INDONESIA A NEWS

ORGANISED gangs in Indonesia using Islam to call for attacks on Christians are themselves facing calls to be banned. The latest disbandment calls came from members of former president Megawati Sukarnoputri' s Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle, some of whom were recently attacked by hardliners in an East Java set-to as they met with constituents. The hardliners, belonging to the Islamic Defenders Front, or FPI, said they understood the meeting they attacked to be an underground gathering of former Indonesian Communist Party members and therefore fair game. The Communist Party has been banned since 1965. The FPI, characterised by a mix of street criminality and religious chauvinism, has been involved in numerous attacks on businesses, community groups and non-Muslim organisations over recent years. But a spokesman dismissed the parliamentarians' call for its banning as "one of the dirty ways of the neo-communists and neo-liberals to sneak into this...

The trial of a Saudi national accused of providing financial support to a terrorist group that carried out twin suicide bomb attacks on luxury hotels in Jakarta last year, resulting in a death toll of seven, is set to resume in the Indonesian capital. Asharq Al-Awsat learnt that Saudi national Ali Abdullah al-Khelaiw, aged 54, is facing criminal charges due to his relationship with one of the terrorists involved in the suicide attack on Jakarta last year, and that the Indonesian authorities believe he is responsible for financing this attack. South Jakarta district court prosecutor Iwan Setiawan called for al-Khelaiw to be imprisoned for a period of no less than 9 years, saying that the Saudi defendant had "assisted in providing funds to terrorists and misused immigration documents." Al-Khelaiw denies the charges laid against him, saying that he travelled to Indonesia in order to set up a computer business, and that the money in question was lent by him to an...

A policeman, right, watches over two masseuses and their customers during a raid on suspected prostitution activities at a hotel in Changchun, in northeast China's Jilin province The Bandung authority is at loss to uncover cases of covert prostitution involving junior and senior high school students, whose number continues to rise in the West Java capital. Eli, a sex worker advocacy program mentor from the Rumah Cemara Group in Bandung, said it was hard to provide advocacy to teenagers involved in covert prostitution since most were not receptive. The number of those involved in covert prostitution is believed to be higher compared to commercial sex on the streets, she added. Eli has been providing support to more than 200 housewives and child sex workers over the past two years, around 20 of who are senior high school students between the ages of 15 and 16. "They are psychologically unstable at those ages. They are hard to handle due to their strong motivation to ea...

Indonesia's Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) is holding its second national congress in Jakarta this week where it will discuss key policies. The Islamist party is the third-biggest in President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's coalition, and lifted its share of the vote in the 2009 elections when most Islam-based parties lost support. Here are some questions and answers about the PKS: WHAT ARE ITS ECONOMIC POLICIES? The PKS was one of the coalition parties most critical of Yudhoyono's top reformers -- former Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati and Vice President Boediono. "The PKS has branded Boediono, Mulyani and others as 'neolib', a vague, pejorative term, and an attack on the market-friendly economic philosophies and policies of Indonesia's influential 'technocrats' ," economist Hal Hill wrote recently. It has said it favours reducing energy and electricity subsidies over the longer term but is in no hurry to remove what many economists conside...

In all the events add up to a continuing impression that Yudhoyono's government is rudderless in the face of Bakrie's growing influence after the departure at the end of May of Sri Mulyani Indrawati, the former finance minister. Bakrie capped off his week by announcing that a controversial joint secretariat that he was appointed to head in late May is backing a proposal to grant each of the 560 members of the House of Representatives a Rp15 billion ($1.6 million) fund for their constituencies. The Golkar Party is backing the pork barrel fund "as a way for legislators to give back to their constituents, " a party spokesman said. Political analyst Burhanuddin Muhtadi, from the Indonesian Survey Institute, denounced the idea as unconstitutional, telling local media that those backing it were supporting "an evil plot to steal public money." A similar program in the Philippines, he said, was only a ploy to pacify parties in exchange for not disruptin...

THE hotel provides free mosquito repellent and closes its pool bar before dusk to prevent guests from contracting malaria. The former Sheraton still offers the best accommodation in Indonesia's little-visited province of Papua, catering mainly to employees of its owner, Freeport-McMoRan, an American mining giant. Freeport protects its staff from more than malaria. Since July 2009 a spate of mysterious shootings along the road linking the hotel in Timika to the huge Grasberg mine up in the mountains has killed one employee, a security guard and a policeman and wounded scores of others. Workers are now shuttled from Timika to the mine by helicopter. Before the pool bar closes, a jolly crowd of Freeport employees have their beers stored in a cool box. They take it to one of the-mostly dry-seafood restaurants in town. As in the rest of Papua, all formal businesses are run by Indonesian migrants who are predominantly Muslim. The mainly Christian Papuans sit on the pavements...

WHEN Emha Ainun Nadjib stood on a stage in Birmingham, England, in 2004, singing an Islamic prayer in Arabic to the music of Silent Night, a row of Indonesian nuns waited behind him to sing the carol's actual verse in Indonesian. Any given month this year, when he attends a dozen public gatherings across Indonesia - each drawing crowds of between 1000 and 10,000 people - Nadjib is likely to use a similar technique to promote dialogue between religions. This traditionally educated West Javanese Muslim, who describes himself as a ''cultural pluralist'', has a cult following across radical and moderate Islamic movements in Indonesia, as well as Christians. He entered public life in the 1970s as a poet and performer. He performed at the Vatican after the death of Pope John Paul II and has more recently organised commemorations for the late former president Abdurrahman Wahid. ''Muslim society in Indonesia is a little bit disorganised, '' Nadjib...