INDONESIA A NEWS

Saudi Arabia has shown a gesture of support and friendship to Indonesia by sparing a housemaid from being beheaded and repatriating her to Jakarta. The news comes at a time when a high-powered delegation from Indonesia is holding talks with the officials of the Ministry of Labor here since Tuesday in an effort to work out a compromise formula to boost relations in the manpower sector and to defuse the crisis in the process. This was disclosed by Tatang Budie Utama Razak, director for Protection of Indonesian Citizens and Legal Entities in Indonesia, on Wednesday. Razak, who arrived with the 12-member delegation from Jakarta to participate in the talks with Saudi officials, confirmed that Darsem Binti Dawud Tawar, 26, arrived in Jakarta on Wednesday morning and was received by her family members, friends and several Indonesian officials. Darsem, from Subang, West Java, was convicted of murder by a Saudi court in 2009 and was sentenced to death for killing her employer, who allegedly...

A 40-year-old West Java villager who goes by the single name Deni has only two children, a considerable change from his own parents. He has seven siblings. He thus illustrates the change that has taken place over the last four decades in Indonesia as the country's family planning program and changing cultural mores have caused birth rates to fall dramatically.   As World Population Day approaches on July 11, Indonesia's extraordinary success in cutting its population growth is a lesson for a world whose total numbers are on course to soar to as high as 9.5 billion by 2050. The key to Indonesia's success has been its National Family Planning Coordination Board, known by its Indonesian initials BKKBN, which worked together with the United States Agency for International Development to produce the results.   The program got underway in the 1970s under the late strongman Suharto who, whatever his shortcomings, recognized that a population explosion could wreck his country. Suh...