Indonesia
A modern day slave trade: Indonesian domestic servants in Malaysia
By Carol Divjak, August 16, 2004
The plight of Indonesian maids in Malaysia was graphically highlighted in May when 19-year-old Nirmala Bonat from West Timor was discovered by neighbours in the hallway of her employer’s apartme...
US whitewashes Indonesian military over Papuan murders
By John Roberts, August 5, 2004
US Attorney General John Ashcroft announced in late June that the Justice Department and FBI had indicted Anthonius Wamang over the August 2002 ambush of employees of the giant US-operated Freeport mi...
Former general on top after first round of Indonesian presidential election
By John Roberts, July 20, 2004
With more than three quarters of the vote counted in the first round of the Indonesian presidential elections, no candidate has achieved an absolute majority. A run off on September 20 is now all but ...
Former generals dominate Indonesia’s presidential election campaign
By John Roberts, July 3, 2004
Campaigning by the five candidates contesting the politically powerful post of president of the Indonesian Republic officially ended on Wednesday. Voting in the country’s first-ever direct presi...
Jakarta expels foreign critics: a new attack on democratic rights
By John Roberts, June 22, 2004
Earlier this month the Indonesian government expelled the staff of the International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based thinktank that has been critical of the repressive activities of the Indonesia...
Ambon communal violence flares up amid Indonesian presidential poll
By John Roberts, June 15, 2004
Communal violence in Ambon, the capital of Indonesia’s Maluku province (previously known as Molucca), over the past month has sparked fears of a return to fighting between Christian and Muslim m...
Five right-wing tickets contend for the Indonesian presidency
By John Roberts and Peter Symonds, June 2, 2004
The campaign for the July 5 Indonesian presidential elections officially began this week with five candidates vying for the country’s most powerful post. The poll is the first-ever direct electi...
Angry response to international pressure to keep Indonesian cleric in jail
By Peter Symonds, April 22, 2004
Just a fortnight before he was due to be released from jail, Indonesian police last Friday declared Islamic fundamentalist cleric Abu Bakar Bashir to be a “suspect” and thus subject to int...
Suharto’s cronies make significant gains in Indonesia’s elections
By John Roberts, April 21, 2004
Only six years after widespread protests forced military strongman Suharto from power, the main beneficiaries of the April 5 vote for Indonesia’s House of Representatives (DPR) are individuals a...
Government indifference to dengue outbreak in Indonesia
By Dragan Stankovic, April 19, 2004
At least 634 people have died so far this year in Indonesia from an outbreak of dengue fever that is the worst in years. As of April 13, the number of cases stood at 54,176, surpassing the total for t...
Indonesia: Fire in state-owned gold mine claims 13 lives
By Terry Cook, March 11, 2004
On March 8, rescue teams retrieved another body from abandoned mine shafts at the state-owned PT Aneka Tambang (Antam) gold mine at Mount Pongkor in West Java. The latest recovery brings the known dea...
A pretence of democracy for the 2004 Indonesian elections
By John Roberts, March 8, 2004
Indonesia’s 147 million eligible voters will begin voting on April 5 in a series of polls to fill 16,000 positions in local councils, provincial legislatures and the national parliament, as well...
