INDONESIA A NEWS

With popular uprisings turfing out rulers in Tunisia, Egypt and perhaps elsewhere in the Arab world, a lot of analysts have focused on fears of ''contagion' ' in other regions, notably on China's censorship of news reports about the protest wave in the Middle East. Yet the Middle East event that might have the most far-reaching effect is not the awakening of the Arab ''street'' against authoritarian rulers, but the vote in a United Nations supervised referendum a month earlier. The largely African people in the south of Sudan voted overwhelming to secede from their Arab-dominated country and form a new nation - a result accepted by the Khartoum government and its main foreign backers, including China. This has followed the declaration of independence from Serbia by Kosovo in 2008 that was accepted by most of the world and approved by the International Court of Justice, and Russia's unilateral recognition of Georgia's South Ossetia and...

The first week of February marked the annual celebration of World Interfaith Harmony Week, a UN resolution that aimed to promote religious and cultural understanding among people of different faiths. But proceedings were marred by the cruellest of events in Indonesia, with celebrations tarnished by a string of vicious attacks on the nation's religious minorities. The most serious attack was waged against the Ahmadiyah sect in Banten, which resulted in three of its members being beaten to death at the hands of the Islamic Defenders Front, a hardline Islamic group. The history between the two has been fractious at best, but in recent times the conflict has assumed an internecine edge. Footage of the bloody attack in Banten on 6 February showed police officers providing an embarrassingly feeble match for a crowd of 1,500 villagers, equipped with machetes, rocks and bamboo sticks. Ahmadiyah Muslims believe Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was Islam's last prophet, and as such find themselves a...

To recall the May 28 terror attacks in Lahore is to acknowledge that Pakistan is not a land apart; rather it is the vanguard of religious and sectarian violence In his novel, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad paints a furious picture of a humanity that cannot escape the inherent evil that resides within the deepest recesses of every individual. The innate wickedness of mankind, he suggests, is masked and curtailed only by the restraints of civilisation. His colonial Africa is described as "one of the darkest places on earth" and a "God-forsaken wilderness"; but the real darkness lurks in the unfathomable human proclivity to commit heinous acts of evil. Yet, perhaps, even Conrad would have been rocked to his core by the savagery of the recent mob killings of three Ahmedis in Indonesia. On February 6, in a small village not too far from the capital of Jakarta, an angry rabble of 1,500 bloodthirsty zealots, many wielding machetes, sticks and rocks, attacked 20 members...

7.5 million hectares of natural forest will escape Indonesia's planned moratorium on new forestry concessions, according to a new report from Greenomics Indonesia, an activist group.   Under its billion dollar forest conservation partnership with Norway, Indonesia committed to establish a moratorium on new concessions in forest areas and peatlands beginning January 1, 2011. But Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has yet to sign the decree due to debate over the details of what types of forest will be exempted. Presently two versions of the decree are circulating. The one drafted by the country's REDD+ Taskforce, chaired by Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, is considerably stronger than one prepared by the Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Hatta Rajasa.   Elfian Effendi, Executive Director of Greenomics, says the Rajasa version fails to include secondary forest under the the moratorium's scope, meaning that any non-primary forest could be granted to loggers and planta...

International media have recently cited Indonesia experience as example for Egypt. Not Iran Islamic Revolution, but post-Soeharto transition is viewed as model. The argument, favoring the secular and moderate forces, is based on the fear that the small but vocal Islamic Brotherhood would hijack the transition. Others, however, compare Egypt revolution to the post-Berlin Wall wave that brought democracy to Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Is post-Soeharto transition the right model? Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak exit has been inevitable. Any delay would have risked a dangerous situation, not least for he himself. Dictators' demise characteristically goes along the course that presses them to rely on both strategic and day to day situation until they see no other option than exit - as happened to Ferdinand Marcos, Soeharto and others - until, perhaps, they risk Romania's Ceacescu's fatal fate.   In the case of Soeharto, let's recall, he was well aware of the growing ...

THE killing of three followers of the Ahmadiyah faith by a frenzied group of Islamists this week has left Indonesia reflecting on how closely it lives up to its national credo ''unity in diversity''. Captured in horrific detail, on a video taken with a mobile phone, were the lifeless bodies of three men, stripped naked, being battered by stones and staves as hundreds of onlookers cheer. The police either stand back or, in the case of one officer, try half-heartedly to shoo away the attackers. It was grotesque, stomach-churning stuff. And it was widely circulated throughout the country. Then, two days later, a marauding mob of militants attacked churches and torched vehicles in central Java, upset that a man who had been found to have blasphemed Islam was given a five-year sentence, the maximum, and not death. The country's reputation for religious harmony - lauded by US President Barack Obama as an ''example to the world'' on his historic visit t...