Talking Indonesia: wildlife trafficking & conservation
Wildlife trafficking is thought to be the third largest illegal trade after drugs and weapons. As a global hotspot for this illicit trade, Indonesia is not only a source country for the rapidly growing...
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: urban villages and activism
Jakarta’s urban village (kampung) communities have received considerable attention over the past few months amid the hotly contested Jakarta gubernatorial election. While most of the election coverage...
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: attacks on the Corruption Eradication Commission
In April, an unknown assailant threw acid in the face of a Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) senior investigator, Novel Baswedan, as he walked home from morning prayers. It was the latest in a...
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: Indonesia as a maritime power
In line with President Joko Widodo’s vision to establish Indonesia as a global maritime fulcrum, Indonesia in February issued its first National Ocean Policy. The drafting of the policy was overseen by...
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: social media, politics and the ‘freedom to hate’
The Jakarta gubernatorial election, held earlier this year, was perhaps the most divisive and bitterly fought campaign seen in modern Indonesian politics. Social media and the internet played a large...
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: migrant workers
The vast number of Indonesian migrant workers working abroad have long been a prominent feature of Indonesia’s labour market. Indonesian government policy on migrant workers tends to come into the...
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: higher education
Indonesia’s tertiary education institutions have long performed poorly in global university rankings. Among the various deficits that are routinely recorded are low teaching and research quality,...
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: food sovereignty
In the midst of growing nationalism, the notion of “food sovereignty” has come to occupy an increasingly prominent place in food policy within Indonesia. But what does food sovereignty mean, and is it...
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: human rights on film
In 2016, Tempo magazine named Istirahatlah Kata-Kata (Solo, Solitude) its film of the year. The arthouse film attracted acclaim at festivals around the world, and played to packed houses in cinemas...
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: democracy in peril?
Last month protesters disrupted a meeting at the offices of the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation (LBH Jakarta) and its national umbrella body, the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI). In what was a...
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: political Islam and political attitudes
How does support for political Islam correlate with other political attitudes in Indonesia, such as support for decentralisation, choice of a political party, or anti-Chinese sentiment? How have the...
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: Jokowi at three years
October 2017 marked three years since President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo came to power. Jokowi won support in 2014 with lofty promises of infrastructure building, better governance, improved welfare, and...
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: war on drugs
In the shadow of Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody crackdown on drugs, Indonesia has been fighting its own war on drugs. Under President Joko Widodo, executions for drug traffickers were resumed and, more...
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: Pornography
The prohibition of pornography has been a controversial area of law in Indonesia, attracting the attention both of Islamic conservatives and activists promoting freedom of expression. Several public...
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: Being Chinese and Muslim
Ethnic Chinese make up less than three percent of Indonesia’s population. Of this group, a tiny minority are Muslim. As such, ethnic Chinese Muslims occupy a unique and significant position where the...
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: urban youth
Like young people across the globe, young Indonesians are often misunderstood. The older generations perceive them as entitled, unmotivated, apathetic and narcissistic, a far cry from the image of the...
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: disengagement from terrorism
Violent Islamist extremism has been a serious security threat in Indonesia for nearly two decades. But while terrorist networks continue to recruit new members, there are also former militants who have...
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: a new criminal code
Indonesia’s Criminal Code, the KUHP, was enacted by the Dutch in 1918, and has been amended only a handful of times since the colonial era. Efforts to complete and enact a new draft of the code over...
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: vigilantism
Vigilantism made headlines in Indonesia in 2017 owing to a spate of so-called “persecution” incidents, entailing physical intimidation or violence against online critics of prominent religious figures....
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: environmental politics
Indonesia’s environmental challenges are vast, and the impacts of forest degradation, in particular, have implications globally as well as locally. For many years, environmental groups and academics...
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