INDONESIA A NEWS

Indonesian police have clashed with about 200 people trying to attack a mosque used by a minority Islamic sect known as Ahmadiya. The mob hurled stones at the mosque in Manislor village in Kuningan district in West Java, prompting an hour-long confrontation with police, a local Ahmadiya official said. "About 200 people pelted stones at our mosque and clashed with the police for about an hour. It is not clear yet who was the organiser of the mob," Nurahim, the local general secretary of the sect, told the AFP news agency. "The police were able to secure the mosque and handle the people. The situation, however, is still tense now." Nurahim said the village's 3,000 Ahmadiyah followers were ready to help the police if needed but would not respond to the violence. "We had a similar experience before in 2007, in which our mosque and houses were attacked. A house was burned and several were damaged at the time," he said. The Ahmadiyah sect, which claims...

Indonesia is taking steps to block pornographic Web sites before the start of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, the country's information minister said Thursday, defying local criticism that the plan amounted to censorship and was unworkable.   "I've asked all Internet service providers to filter porn content by using anti-porn software," the information minister, Tifatul Sembiring, said in a text message.   Mr. Sembiring, of the conservative Islam-based Prosperous Justice Party said he made the request last week and expected Internet service providers to take one month to implement it before the start of Ramadan on Aug. 11 . He did not say how many sites would be blocked.   Free speech advocates have accused the authorities of arbitrarily enforcing the country's controversial 2008 anti-pornography law, which has been criticized as draconian and overly broad. Religious minorities in this Muslim-majority country have been among the most vocal critics. The gov...

Human rights organizations across Asia and the world are reacting with disappointment and anger over the July 22 decision, announced in Jakarta by US Secretary of Defense Robert M Gates, to lift his agency's decade-old ban on cooperation with the Army's elite Kopassus special forces unit, which has been accused of widespread terrorism against foes of the Indonesian government. The ban was instituted in 1999 in the wake of charges that Kopassus had taken part in extensive human rights abuses as the Suharto regime teetered on its last legs. There is considerable speculation that the Indonesian government, which has been seeking reinstatement of Kopassus's status for several years, was threatening to seek tie-ups with the Chinese military for training and assistance if the Americans didn't do it. Eyewitnesses have accused Kopassus of being involved in or even supervising riots in Jakarta in May of 1998, including the mass gang rape of ethnic Chinese women ...

From behind secure prison walls, convicted terrorist Abdul Aziz seems harmless, if not playful. The 34-year-old inmate is one of five convicted terrorists now serving time at Kedung Pane prison for their role in plotting the 2005 Bali bombing, which killed 23 people and injured over 120 others. At the time, their convictions were seen as a significant step in Indonesia's internationally lauded counter-terrorism campaign. But Aziz and others could soon be up for parole, and there are questions as to how harmless they would be back on Indonesia's streets. Aziz said in an interview with Asia Times Online that he has personally re-evaluated the means for achieving jihad, the struggle required of practicing Muslims to preserve Islam. However, he admits to "feeling more anger" towards the state since officials denied him a parole opportunity earlier this year. Aziz recently participated in a five-day conflict-management program piloted by a partnership of ...

A group of 500 Islamic extremists blocked Christians from the Huria Protestant Church (Hkbp) in a field where the Sunday service was taking place. The incident occurred last July 18 in the city of Pondok Timur in Mustika Jaya subdistrict, district of Bekasi (West Java). Muslims blocked all routes to prevent Christians leaving the field and began to insult them, terrorizing them. The group of Protestant believers pray outdoors because their hall for religious functions was closed on the grounds that it was illegal. The situation improved when a representative of the Bekasi Office for Religious Affairs, along with 200 policemen, arrived at the site. Luspida Simanjutak, head pastor at the Hkbp church, told AsiaNews: " We were forced to sign a pact with them, forcing us to stop our faith celebration but we strongly rejected the proposal. We asked the representative to help our congregation to leave the site without harm. Their goal is one and one alone, to eradicate a...

Indonesian Muslims have been praying in the wrong direction for months, facing Somalia when they should have been facing Saudi Arabia, the country's highest religious authority says. A cleric from the Indonesian Ulema Council admitted it had made a mistake in March when calculating which way Muslims should turn to pray. New instructions had now been issued and people had only to shift their position for the correct alignment, he said. According to Islamic tradition, the prophet Muhammad was born in Mecca and it is said to be the place where Allah's message was first revealed to him. Each day Muslims around the world turn to Mecca to pray and, at least once in their lives if they can afford it, travel there to perform the Haj, or pilgrimage. Ma'ruf Amin, from the Ulema Council, said a ''thorough study with some cosmography and astronomy experts'' revealed that Indonesian Muslims had been facing southern Somalia and Kenya instead of Mecca, whi...

ASEAN, whose members include the largest Muslim nation, Indonesia, is calling for unimpeded aid access to Gaza . The body also wants the resumption of Middle East peace talks. A draft document says foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations "strongly condemned" the May 31 Israeli military raid on an aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip. Nine activists died in the raid, which sparked an international outcry. "In this regard, we reiterated the call for the unimpeded access of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people in Gaza in order to help alleviate their plight," says the draft obtained yesterday ahead of the 10 foreign ministers' annual talks, which begin in Vietnam today. The discussions culminate on Friday in the 27-member ASEAN Regional Forum, Asia-Pacific' s largest security dialogue, which will be attended by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In their draft, the ministers call for a resumption of n...

Hundreds of protesters camped outside Parliament in Papua last night as part of a rally calling for a referendum on self-determination for the Indonesian province. Tribesmen painted their faces in the colours of the banned separatist flag and called on elders to demand the referendum. The protesters are adamant they will not leave until the Indonesian government hears their calls. Tribal leaders voted last month to reject the autonomy status of Indonesia's most remote and least developed province. The status was introduced in 2001 after the fall of the Suharto military dictatorship in Jakarta. Human rights advocates and protesters say it had failed to raise the standards of living in the region, in spite of its extensive natural resources. Police said yesterday they were preparing to disperse the protesters - who had started their rally with a permit - using force and could use live ammunition if all else failed.

A June 27 story by Indonesia's most respected news magazine, Tempo, detailing the fat bank accounts of six top national policemen is starting to appear to be a major test of press freedom in the country. In the early hours of July 6, two black-clad men on a motorcycle were seen by witnesses throwing three firebombs at the magazine's editorial offices in central Jakarta, causing relatively minor damage. Only two of the Molotov cocktails ignited and Wahyu Muryadi, Tempo's editor-in-chief, said there had been no injuries. Although the motorcyclists have not been identified, they are widely presumed in Jakarta to be connected to the police officials who were embarrassed by the Tempo story. A police spokesman, however, denied that the firebombing was related to the story, or that the police had anything to do with it. In recent days, rather than investigating the billions of rupiah the officials reportedly have in their accounts, the police appear to be more pre...

The National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) searched in vain on Saturday for an Indonesian woman with a young daughter who needed urgent medical treatment. The society said its members searched under the Al-Sitteen bridge and other places where illegal Indonesians gather in hopes of being deported but they could not find the woman with a child in need of medical attention. Makkah province NSHR General Manager Hussain Al-Sharif said he received a report from a Saudi philanthropist who said she came across the Indonesian woman with her very sick daughter and took them to a private dispensary in Jeddah for treatment at her own expenses but the clinic refused to accept them because the daughter needed urgent surgery. The woman told the NSHR that she took the Indonesian woman and her daughter to the Jeddah Passport Department which in turn refused to accept them because some formalities had to be done by the Indonesian Consulate in Jeddah. The Saudi woman philanthropist...

Lonnie Thompson spent years preparing for his expedition to the remote, mist-shrouded mountains of eastern Indonesia, hoping to chronicle the effect of global warming on the last remaining glacier in the Pacific. He's worried he got there too late. Even as he pitched his tent on top of Puncak Jaya, the ice was melting beneath him. The 4,884-meter- high glacier was pounded by rain every afternoon during the team's 13-day trip, something the American scientist has never encountered in three decades of drilling ice cores. He lay awake at night listening to the water gushing beneath him. By the time they were ready to head home, ice around their sheltered campsite had melted a staggering 30cm. "These glaciers are dying," said Thompson, one of the world's most accomplished glaciologists. "Before I was thinking they had a few decades, but now I'd say we're looking at years." Thompson has led 57 such expeditions in 16 countries around...