Recent News in Indonesia

Who cares about recent news in Indonesia? It is certainly not the US public who seem to be hungry only for the latest dirt on Britney Spears. Living on a triple fault line in California, I often check the USGS* earthquake map. Indonesia has been hit with earthquakes in one place after another. The earthquake activity seems to be tied to a volcano about to erupt. This sparked my interest in reading about recent news in Indonesia. The first website that came up in a google search was the Jakarta Post. The news articles were short, without much detailed information. Following is a quick look at recent news in Indonesia.

Two foreign nationals were arrested while teaching English in Pamulang. They arrived in the country on October 6th and are being deported for violating their tourist visas. It seems "Tangerang is a haven for foreigners working without proper documents. (Multa Fidrus)". One of the teachers is from Australia, which is a quick plane ride from Indonesia. The other is from Britian.

In East Java, police "...arrested and questioned seven members of the controversial Al Qiyadah Al Islamiyah sect."

Police raided two more illegal drug factories in Batam, making that a total of four places found to be manufacturing "shabu-shabu" or crystal methamphetamine.

After a policeman went to the Mimika Baru Police station to complain about police brutality he was involved with an alteration and later died. This set off an "angry mob" that started setting fires to houses. At least 10 homes were burned. The police brutality complaint was about the policeman's son who was allegedly beaten after "drinking liquor and misbehaving". After two days of rioting, a "peace deal" was made. The police released 16 "tribesmen" who were arrested during the riots, in return for weapons seized from the police by "the tribes."

It is believed that 10 villagers from Flores, contracted anthrax after cutting up and eating a buffalo infected with the disease.

Fumes from crude palm oil are thought to be responsible for the deaths of 6 workmen, three of them teenagers. They were cleaning a tanker after a shipment of the palm oil had arrived. Indonesia, evidentially, does not have laws regarding wearing protective clothing and masks when working around chemicals.

A liquefied petroleum gas cylinder explosion at a bread factory killed one and injured 5.

The Jakarta Post included a 17 sentence article about miners who were injured after a landslide. What interested me about this article was how the brief report implied some USA wrong-doing in the workers' injuries. Those 17 sentences mentioned a prior landslide at the employee's cafeteria had killed two people. It also mentions that the US owned "gold and copper" company has earned billions of dollars since it began in the 1970s in an arrangement with "U.S. backed dictator Suharto."

The airport in East Java has been rated poorly by the USA Federal Aviation Administration. Recent news in Indonesia includes the latest in a string of airplane accidents. There were only minor injuries when a plane, landing in a heavy rainstorm, skidded off the runway due to a broken axle. The article states over a 100 people have died to accidents this year.

A 14 year old boy was stomped to death by a wild elephant after running into the animal with his motorbike. A mother and 3 year old daughter also died when elephants were searching for food in their village in May. According to environmentalists, the wild elephants are being forced to look for new feeding grounds due to illegal logging and farming. There are an estimated 2,500 elephants living in the Bukit Barisan National Park on Sumatra Island where the fatality happened.

A trial in New York has begun in a case where a Long Island couple is accused of forcing two Indonesian housekeepers into slave labor that involved physical and psychological abuse. The couple denies the allegations, claiming the ladies practiced witchcraft and self-mutilation. The couple "were arrested in May after Samirah, wearing tattered clothes, was found wandering outside of a Long Island donut shop, pleading for help." The second woman was found after police obtained a search warrant. She was found in a closet in the basement.

An imminent eruption of the volcano, Mt. Kelud, was reported; evacuations ordered; some residents on the volcano hillside refused to leave, not believing it would erupt; others fled to "tent cities"; later news says that the experts were wrong and there is no immediate danger of a destructive eruption. The volcano began erupting on Saturday, November 3.

Another volcano, Mt. Soputan has been spewing ashes putting the Southeast Minahasa district on a "red alert".

Other recent Indonesian news included reports of an Art Summit and shadow puppet performances called Wayang. Fusing the traditional art with technology, master Bali puppeteer, I Made Sidia, was a hit with "Wayang Lisnik" or "electric puppet". The master uses humor to critique social and political issues in contemporary society.

Never found the article I searched for about the connection between volcano activity and earthquakes~an 8.4 magnitude quake in September, 2007 followed by numerous aftershocks and a 7.1 magnitude quake on Thursday, November 1st. What I did find was a more interesting than anything about Britney Spears or any of the media's flavor of the month news. For more recent news in Indonesia visit the Jakarta Post dot com.

*USGS,United States Geological Survey earthquake map