Almost nine years since the fall of the dictator Suharto, one word continues to dominate discussions of the widespread social discontent in Indonesia: “fragmentation”.
Indonesia
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is coming under increasing pressure to release a report implicating security forces in the murder two years ago of Munir, Indonesia’s most prominent human rights activist.
Although still three years away, citing the need to prevent Indonesia’s 2009 general elections from becoming “overly fragmented” by a plethora of new political parties, legislators are seeking to limit the number of parties that can participate.
The Indonesian government recently issued a ministerial decree to implement a citizenship law passed in July. The law will clarify the status of hundreds of Indonesians studying abroad during the alleged 1965 coup attempt who had their citizenship stripped by the Suharto regime after the overthrow of President Sukarno for alleged links to “subversive movements”. People’s Democratic Party chairperson Dita Indah Sari argues that dealing with the exiles’ status should not be an administrative question, but one of justice for victims of Suharto’s New Order regime.
On the evening of March 2 at Jakarta airport, Dr Ed Aspinall, a lecturer in South East Asian history at the University of Sydney, was prevented from entering Indonesia.
The Indonesian government has an almost "pathological hostility to separatism", Dr Ed Aspinall, lecturer in South-East Asian Studies at Sydney University, told a forum on July 2.
Sukarno, the first president of Indonesia, was 27 years old when he became chairperson of the Indonesian National Party in the 1920s. Mohammed Hatta was a similar age when he took over the leadership of the nationalist
- Previous page
- Page 13