INDONESIA A NEWS

An Indonesian legislator wants girls in his province to pass virginity tests before being admitted into state-funded high schools - a widely ridiculed proposal with little chance of passing. Bambang Bayu Suseno, a lawmaker in Jambi's provincial parliament, cited concerns about a rise in premarital sex among teens in pushing for the proposal. But critics argued Wednesday that mandatory testing would be discriminatory and a violation of human rights. "The way to address this problem is through sex education," said Seto Mulyadi, who heads the National Commission for Child Protection, adding that not all girls engaging in sex do so willingly. "Make it part of the school curriculum so students will learn how to protect themselves - but virginity tests?" Indonesia is a secular nation with more Muslims than any other in the world - some 210 million.   Most practice a moderate, tolerant form of the faith, but some conservatives are worried rapid modernization is e...

Indonesia, an archipelago made up of approximately 17,508 islands, and is located in South-East Asia. The country has a population of approximately 230 million, making it the fourth most populous country in the world; its capital city is Jakarta, which is located on the island of Java. Since the majority of the population of Indonesia are Muslims, Indonesia can be considered the largest Islamic state in the world in terms of population. The Indonesian economy is classified as a developing economy, and is known as a "Tiger Cub Economy" which is a group that also includes Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. This is a reference to the more economically advanced "Asian Tiger Economies" that include Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. The Asian Tigers gained this name after attracting foreign investment and achieving impressive growth in their economy, manufacturing industries, and capital development. However the East-Asian economies suffered a financial...

Perhaps we would never believe that Indonesia is a country where the life comes from the sweats of the country men but is enslaved from abroad, and what is more    unbelievable is that, it is a country in which the Islamic ummah is the biggest   in the world, but is the third biggest producer of corruptions. A country which they say that when you plug the tree into the ground, it would produce fruits to be eaten by its people, but everywhere, we could easily see    people dying of starvation, where the metaphor is “like a chicken dying in its    barn”. We can also see shiny cars that cost over billions of Rupiah, milling   about in the middle of the streets amidst the begging hands of the beggars and   the carts of the street scavengers. Not long ago, a class III A officer of DITJEN (Directorate General) of Taxation   was found to have 25 billions in his savings, compare it with the average income   of the Indonesian c...

Indonesia may move its capital out of Jakarta but it won't solve the city's problems.   Jakarta may be one of the most besieged cities on the planet, beset by a plethora of woes: overcrowding, pollution, groundwater subsidence, staggering traffic jams, collapsing infrastructure and more. The answer? The same answer that Brazil, Nigeria, Malaysia and other countries have devised: move the seat of government to a new city despite the fact that it rarely if ever does any good for the city left behind.   Nonetheless, if it sounds farfetched, Indonesia's president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, last month said the government is seriously considering moving the government to Borneo or West Java. Two sites have been identified - Palangkaraya in Central Kalimantan, an hour and a half flight away across open water, and Jonggol in West Java, a more manageable 48 km south of the massive conurbation known as Jabotabek, which combines the beginning letters of Jakarta and the suburban juri...

THE United States and Indonesia have pledged to expand co-operation to a global scale, saying they can play supporting roles on hot-button issues from the role of Islam to the Middle East conflict. Holding an inaugural joint commission on ties, Washington and the world's largest Muslim-majority nation promised to keep a ''scorecard' ' on recent agreements such as boosting student exchanges to fighting climate change. ''Indonesia is not only a great bilateral partner, it is a leader on behalf of so many of the important issues that we both are addressing,' ' US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa, speaking earlier at a think tank, said the world's third and fourth most populous nations should complement each other on the international stage. ''We are ready to work with the United States in fostering mutual understanding wherever there is a conflict or tension,'' Mr Natalegawa sai...

Ambonese prisoners claim they have been tortured and beaten by Detachment 88, Indonesia's elite counter-terrorism unit funded and trained by Australia. Its elite counter-terrorism squad is breeding hatred with brutal acts. Yonias Siahaya's eyes, wide open and full of fear, shift constantly. They dart from left to right, across the crowded ward at Ambon's main hospital, like those of a wild animal just caught and caged. Siahaya is in considerable pain, his left side immobilised from the waist down. His right hand is handcuffed to his bed and his hip fractured, the result, he says, of a savage beating last month by members of Detachment 88, Indonesia's elite counter-terrorism unit funded and trained by Australia and the US. But the 58-year-old construction worker and father of eight is not a radical jihadist. He is a Christian and his crime was to be found in possession of two flags of the Republic of Southern Moluccas, the banned emblem of separatists b...

The annual exodus of Indonesians back to their villages has brought chaos on the country's dilapidated roads, with motorists complaining of interminable delays and reports of traffic snarls stretching for dozens of kilometres. Known as mudik - going home - as many as 30 million Indonesians return to their villages by car, boat, train, plane and, most typically for the working poor, by motorcycles, to celebrate Idul Fitri, which starts tomorrow at the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. The biggest movement of people comes from Jakarta - an estimated 3 million people leave laden with gifts and cash to hand out to friends and relatives. Despite a ban on more than two people riding on a motorcycle, it is not uncommon to see entire families and their presents on the one small motor scooter, children sandwiched between their parents and gifts dangling from the side. More than 200 people have died in the past few days as a result of accidents, most of them invo...

In 2006, Elly Anita from East Java moved to Dubai to work as a secretary. After two months of sexual harassment by her boss and having received no wages, she asked for a transfer. She was sent to Kurdistan, which she was told was a part of Italy. When Anita stepped off the plane and called her agent, he refused to tell her where she was. "I couldn't sleep that night. I was thinking, where am I? Oh my god. I was so afraid," Anita recalled. It took her two weeks to figure out that she had been sent to war-torn Iraq. Anita's story is not unique. In recent years, the number of reported cases of abuse has sharply increased. Target areas The vast majority of reports of violence last year occurred in the Middle East and Malaysia, comprising 63 percent and 33 percent, respectively, according to the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Gary Lewis, the East Asia and Pacific representative from the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime, says that although the number of report...

If there are any symbols of Papuans' continued quest and determination for sovereign independence1, it is their continued attachment to their flag, the Morning Star or Bintang Kejora (in Indonesian), their Anthem, Hai Tanahku Papua (in Indonesian) or Oh, My Land Papua, written by a Dutch missionary in the 1930s and the continued existence of the OPM, Papua Independence Movement since 1964. The Morning Star was first formally unveiled on 1 December 1961, symbolising the onset of the Republic of West Papua and flew till October 1962, when the former Dutch colony was transferred to the United Nations Temporary Executive Authority through a deal brokered by the United States, mainly to prevent Indonesia from joining the Soviet Camp during the Cold War. Indonesia took control of the territory in the following year and formally incorporated West Papua, renamed West Irian, into Indonesia in 1969, recognised by the United Nations. However, Papuans have continued to challenge the terr...

AN Indonesian maid who went on the run after being accused of murdering her Malaysian employer's baby son has been arrested after coolly lining up an interview for a new job. Police have been hunting for the 25-year-old woman, from Java in Indonesia, after the 15-month-old boy died last week and a post-mortem examination indicated foul play. She was arrested after approaching a family in suburban Kuala Lumpur asking for a job. They recognised her from her picture in the newspaper and alerted police, Ampang district police chief Abdul Jalil Hassan told AFP. "She went to one of the houses, carrying a plastic bag with some clothes and was asking for a job," Abdul Jalil said. "She told the family that she ran away from her employer as she could no longer work with them." "The family noticed she looked similar to the suspect wanted by police in connection to the baby murder case and alerted us. We went to the house and detained the woman,...

With Indonesia's economic growth among the strongest in Southeast Asia and brightening future prospects for the resource-rich country, economists are weighing whether it should be the next country added to the BRIC grouping of fast-growing emerging economies comprising Brazil, Russia, India and China.   When US investment bank Goldman Sachs came up with the BRIC acronym in 2001, it projected that the combined economic size of the four countries would be bigger than all Group of 7 countries except the United States by 2050, according to Milan Zavadjil, country director at the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Indonesia office. (The other G-7 countries being Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Canada.)   Sticking to that definition, Indonesia is arguably ripe for inclusion to the club. For some financial analysts, Indonesia's BRIC designation would be symbolic of the gathering global shift in economic power away from the developed G-7 economies and towar...