<![CDATA[Living In Indonesia Expat Forum - Politics & Current Events]]> http://www.livinginindonesiaforum.org/ Discussions of news and politics of the day. en Fri, 24 May 2013 10:40:51 GMT vBulletin 15 http://www.livinginindonesiaforum.org/images/misc/rss.png <![CDATA[Living In Indonesia Expat Forum - Politics & Current Events]]> http://www.livinginindonesiaforum.org/ Another Death from Methanol Poisoning http://www.livinginindonesiaforum.org/showthread.php/34132-Another-Death-from-Methanol-Poisoning?goto=newpost Fri, 17 May 2013 14:02:20 GMT Cheznye Emmons died after drinking from a bottle labelled "gin" that later turned out to be filled with deadly methanol.

The 23-year-old had been travelling across south Asia with her boyfriend Joe Cook, 21, and a male friend the couple had met on their travels when they bought the tainted alcohol from a local shop in Indonesia.

Methanol is extremely poisonous and is known to cause kidney failure, blindness, seizures and death even in small doses.

All three travellers fell ill within hours of consuming the toxic substance – although Miss Emmons soon took a turn for the worse.

Within days the beauty therapist, from Great Wakering, Essex, complained of not being able to see and was rushed to the nearest eye clinic.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...Indonesia.html
]]> lantern http://www.livinginindonesiaforum.org/showthread.php/34132-Another-Death-from-Methanol-Poisoning Japanese Mayor Sanctions Rape to Keep the Troops in Line http://www.livinginindonesiaforum.org/showthread.php/34083-Japanese-Mayor-Sanctions-Rape-to-Keep-the-Troops-in-Line?goto=newpost Thu, 16 May 2013 05:58:12 GMT According to Osaka mayor, Toru Hashimoto, "To maintain discipline in the military, it must have been necessary at that time. For soldiers who risked their lives in circumstances where bullets are flying around like rain and wind, if you want them to get some rest, a comfort women system was necessary. That's clear to anyone." He was talking about so called "Comfort Women" from nations conquered by the Japanese during World War II -- China, Korea, the Philippines, and Indonesia, among others.

Its not clear to me, Mr. Hashimoto. What is clear is the there is but a thin veneer of civilization covering an arrogant, racist barbarism that could once again rise to menace Asia and the world.

Read the Jakarta Post report here: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2...necessary.html ]]> waarmstrong http://www.livinginindonesiaforum.org/showthread.php/34083-Japanese-Mayor-Sanctions-Rape-to-Keep-the-Troops-in-Line Is it illegal for 7-Eleven and Indomaret to sell alcohol in Grogol?!? http://www.livinginindonesiaforum.org/showthread.php/33981-Is-it-illegal-for-7-Eleven-and-Indomaret-to-sell-alcohol-in-Grogol-!?goto=newpost Sun, 12 May 2013 15:06:46 GMT Just stumbled over this article and am a bit baffled. Not so much by the fact that a religiously motivated mob raided stores that sold alcohol, but... Just stumbled over this article and am a bit baffled. Not so much by the fact that a religiously motivated mob raided stores that sold alcohol, but by the fact that the article doesn't clarify what the legal situation is.

Is it illegal for stores to sell alcohol in Grogol, and if so, why?

Quote:
“We have since March warned them not to sell alcoholic drinks. But these stores kept on selling the beverages freely,” Khalid, the coordinator of the mob, said as quoted by Beritajakarta.com.Members of the Jakarta Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) were on location, but they remained on the sidelines during the incident, which caused a traffic jam along Jalan Tanjung Duren Raya.
Representatives from the stores promised the group that they would stop selling alcohol.
Khalid demanded that Satpol PP and the police take strict action against minimarts that openly offer alcoholic beverages.
Grogol Petamburan subdistrict head Denny Ramdhani said that out of the 12 minimarts operating in his area, only the 7-Eleven and the Indomaret continue to deal booze.
“If in the future they still sell alchol, we will … revoke the permits of the two stores,” Denny said.

Full article here: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/...olic-beverages


Did I not get the memo on alcohol now being illegal in Grogol or what is going on? :ohwell: ]]> Hiram http://www.livinginindonesiaforum.org/showthread.php/33981-Is-it-illegal-for-7-Eleven-and-Indomaret-to-sell-alcohol-in-Grogol-! Beef prices http://www.livinginindonesiaforum.org/showthread.php/33819-Beef-prices?goto=newpost Mon, 06 May 2013 22:42:21 GMT Just read this in today's jak globe:

"The KPK has alleged that the payment was part of a Rp 40 billion commitment Maria made for the 8,000-ton additional import quota, as she promised to give Luthfi a fee of Rp 5,000 for every kilo of beef he allowed the company to import."

Rp 5,000 is about how much beef prices have gone up by where I am recently. Is this why? If so I'm seriously thinking about not buying any more beef until the price goes back to normal. ]]> JohnOates http://www.livinginindonesiaforum.org/showthread.php/33819-Beef-prices <![CDATA[They're taking our children]]> http://www.livinginindonesiaforum.org/showthread.php/33804-They-re-taking-our-children?goto=newpost Mon, 06 May 2013 12:26:34 GMT In the next five years, PEW will release their survey, which highlights the increasing trend amongst Papuans of opting for the implementation of... In the next five years, PEW will release their survey, which highlights the increasing trend amongst Papuans of opting for the implementation of Sharia Law. Soon infidels will no longer to do that in Papua let alone Medan. Timor might be the last option as Bali will be inundated with Javanese and Lombok migrants.


http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/t...429-2inhf.html

They're taking our children

Published: May 4, 2013 - 3:00AM

The village of Megapura in the central highlands of Indonesia's far-eastern province of West Papua is so remote that supplies arrive by air or by foot only. Johanes Lokobal has lived here all his life. He does not know his exact age: "Just old," he croaks. He's also poor. "I help in the fields. I earn about 20,000 rupiah [$2] per day. I clean the school garden." But in a hard life, one hardship particularly offends him. In 2005, his only son, Yope, was taken to faraway Jakarta. Lokobal did not want Yope to go. The boy was perhaps 14, but big and strong, a good worker. The men responsible took him anyway. A few years later, Yope died. Nobody can tell Lokobal how, nor exactly when, and he has no idea where his son is buried. All he knows, fiercely, is that this was not supposed to happen.Johanes Lokobal sits on the grass that cushions the wooden floor of his little, one-room house. He warms his hands at a fire set in the centre. From time to time a pig, out of sight in an annex, squeals and slams itself thunderously against the adjoining wall.

"If he was still alive, he would be the one to look after the family," Lokobal says. "He would go to the forest to collect the firewood for the family. So I am sad."

The men who took Yope were part of an organised traffic in West Papuan youth. A six-month Good Weekend investigation has confirmed that children, possibly in their thousands, have been enticed away over the past decade or more with the promise of a free education. In a province where the schools are poor and the families poorer still, no-cost schooling can be an irresistible offer.
But for some of these children, who may be as young as five, it's only when they arrive that they find out they have been recruited by "pesantren", Islamic boarding schools, where time to study maths, science or language is dwarfed by the hours spent in the mosque. There, in the words of one pesantren leader, "They learn to honour God, which is the main thing." These schools have one aim: to send their graduates back to Christian-majority Papua to spread their muscular form of Islam.

Ask the 100 Papuan boys and girls at the Daarur Rasul school outside Jakarta what they want to be when they grow up and they shout, "Ustad! Ustad! [religious teacher]."

In Papua, particularly in the Highlands, the issues of religious and cultural identity are red-hot. Census data from over the past four decades shows that the indigenous population is now matched in number by recent migrants, largely Muslims, from other parts of Indonesia. The newcomers' domination of the economy, particularly in the western half of the province, effectively marginalises the original inhabitants. This immigration means that indigenous Papuans have a real - and realistic - fear of becoming an ethnic and religious minority in their own country. Stories of people taking away their children adds an emotive edge and has the potential to inflame tensions in an already volatile region.

For about 50 years, a separatist insurgency has been active in Papua and hundreds of thousands have died in their efforts to gain independence for the province. Christianity, brought by Dutch and German missionaries, is both the faith of a vast majority of the indigenous population, and a key part of their identity. Islam actually has an even longer history in Papua than Christianity, but it's of a gentler kind than what's preached in Java's increasingly hardline mosques and it's still, for the moment at least, the minority religion. But when the pesantren children return from Java, their faith has changed. "They become different persons," Papuan Christian leader Benny Giay, tells me. "They have been brainwashed".

The schools insist they recruit only students who are already Muslims, but it's clear they are not too fussy. At Daarur Rasul, I quickly found two little boys, Filipus and Aldi, who were mualaf - brand new converts from Christianity. One radical Islamic organisation, Al Fatih Kafah Nusantara (AFKN), makes no bones about its intention to convert, and to use religion for political ends. Leader Fadzlan Garamatan says AFKN has brought 2200 children out of Papua as part of his program of nationalistic "Islamicisation". "When [Papuans] convert to Islam, their desire to be independent reduces," says Fadzlan on AFKN's internet page.

In restive West Papua, the movement and conversion of young children is politically explosive. We were warned a number of times not to chase the story. It's never reported in the Indonesian press. The chief of the Indonesia government's Jakarta-based Unit for the Acceleration of Development in Papua and West Papua, Bambang Darmono, downplays it as just one of "many issues in Papua", and the Religious Affairs Ministry's director of pesantrens, Saefudin, says he has never heard of it. But my efforts to trace the life and death of one Papuan boy has revealed that the trade goes on. And, in the service of grand religious and political aims, sometimes young lives are broken.

Elias Lokobal smiles to himself when he talks about the feisty little stepbrother he lost, but when talk turns to Amir Lani, his expression darkens. Lani is a local cleric in Megapura and the other villages surrounding the highland capital, Wamena. It was in about 2005 when he and Aloysius Kowenip, the police chief from the nearby town of Yahukimo, began approaching families to recruit their children. The pair worked to take five boys from vulnerable families in each of five villages and transport them to Java for education. Kowenip, a Christian, says it was his idea to "help" the children, and that the funding came from "the local government and an Islamic organisation" whose name he could not remember. He says he sought out children with only one living parent because "nobody guided them".

Young Yope was one such boy. Although he had a stepmother, his natural mother had died. Neither Lani nor Kowenip ever visited Yope's father, Johanes Lokobal, to explain their scheme. It still rankles. "These people should ask permission from the parents," Lokobal says. Instead, they asked young Yope himself, who was enthusiastic about this adventure. Some friends had gone the previous year and he was keen to join them.

When it came time for Yope to depart, it happened in a flash, stepbrother Elias recalls. "I went to school, and when I came back there was no one home."
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/t...429-2inhf.html

*I can't paste the whole story here as the maximum character of one post is 10000. I divided the article into three posts but if you want to read the whole piece click the link above! ]]> ponyexpress http://www.livinginindonesiaforum.org/showthread.php/33804-They-re-taking-our-children