INDONESIA A NEWS

HERE'S a provocative thought: if it weren't for the 2004 tsunami, Western aid workers in Banda Aceh city would not be the target of politically motivated drive-by shootings, and women in West Aceh regency would be free to wear trousers. As of Friday, any Muslim woman in the regency will be forced to change into a government-supplied long skirt if she dares step outside in tight pants. And after she takes the trousers off - and dons a jilbab, or Muslim head scarf - they will be publicly shredded.The new laws will add to recently enacted provincial legislation prescribing stoning as punishment for adultery or homosexual relations. The laws have attracted scorn and support in equal measure in Indonesia, but even they are mere pointers to a climate of uncertainty far outweighing simple questions of how Aceh has gone about rebuilding since December 26, 2004, when 170,000 of the 230,000 lives lost in the tsunami were from Aceh.Billions of dollars in foreign aid were quickly pledged f...

Religious officials in Aceh have sparked yet another controversy, this time banning the barongsai, or traditional Chinese lion dance, from a cultural performance as part of commemorations leading up to the fifth anniversary of the 2004 tsunami that devastated the province. The move is seen as a slap in the face to hundreds of Acehnese Buddhists of ethnic Chinese descent who had wanted to include the dance in their official remembrance ceremony on Sunday. Yuswar, a member of the Buddhist commemoration committee, said plans to have nine barongsai groups from North Sumatra perform around Banda Aceh as part of events to mark the Dec. 26 disaster had to be canceled. " Barongsai has no religious elements. It's just a cultural show," he said, though he added that Chinese-Indonesians believed the dance had the power to calm the restless spirits of their relatives who died in the disaster. Yuswar said the committee had obtained permits from the city's mayor and police chief, ...

About 200 mostly elderly Indonesian pilgrims passed away during their Haj pilgrimages, jolting the Indonesian officials once again to find out solution to an ever-increasing number of deaths reported every year especially among Indonesian pilgrims. The final death count has yet to be determined. The death toll is likely to increase once a final accounting has taken place. Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, sent 208,000 Muslims to perform Haj this year. "The deaths were mainly related to heart disease, respiratory failures, liver failure, hypertension, heart attacks and suffocation because of crowds and congestion with most of the deaths (being persons) aged above 55 years old," said Budiarto Kurniawan, the spokesman of the Indonesian Embassy. In order to solve the problems of overcrowding and congestion, the Indonesian government has signed a memorandum of understanding with Saudi Arabia to construct an apartment block near the Grand Mosque in Makkah for its p...

Indonesia has come a long way since 1975, when an aggressive military dictatorship in Jakarta invaded the tiny former Portuguese colony of East Timor with the tacit approval - many scholars believe - of Australia and the United States. Some 200,000 people died in the ensuing annexation and guerrilla war before East Timor finally succeeded in severing ties with its giant neighbor in 1999 - again with great bloodshed and destruction. But despite a rollicking free press and an open democracy, Indonesia has not, apparently, come far enough to allow a fictionalized account of the invasion to be seen publicly within its borders. On Tuesday, the official Film Censorship Agency (LSF) banned "Balibo," an acclaimed Australian movie about the murder of five foreign journalists by Indonesian troops at the beginning of the invasion. The film, shot in East Timor and released in August in Australia, was to have been shown Tuesday evening at a private screening by the Jakarta Foreign Corresp...

Indonesian police have arrested 13 Papuans after they conducted a rally along with dozens others, celebrating the anniversary of what they claimed as the 48th Papuan Independence Day, a local police spokesman said on Tuesday. The police spokesman Agus Rianto said that the rally was held without a permit from police. "They have violated the country's law by holding a rally with out a permit, now we are questioning 13 of them," he told. The spokesman said that earlier the police had tried to order the mass, but they rejected. "This small group of people claimed that they are celebrating the anniversary of Papuan independence, which is actually the claim was not true," he said. The Free Papua Movement has long engaged in rebellious activities in Indonesia. They have used both guerrilla and diplomatic ways to achieve their goal. On guerrilla way, the group seems targeting a subsidiary of U.S. giant mining firm of Freeport in Papua which may attract international att...