https://www.scmp.com/rss/309197/feed Jeff is based in Jakarta where he specializes in political, economic and human rights issues. He got his start in the late 1990s in Tokyo where he was a subeditor at the English edition of the Mainichi Shimbun. He went on to join Bloomberg News in Tokyo and then the Australian Financial Review in Sydney. Recently he started satupelangi.org, a website devoted to LGBT issues in Indonesia. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Isnur Wahyudi, 55, dons a white surgical mask and a hair net, pulls on a pair of tall rubber boots and splashes through an antiseptic bath before ducking inside an imposing looking six-storey bird house that resembles a concrete bunker. Nestled in the middle of Indonesia’s Sajira forest in the West Java province of Banten, it’s one of 50 he helps manage. Inside, as many of 40,000 frenetic swiftlets swoop and occasionally careen into visitors. The object of their frenzy: scores of nests, which... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2152955/chinas-birds-nest-crackdown-leaves-indonesia-struggling-feather?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2152955/chinas-birds-nest-crackdown-leaves-indonesia-struggling-feather?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 01 Jul 2018 02:30:15 +0000 Reformasi, the people-power movement that dumped a dictator and started Indonesia on the road to democracy 20 years ago, was renewed this week as more than a 150 million voters turned their backs on dynastic politics opting for competence over connection. On Wednesday, voters in three of the country’s biggest provinces elected reformers with proven track records over powerful incumbents. Ridwan Kamil, the architect-turned-mayor of Indonesia’s third city of Bandung, who spent big on urban... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2153166/reformasi-sweep-indonesias-elections-prove-people-power-has-legs?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2153166/reformasi-sweep-indonesias-elections-prove-people-power-has-legs?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 29 Jun 2018 12:47:49 +0000 On May 17, two female passengers boarded their flight in Makassar in South Sulawesi, Indonesia, bound for Manado, North Sulawesi. Soon after, they told flight attendants they had bombs in their checked luggage. They didn’t. On the same day, on a flight carrying 147 passengers out of Ternate, North Maluku, to Jakarta, a man told flight attendants that he, too, had a bomb in his checked bag. He didn’t. A few days later, on a flight out of Banyuwangi in East Java, two of the city’s councillors were... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2149673/isnt-it-time-indonesia-blew-its-fuse-over-bomb-hoaxes?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2149673/isnt-it-time-indonesia-blew-its-fuse-over-bomb-hoaxes?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 10 Jun 2018 05:30:00 +0000 While she was a student at University of Indonesia, Raisa Widiastari began volunteering with the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence, a big national NGO dedicated to raising awareness for the victims of human rights abuses. She saw it as a way to make her country confront its chequered past. But last year, Widiastari herself became a victim of abuse. In September, she and about 200 other activists were trapped in a building by Islamic vigilantes for more than eight hours on... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2149952/widodo-just-paying-pre-election-lip-service-human-rights?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2149952/widodo-just-paying-pre-election-lip-service-human-rights?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 08 Jun 2018 13:30:00 +0000 A trade war is looming between the European Union and the world’s biggest producers of palm oil, Indonesia and Malaysia, over proposals to strip biofuel off the menu of renewable energy sources member states may use to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. At issue is the US$39 billion palm oil industry. Indonesia and Malaysia are the world’s two biggest producers of the crop, used in everything from fuel to cosmetics to cookies. Last month Luhut Pandjaitan, coordinating minister for maritime... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2147882/forget-us-china-malaysia-indonesia-eu-trade-war-may-be-upon-us?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2147882/forget-us-china-malaysia-indonesia-eu-trade-war-may-be-upon-us?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 27 May 2018 03:03:24 +0000 February 4, 1998, was a day that would change Desmond Junaidi Mahesa’s life forever and he never saw it coming. The social justice activist had left his office to attend a gathering after the Muslim festival of Eid in Jakarta, but he never made it to the celebration. Instead, he was approached by two men who grabbed him, threw a bag over his head and forced him into a car. About 40 minutes later, he found himself in a 2 x 2.5-metre room in an undisclosed location where he would be kept for the... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2146839/indonesias-reformasi-activists-were-burned-beaten-electrocuted?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2146839/indonesias-reformasi-activists-were-burned-beaten-electrocuted?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 20 May 2018 06:33:40 +0000 Usman Said surveys the stainless steel plaques bearing the names of his fallen classmates at Trisakti University in Jakarta. Twenty years ago this week soldiers gunned them down amid escalating protests that within days would topple the dictator Suharto. Snipers that day held off ambulances, leaving the young men in their early 20s to bleed to death. Said, who now heads Amnesty International in Jakarta, takes some solace that their deaths weren’t in vain. “We have freedom of assembly and speech... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2146838/indonesias-reformasi-success-20-years-after-suharto?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2146838/indonesias-reformasi-success-20-years-after-suharto?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 19 May 2018 06:00:30 +0000 When Francis Xavier Harsono applied for his first passport in 1992 he was brimming with anticipation for his first trip overseas. Back then, things were looking up for Harsono, one of Indonesia’s first contemporary artists. He had been making a name for himself with work that subtly criticised the Suharto regime and an artist-in-residency programme in Adelaide, Australia, awaited him. But then the bureaucrats struck. The passport office forced Harsono, an Indonesian of Chinese descent, to... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2146841/indonesian-chinese-still-face-discrimination-20-years-after?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2146841/indonesian-chinese-still-face-discrimination-20-years-after?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 19 May 2018 04:45:45 +0000 When police arrived on the doorstep of Taufik Gani, 55, in his middle class neighbourhood in Surabaya, he could scarcely believe their news. The officers brandished the number plate from one of two motorcycles that had been turned into a bomb that day to snuff out 13 lives and wound dozens. “Oh God it’s our neighbour!” said Gani, who lived not 40 metres away from Dita Oepriarto, who, along with his wife and four children police believed carried out suicide bomb attacks on three churches in... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2146144/does-surabaya-attacks-signal-barbaric-turn-using-children-suicide?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2146144/does-surabaya-attacks-signal-barbaric-turn-using-children-suicide?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 15 May 2018 04:45:17 +0000 On his FIRST visit to Indonesia this month as president of China Railway Corp, Lu Dongfu could have been forgiven if he felt bemused at the delays bedevilling the US$6 billion (HK$47 billion) Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail project that his company was helping build. Disputes with landowners have meant work has only just started on several sites along the 150km route – three years after Lu’s firm beat out Japanese rivals for the train line. By comparison, Lu said in January that the CRC would... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2145806/catch-22-china-could-derail-indonesias-widodo?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2145806/catch-22-china-could-derail-indonesias-widodo?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 11 May 2018 23:00:30 +0000 When Dr Selvy Anggeraini took over as the head of one of Jakarta’s busier government health clinics, she had a budget of 1 billion rupiah (US$72,500) to treat the 350 or so patients that came daily to seek care from one of her 14 doctors. Four years later, after the introduction of a generous universal health insurance programme, her caseload has doubled, even though her budget has barely moved. “The care is mostly free so now more people come,” says Anggeraini, whose district – home to 350,000... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2142640/indonesias-health-scheme-dwarfs-obamacare-there-problem?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2142640/indonesias-health-scheme-dwarfs-obamacare-there-problem?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 22 Apr 2018 06:45:45 +0000 While he was growing up in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, Dennis Yeung was unaware of the differences between himself and the other boys. Sure, he was known as “Ching”, but even here he may have caught a break. One white classmate was known as “Buddha” because he was fat. Another kid was “Fungus” owing to wad of peach fuzz on his face. Now, 68, the jovial retired mechanical engineer recalls that it wasn’t until he started shaving that the difference between he and the majority of Australians... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2139424/journey-past-why-overseas-chinese-are-finally-embracing-their?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2139424/journey-past-why-overseas-chinese-are-finally-embracing-their?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 31 Mar 2018 12:00:45 +0000 The former special forces general and presidential candidate in Indonesia’s last election, Prabowo Subianto, will make another bid for the top job when the country goes to the polls next year to choose its head of state. A formal announcement is not expected until next month at the earliest. Even so, top officials at Prabowo’s party, the Great Indonesian Movement Party, or Gerindra, said they have begun preparations early in a bid to better organise the vast and unwieldy campaign machinery... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2136558/prabowo-vs-widodo-what-makes-general-think-indonesian-election?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2136558/prabowo-vs-widodo-what-makes-general-think-indonesian-election?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 17 Mar 2018 00:30:39 +0000 When Ridwan Kamil took over as mayor of Bandung in September 2013, bureaucrats like Tammi Lasmini, who would be responsible for executing plans to rebuild the city centre and spruce up its parks, admitted to having their doubts. Just a month earlier Kamil’s predecessor, Dada Rosada, had been arrested on suspicion of bribing judges – charges that ultimately led to a 10-year prison sentence. A Dutch colonial hill top town and capital of Indonesia’s West Java province, Bandung was one of the few... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2135299/man-cleaned-city-pigs-indonesian-voters-he-needs-be-pious-too?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2135299/man-cleaned-city-pigs-indonesian-voters-he-needs-be-pious-too?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 04 Mar 2018 05:31:07 +0000 Amid Indonesia’s latest bout of moral panic, that has seen its transgendered citizens rounded up by police and politicians calling for outright bans on sex outside marriage, there are signs that cooler heads may prevail – if only slightly. The ranking member of a parliamentary committee, charged with overhauling the country’s voluminous criminal code, said most politicians were eager to avoid language that would make extramarital sex illegal. The provision is thought to disproportionately impact... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2131814/sex-marriage-fudge-gives-hope-indonesias-persecuted-gays?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2131814/sex-marriage-fudge-gives-hope-indonesias-persecuted-gays?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 04 Feb 2018 01:01:44 +0000 On his way to catch a film on a recent Saturday afternoon, Tommy Prabowo pulls into a parking space at one of the grander malls in downtown Jakarta. Inside the black Honda compact parked beside him is a distraught white Maltese terrier, named Valent, making plain to anyone within earshot that he doesn’t want to be alone. When Prabowo returns six hours later Valent – short for Valentine – is still there and is no less annoyed. Prabowo settles in for a long, dark and sweaty wait in the stuffy... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2123376/how-indonesia-finally-fell-love-mans-best-friend?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2123376/how-indonesia-finally-fell-love-mans-best-friend?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 10 Dec 2017 07:02:25 +0000 On a rainy afternoon at the Cisarua Refugee Learning Centre, in the cooler climbs outside Bogor, Hania Nemati, 14, takes time out from studies to talk about her dreams. “I want to be an astronaut, and if I can’t do that then I want to become a business woman,” says Hania in flawless English. In 2015, Hania, her parents and three brothers fled Afghanistan to Indonesia, a land that is home to about 14,000 refugees and treats them relatively benignly. It is a welcome contrast from life back in... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2122502/rohingya-or-afghan-indonesia-tale-two-refugee-groups?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2122502/rohingya-or-afghan-indonesia-tale-two-refugee-groups?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 02 Dec 2017 07:33:06 +0000 Susi Pudjiastuti shows off a copy of an application for a permit submitted one year before she was named Indonesia’s fisheries minister in 2014. Made out to an Indonesian company with an address in Fuzhou, China, it sought permission to operate a vessel capable of hauling in 3,000 tons of fish per voyage. The vessel would have operated a purse seine, a type of circular net used in commercial fishing to target dense schools of fish. The nets are controversial because they are so efficient – some... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/personalities/article/2121483/tattooed-indonesian-fisheries-minister-will-blow-your-mind?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/personalities/article/2121483/tattooed-indonesian-fisheries-minister-will-blow-your-mind?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 26 Nov 2017 05:30:15 +0000 Oktovianus Warnares gathered with five other men outside a government building on the picturesque island of Biak, just off the coast of the Indonesian province of Papua. It was May 1, 2013, the 50th anniversary of Indonesia assuming control of Papua from the United Nations. Warnares and his crew had gathered to raise the outlawed Morning Star flag of independence to protest against the rule of Jakarta – a distant city not only in kilometres but ethnicity and religion. Warnares estimates that... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2120457/indonesias-widodo-vowed-erase-stigma-papua-tell-separatists?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2120457/indonesias-widodo-vowed-erase-stigma-papua-tell-separatists?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 17 Nov 2017 15:00:00 +0000 Bedjo Untung holds a list of 122 place names around the island of Java that runs eight pages long. They include names of small out-of-the-way places like Hutan Barisan and Bukit Wonosegoro. They sound unremarkable except that they are the home to mass graves. This week that list grew longer. Untung, who heads the country’s largest survivors group of the purge of suspected communists in 1965, says he presented 10 more place names to Indonesia’s semi -governmental National Commission of Human... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2117372/america-has-come-terms-indonesias-past-why-cant-indonesians?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2117372/america-has-come-terms-indonesias-past-why-cant-indonesians?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 29 Oct 2017 04:30:00 +0000 At the Orion Plaza in the North Jakarta suburb of Glodok, Along Jenggot solders a connector onto a satellite dish cable. He has worked here since before 1998, when rioters stormed the mall, looted its shops and set it ablaze. The ceiling fell in, Jenggot recalls. The walls are still charred in places. Now the owner of a small electronics repair shop at the mall, Jenggot worries whether the same strife will erupt again. “It can happen,” the 50-year-old said. “They are using race and religion now.... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2116288/could-anti-chinese-violence-flare-again-indonesia?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2116288/could-anti-chinese-violence-flare-again-indonesia?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 22 Oct 2017 02:02:20 +0000 When Elsye Deliana first moved to Bali to work as a tour guide, she noticed visitors to the Indonesian island tended to hail from Hong Kong, Taiwan and other parts of Asia. But starting around 2010, the number of visitors from mainland China eclipsed those from Taiwan for the first time. From there they grew rapidly, doubling in four years and then doubling again two years after that. Now the owner of her own agency – PT Star Cemerlang Wisata – Deliana says Chinese tourists are the mainstay of... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2114177/move-over-aussies-chinese-are-coming-and-indonesia-cant-get?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2114177/move-over-aussies-chinese-are-coming-and-indonesia-cant-get?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 08 Oct 2017 05:30:28 +0000 Every year at this time Indonesia renews its collective distain for communists, widely blamed for allegedly trying to tear the country apart in an aborted coup more than half a century ago. But this year is different. As thousands of police stood guard outside government buildings and the parliament, Islamic conservatives seized on the annual rite to get back at the administration of President Joko Widodo, which for months have been squeezing hardliners following a successful overthrow of... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2113404/islamists-find-another-stick-beat-widodo-communism?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2113404/islamists-find-another-stick-beat-widodo-communism?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 30 Sep 2017 03:42:38 +0000 When he started out as a mixed martial artist, Stefer Rahardian, 30, had no prospect of turning professional. Back in 2008, when he tagged along with a friend to his first ju-jitsu lesson – the grappling discipline that makes up much of the sport – there was no MMA league in Indonesia. Underground matches in front of 50 spectators at local gyms were it. No cages, no girls, no crowds ... and certainly no prize money. “If you hurt yourself you had to take yourself to the doctor. My mother would... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2111412/i-came-nothing-meet-indonesian-conor-mcgregor?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2111412/i-came-nothing-meet-indonesian-conor-mcgregor?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 17 Sep 2017 03:01:35 +0000 With promises of higher wages and easy work, an agent lured Abu Bakar, 36, and his wife from their village on the island of Madura, off the coast of East Java. The agent delivered them, without a work visa, to a fruit processing factory just minutes from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, and took their passports. That was four years ago. After paying for rent, food and cigarettes – Bakar’s only indulgence – he and his wife, Puniyati, 33, who washes clothes for a few hours a day, are left with... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2109407/inverted-flags-illegal-migrants-how-malaysia-indonesia-ties-took?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2109407/inverted-flags-illegal-migrants-how-malaysia-indonesia-ties-took?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 03 Sep 2017 05:03:06 +0000 As his company of police officers assembles for the morning muster in West Jakarta, falling into 27 rows of roughly eight men deep, Budhy Novian, chief of law enforcement for Jakarta’s municipal police, considers the day ahead. Soon, Novian, 43, will climb into a Ford sport utility vehicle and join a motorcade of about two-dozen police vans, flatbed trucks, tow trucks and cruisers on patrol for shops and vendors encroaching on the city’s scare public space. But after a month, the show of force... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2109195/step-dark-jakarta-seeks-order-its-crazy-pavements?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2109195/step-dark-jakarta-seeks-order-its-crazy-pavements?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 31 Aug 2017 10:45:45 +0000 At the Rumah Singgah Peka drug rehabilitation centre in the highlands of Bogor, about 50km outside of Jakarta, Sam Nugraha sometimes struggles to keep up with incoming clients. His facility, which opened in 2010 and runs on government funds, can accommodate 20 patients, but sometimes as many as 40 pile in and sleep on the floor. On one hand, for Nugraha, a one-time addict himself, the incoming tide of patients suggests his emphasis on harm reduction is in demand. On the other hand, the surge of... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2106293/widodo-following-dutertes-playbook-war-drugs?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2106293/widodo-following-dutertes-playbook-war-drugs?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 12 Aug 2017 06:06:45 +0000 Up until mid May, Fajar Prabowo supervised mobile HIV testing units that fanned out to Jakarta’s gay saunas and bars in an effort to reach hundreds of closeted homosexuals who feared being spotted walking into clinics. Often for 10-hour stretches, he would counsel, test, and, for the 17 per cent who were HIV positive, console upwards of 50 men. But after police raided and detained more than 140 men at a gay sauna in a red light district in the city’s north, just days after one of those same... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2105151/indonesia-cracks-down-gays-and-fuels-its-hiv-epidemic?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2105151/indonesia-cracks-down-gays-and-fuels-its-hiv-epidemic?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 06 Aug 2017 08:04:15 +0000 When officials from Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) swooped in to nab Ridwan Mukti, the former governor of Bengkulu, on corruption charges, few there were surprised. Mukti was after all the third governor to have been arrested this way in five years. Well into his second year as governor, he had done little about the crumbling schools and roads in his corner of Sumatra. Nevertheless he and his wife Lilly Maddari were nabbed on suspicion of accepting 1 billion Indonesia rupiah... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2103395/how-agency-waging-war-against-corruption-indonesia-and-winning?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2103395/how-agency-waging-war-against-corruption-indonesia-and-winning?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 22 Jul 2017 06:30:30 +0000 Amid the din of a few hundred protestors that he helped assemble in front of the main gate of Indonesia’s parliament, Cepu Supriyanto struggled to make himself heard by a visiting reporter. With the help of no fewer than eight megaphones, the demonstrators belonging to the Silent Majority, an activist group he founded, screamed their support for the country’s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) as legislators inside mulled a censure motion that could defang the watchdog panel. But... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2102487/why-indonesias-widodo-had-throw-ahok-under-bus?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2102487/why-indonesias-widodo-had-throw-ahok-under-bus?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 15 Jul 2017 04:47:03 +0000 At the Pasar Senen railway station in central Jakarta, Eko Purnomo, 26, shifts uncomfortably on the steel benches that carve up the waiting room where it is standing room only. His back against an overworked air conditioner cranked too high and his foot on a bag of clothes and bedding he’s taking to his family in Bojonegoro, Central Java, he explains why someone who makes just over US$20 a day selling meatball soup on the roadside has been waiting since before sunrise to catch a 2pm train to... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2099740/fast-ends-rush-begins-what-end-ramadan-malaysians-indonesians?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2099740/fast-ends-rush-begins-what-end-ramadan-malaysians-indonesians?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 24 Jun 2017 05:30:00 +0000 Straining to make herself heard over an Oasis cover band, Maggie, who didn’t want to give her full name, explains her bar’s strategy during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. “You don’t want to be too obvious,” she says, also asking that the name of her sprawling venue in the heart of the Kemang entertainment district in Jakarta be withheld – after all, she doesn’t want to attract attention. Every Ramadan during the past 10 years, Maggie has shut the bar in the front, covered the windows and... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2097665/how-indonesian-bars-can-keep-serving-ramadan?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2097665/how-indonesian-bars-can-keep-serving-ramadan?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 11 Jun 2017 05:00:30 +0000 At about 9pm on Sunday, four mini buses, the kind commonly used for public transport in Jakarta, slunk into the Ruko Kokan Permata Complex in Kelapa Gading, in the north of the city. The convoy then wound its way past the Playboy Sensation Funtasty massage parlour and trundled by the blacked out windows of the Delta Massage Health Club – both, in effect, brothels for “straight” men – before making two right turns to stop at Block B, units 15-16. There, a dozen or so plain-clothes police officers... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2095861/where-will-indonesias-anti-gay-hysteria-end?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2095861/where-will-indonesias-anti-gay-hysteria-end?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 28 May 2017 04:00:15 +0000 Almost every year around this time – during the dry season – haze descends on Riau. And every year Jois Marfu’ah suffers. Villages and some businesses across Riau, on the island of Sumatra, slash and burn shrub land to make way for crops. The flames belch out a toxic mess that is dangerous to breathe. Ear, nose and throat infections are common. Day becomes night as visibility drops to 50 metres or so, Jois says. Schools close. Trips to see relatives – already arduous on Indonesia’s woeful roads... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2094952/dry-season-coming-indonesia-readies-fight-forest-fires-singapore?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2094952/dry-season-coming-indonesia-readies-fight-forest-fires-singapore?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 21 May 2017 02:00:30 +0000 I t was during a trip to Egypt in 1995 when Edison Siahaan first felt that something wasn’t quite right with his throat. Four decades had gone by since he started smoking at the age of 15. His voice had been raspy for years. Maybe this was just the dry air tickling the back of his throat. But it wasn’t dry air and it wasn’t a tickle. It was cancer. Doctors excised a portion of his trachea leaving a hole the size of a nickel at the base of the throat. He lost his bank job because for a year... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2094162/whats-keeping-indonesia-china-addicted-smoking?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2094162/whats-keeping-indonesia-china-addicted-smoking?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 13 May 2017 03:00:00 +0000 With its colonial architecture and neat parks, Jakarta’s Menteng district has long been the leafy redoubt of the country’s powerful. But on Wednesday last week, power shifted slightly, to one modest bungalow on a cul-de-sac two blocks from the governor’s residence. This was the personal political headquarters of failed presidential candidate Subianto Prabowo, and where the incoming governor of Jakarta, Anies Baswedan, a close ally, accepted his own stunning election victory. “Our journey is... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2089286/jakartas-ethnic-chinese-leader-gone-it-widodo-next?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2089286/jakartas-ethnic-chinese-leader-gone-it-widodo-next?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 23 Apr 2017 03:00:30 +0000 When Saudi King Salman emerged earlier this week from a Boeing 747 that is bigger than Air Force One onto a specially made escalator and descended onto the tarmac of the government VIP terminal in Jakarta, the irritations that have dogged relations between the kingdom and the world’s largest Muslim majority all but evaporated. Gone – at least for now – were the steady feed of stories of mistreated domestic workers or of injured hajj pilgrims yet to receive compensation. Instead, when the... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2075926/fairytale-trip-and-truth-about-indonesias-importance-saudi?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2075926/fairytale-trip-and-truth-about-indonesias-importance-saudi?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 05 Mar 2017 02:30:15 +0000 Australia's new prime minister, Tony Abbott, is counting on a muscular approach to stem the tide of asylum seekers entering his country aboard flimsy boats. But the signature policy that helped him win election this month may fail due to the indifference of Indonesian officers who are needed to help implement it, and remarks by his senior ministers that have upset their Indonesian counterparts. A planned summit between the Australian premier and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono,... https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1314146/new-australian-premier-abbotts-asylum-plan-needs-indonesian-help?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1314146/new-australian-premier-abbotts-asylum-plan-needs-indonesian-help?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 20 Sep 2013 16:00:00 +0000 Before Indonesia effectively shut down for the Eid ul-Fitr earlier this month, Ibu Tarmi sold a kilogram of potatoes for about 6,000 rupiah. Now that price has almost doubled to help absorb the cost of vegetables she buys from delivery trucks every morning at about 5am. What's more, the 57-year-old Tarmi, who only uses one name, doesn't feel she can pass on to her customers the full cost of the price hike that resulted from the government's decision in June to raise the subsidized price of fuel... https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1298440/indonesias-middle-class-hard-hit-rising-fuel-costs?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1298440/indonesias-middle-class-hard-hit-rising-fuel-costs?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 21 Aug 2013 16:00:00 +0000