traumatic past

Managing those perceptions, however, may be easier said than done. An older generation of Indonesians remembers having the value of their savings drastically reduced through currency redenomination schemes implemented in 1950, 1956 and 1966. The first, in 1950, saw then finance minister Syarifuddin Prawiranegara order the public to literally tear in half all of the notes they held denominated over five rupiah.

The left portion of a torn bill was valid as legal tender but worth only half the pre-torn bill's original amount. The right portion of the torn unit was no longer valid but could be exchanged for government bonds - valued far less than the money's original face value.

The policy aimed to reduce public purchasing power, counter hyperinflation and pay off then-spiraling national debt. While the policy's success in dampening inflation was temporary, the move managed to drastically reduce the quantity of money in circulation and replaced the bills issued by the colonial Dutch administration.

In 1959, Indonesia again sought to reduce the amount of money in circulation and contain hyperinflation. A presidential decree acted to drop one zero off all 500 and 1,000 rupiah notes, an unexpected move announced on the radio that effectively reduced the value of the currency by 90% overnight. Those ham-fisted interventions collapsed the value of the rupiah, which fell from 45 to the US dollar in 1955 to 35,000 by 1965.

An even more radical change took place in 1965 to curb inflation that then ran as high as 650% Then president and independence hero Sukarno, whose central bank over-printed bank notes to finance political prestige projects, ordered the public to exchange their old 1,000 rupiah notes for new one rupiah notes. The move drove prices even higher as Indonesians ditched cash for gold, goods and other assets.

Indonesia is now in better technocratic hands, but policymakers still feel obliged to play down that economic history. The proposed redenomination plan, Bank Indonesia officials have emphasized, is wholly different from the schemes of the past. Central bank governor Darmin Nasution has repeatedly said that the purchasing power of the rupiah will remain the same, despite dropping three zeroes from its nominal value.

Still some local analysts and business leaders suspect a hidden agenda and have referred to lingering "trauma" among older Indonesians when discussing the potential downsides of the redenomination plan.

"This has been done back in the president Sukarno era," said Sofyan Wanandi, general chairman of the Indonesian Business Association (Apindo), in a recent interview. "However it was not fruitful. Instead society endured trauma."

The island of New Guinea - the black island like black skin the people of New Guinea

2012-01-17T09:17:00.000+07:00

The year 2011 was a tumultuous one for the island of New Guinea, the world's second-largest and perhaps most politically divided island. Papua New Guinea (PNG), the independent country on the island's eastern half, suffered from a four-month political standoff that was at least temporarily resolved in late December.

On the island's western half, consisting of two Indonesian provinces, what started out as a strike over wages at the Grasberg mine spiraled into four months of protests which fueled a revival of the Papuan independence movement. While relative peace had been restored on both sides of the island by year's end, lasting stability will depend on a number of mutable factors in the year ahead.

The key figure in the PNG political crisis - and also the key figure in the country since its independence - is Sir Michael Somare. Somare headed the first "indigenous" government from 1972-1975 before PNG acquired official independence from Australia in 1975. He was then PNG's prime minister from 1975-1980, 1982-1985, and again from 2002 until June 2011. Somare's family announced his retirement from politics last June due to ill health and he left the country for Singapore for three months to recover from heart surgery.

Sam Abal became the acting prime minister while Somare was recuperating out of country, but was ousted on August 2 in favor of Peter O'Neill, the head of the opposition People's National Congress Party, when 73 pro-O'Neill members of the 109-member parliament declared the government legally vacant and elected O'Neill as prime minister. Parliament then passed retroactive legislation formally recognizing O'Neill as the premier.

After returning to PNG, Somare challenged the legality of what he termed a "bloodless coup" to the Supreme Court. The court then had to decide which of the two competing prime ministers - Somare or O'Neill - had the right to power and whether Somare's or O'Neill's governor general, police commissioner, and cabinet could rightly rule. In a hotly contested 3-2 decision, the court held that the election to install O'Neill as prime minister was unconstitutional.

On December 14, Governor General Michael Ogio swore Somare and his cabinet into power, but in response the O'Neill loyalist dominated parliament voted to suspend Ogio and chose Speaker of Parliament Jeffrey Nape as his replacement. Nape swore in O'Neill in as prime minister later in the day of December 14. O'Neill had extra police flown into the capital of Port Moresby to take control of government assets, including the Government Printing Office, Treasury, and Government House while Somare's faction occupied other government offices.

The stand-off and potential for violence threatened to spark a crisis, one with geostrategic implications in light of intensifying competition between Chinese and American companies interested in PNG's resources. In March 2011, for example, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton accused China of trying to "come in behind" the US and undermine Exxon Mobil's US$15 billion liquefied natural gas project in PNG.

An autocratic turn in PNG could have played favorably into China's position, especially if PNG followed the way of nearby Fiji. A 2006 military coup there led by Commodore Frank Bainimarama undercut Fiji's civil society and established a new military dictatorship that has engaged China as its new patron. The Commonwealth banished Fiji from its membership in 2009, but that only pushed the country further into China's orbit.

Different dynamics are in play in PNG, however. Ogio, who is also the Queen's envoy for PNG in the Commonwealth, declared the swearing in of Somare "wrong and invalid" on December 20, thus paving the way for O'Neill to ascend to the premiership. While it is unclear what internal discussion the British Crown and Ogio may have held, the final result was that Somare, despite his insistence that he was the country's rightful leader, lost significant international support. For the time being, political stability has returned to PNG under O'Neill's leadership.

While PNG was embroiled in a potentially volatile political dispute, its neighbor, Papua Indonesia, was rocked by an intensifying labor dispute that acted to galvanize a long simmering insurgent movement. A workers' strike at the Grasberg mine over wages and other issues that started on September 15 evolved into a four-month standoff pitting at least 8,000 Indonesian miners, most of whom were indigenous Papuans, against the Indonesian subsidiary of the US mining company Freeport-McMoRan.

One month into the strike, Freeport was forced in October to declare force majeure when it could not meet its contractual obligations on shipments of copper and gold concentrate under sales agreements from its Grasberg mine. Grasberg had been operating at only 5% capacity because of the strike and the workers were blocking off main roads from Porsite Harbor to the towns of Timika, Kuala Kencana and Tembagapura, which cut off food, production equipment, medicine and other supplies needed for the mine's operations.

The strike led to protests and violence between the miners and Indonesian security forces which came down on the side of Freeport. Indonesian police and paramilitary fighters opened fire at a large demonstration in Timika, the town nearest to the mine, killing two at least strikers in October. As the violence escalated and the acrimony between the miners and the Indonesian government intensified, decades-old Papuan resentment over heavy-handed Indonesian rule boiled to the surface.

On November 31, hundreds of Papuans converged in a rally in Timika where groups of indigenous Papuans hoisted the flag of Papuan independence, a move that had provoked violent security force responses in the past. After allegedly shooting warning shots, the police then fired on the crowd, killing at least four people. Smaller rallies then broke out throughout cities in Papua in which at least one more Papuan was killed.

In total, eight people were killed in protests during the four months before a deal to settle the strike was reached on December 13. The agreement led to a 40% wage increase over two years for the miners, improved benefits, and a promise by Freeport to base future wage negotiations on cost of living and competitor benchmarks. In addition, workers were reimbursed for lost wages during the strike by a one-time three month "signing bonus".

Unlike in PNG, however, the deal the deal between Freeport and the miners failed to contain the protests for Papuan independence or settle the wider crisis. Less than a week after the deal was reached, a helicopter flying at 600 feet over the Grasberg mine site was shot at allegedly by Papuan independence fighters. One of the 23 passengers was injured and the helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing in Timika.

The rebel Panai Free Papua Liberation Army (TPN-OPM) justified the attack by claiming that the helicopter was on the way to carry out attacks on Papuan villages in areas the group controls. In a December 16 report by the West Papua Media group, it was claimed that over four full strength combat battalions of the Indonesian army, paramilitary police and the elite counter-terrorism unit Detachment 88 launched an offensive where villages, schools and other buildings were burnt down in a bid to surround the TPN-OPM's headquarters under the command of General Jhon Yogi. The news group claimed at least 18 people were killed in the government assault.

Whether the rebels' claims are more propaganda than truth could not be independently corroborated, but the messaging shows how Papuan fighters have exploited the Freeport issue for their political purposes.

Despite New Guinea island's vast untapped resources and economic potential, PNG has struggled to chart a stable path as an independent country, while Papua remains pitched in a struggle against Indonesian rule. The tentative resolution of PNG's political crisis and the Papuan miners' strike brought both sides of the island back from the brink, but there is still unfinished business in both geographies.

Papuan independence fighters are now more active than before the Freeport strike and PNG is on guard against a potential sudden attempt by Somare to retake political power by force. If both PNG and Papua can accommodate the different political, labor, and cultural interests within their respective borders, 2012 could present both parts of the island with opportunities for peace and development. However, recent history shows reaching such a complex accommodation will be difficult and new bouts of instability can not be ruled out.

punk lovers in the lives of Aceh people

2011-12-16T09:29:00.000+07:00

Dozens of young men and women have been detained for being "punk" and disturbing the peace in Aceh, Indonesia's most devoutly Muslim province. They are being held in a remedial school, where they are undergoing "re-education" .

Rights groups have expressed concern after photographs emerged of the young men having their mohawks and funky hairstyles shaved off by Aceh's police. They look sullen and frightened as they are forced into a communal bath. But Aceh's police say they are not trying to harm the youths, they are trying to protect them. The 64 punks, many of whom are from as far away as Bali or Jakarta, were picked up on Saturday night during a local concert.

Aceh police spokesman Gustav Leo says there have been complaints from residents nearby. The residents did not like the behaviour of the punks and alleged that some of them had approached locals for money. Mr Leo stressed that no-one had been charged with any crime, and there were no plans to do so.

They have now been taken to a remedial school in the Seulawah Hills, about 60km (37 miles) away from the provincial capital Banda Aceh. "They will undergo a re-education so their morals will match those of other Acehnese people," says Mr Leo. But activists say the manner in which the young people have been treated is humiliating and a violation of human rights.

Aceh Human Rights Coalition chief Evi Narti Zain says the police should not have taken such harsh steps, accusing them of treating children like criminals. "They are just children, teenagers, expressing themselves," she says. "Of course there are Acehnese people who complained about them - but regardless of that, this case shouldn't have been handled like this. They were doused with cold water, and their heads were shaved - this is a human rights violation. Their dignity was abused."

But Mr Leo disagrees. It is the second time the police have cracked down on punk culture in Aceh. "We didn't arrest them, they haven't committed any criminal offence," he says. "They are Aceh's own children - we are doing this for their own good. Their future could be at risk. We are re-educating them so they don't shame their parents."

This is the second time Aceh's police have clamped down on punks in the province, which is the only province in Indonesia allowed to implement shariah law. There is a thriving underground punk music scene in Aceh, but many punk-lovers are viewed suspiciously by local residents. Many of the young teens sport outrageous hairstyles, in keeping with punk culture, but against the norms of the keenly religious in Aceh.

Aceh is one of the most devout Muslim provinces in Indonesia, and observers say it has becoming increasingly more conservative since Islamic law was implemented a few years ago.

Elegy Indonesian laborers

2011-12-06T21:02:00.000+07:00

When the Jakarta governor offered a hefty pay rise last week to workers, he successfully headed off a major strike. But almost immediately, workers went on the rampage in another part of the country demanding a wage hike too.

It is another illustration of the most recent and, for investors, troubling risk they face in what has become one of the darlings of the emerging economies.

The big drivers for the strikes have been high prices for the commodities that are the backbone of the Indonesian economy, rising costs and a strong sense that the country's widely trumpeted economic successes have not been shared.

"Workers are not dumb. They are going to see prices are high. They're going to say 'we want our just rewards'," said Dick Blin, spokesman for the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), which covers the bulk of Indonesia's main industries.

The highest profile -- and so far most costly -- strike has been going on since September at the giant Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc mine where 8,000 miners in the remote eastern province are demanding better pay.

Though union leaders in other industries deny that the Freeport strike was their trigger, the number of strikes has begun to mushroom across a broad range of industries from supermarket to telecoms, threatening to temper investor enthusiasm for one of Asia's fastest growing economies.

"These strikes are dangerous and show how weak the government is in facing industrial disputes," said Sofjan Wanandi, a leading businessman and chairman of the Employers' Association of Indonesia.

"With this situation, businesses will re-consider their expansion and investment plans, as well as plans to relocate factories from China to Indonesia," he said.

Businessmen from South Korea, a top investor, were also expressing concern, he said.

Investors in Southeast Asia's biggest economy have long factored in industrial-scale corruption, a complex and lethargic bureaucracy and even militant attacks.

But industrial disputes in the densely populated society, which has had little more than a decade of democracy, is a much newer hurdle.

Union membership is still quite low in a country where militant union leaders just a few years ago could expect to be hounded into jail, or worse.

POOR REFEREES

Subiyanto, the Secretary-General of Indonesia's Chemical, Energy and Mining Union Federation, estimates that only seven percent of companies have unions and the total number of workers who belong to unions is 15 percent. The number, though, appears to be growing.

Some labor-related laws are decades out of date and the number of officials supervising companies is simply too small to cope, he said.

"The fact is that government supervisors in the regions are getting lower and lower in number. For example in Tangerang regency (an industrial region), there are not more than 10 supervisors overseeing over 4,000 companies. How can you possibly monitor relations between the workers and the capital owners?"

"It's like playing football when the referee is not firm and you can see the strong oppressing the weak."

Some of those strikes have turned violent, and tension over the failure to create enough higher value jobs in the predominately youthful population could become one of the biggest mid-term risks, some analysts say.

A planned strike last week in Jakarta by 85,000 unionized workers was averted after the city governor agreed to hike minimum wages by about 20 percent.

Almost immediately, there was a similar protest for higher pay by 10,000 workers in Batam, an island home to manufacturers from nearby Singapore.

This time the response was slow. The military had to guard industrial estates after a mob burned traffic police posts and cars and attacked a government office.

As Freeport considers lifting pay by as much as double for more skilled contractors to end its crippling strike, any high pay award risks setting a precedent.

"If somebody asks for more, everybody will follow. That's a fact," said Alwin Lubis, president director at Indonesian miner Aneka Tambang. "That is what we're worried about."

RISING PRICES

The Freeport strike has come after gold prices doubled in the past two years. Prices for many commodities of which Indonesia is a leading exporter, such as tin, copper, coffee and cocoa, have also hit record highs in recent years.

"These commodity prices are a good opportunity to negotiate for better welfare, pay and wages," said Khoirul Anam, president of the Indonesian Forestry and Allied Workers' Union.

He said conditions were often little different from the days under Dutch colonial rule, arguing, for example, that palm oil workers should be paid three times as much.

"The bargaining position of labor in Indonesia has increased. However, it is not that much. They have slowly understood their rights and are demanding more," said Andriko Otang from the Trade Unions Rights Centre.

BILLIONAIRES AND LOW SALARIES

The strikes have coincided with growing wealth on the back of the global price commodity boom and a burst in consumerism.

On the day workers rioted in Batam, others were injured in a 5,000-strong crush to get half price Blackberry mobile phones in the capital. Also that day, Forbes released a report saying the country had created four more billionaires, with the wealth of its Indonesia "Rich List" up by 19 percent to $85 billion.

Indonesia is creating millionaires faster than any other in the Asia-Pacific, according to wealth manager Julius Baer.

Yet monthly wages average $113, less than a half that in Thailand and a third of China's, according to the Asian Development Bank's latest data. And half the population survives on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank.

Low-wage workers, seeing pay rises cancelled out by food prices climbing 15 percent last year, are being surrounded by growing consumerism and displays of wealth. Their expectations and perceptions of inequality are rising too.

"Many of us don't see any improvements in our life," said Sari, a worker making Adidas shoes in a footwear factory, a sector where plants have relocated from China and Vietnam in the past year after wage costs rose there.

"A factor that would make a person go on strike is when one feels trapped. We are going in that direction, so the likelihood for more strikes in garment, textile and shoe factories is huge."