The Indonesian military is reported to be engaged in its biggest operation for five months as light tanks and armored personnel carriers pounded a base of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).
Troops were using light tanks and armored personnel carriers against a suspected concentration of GAM rebels in an area 35 kilometers south of the industrial township of Lhokseumawe.
Robert Go, Tabanan (Bali) – Some of Indonesia's top businessmen are thumbing their noses at the nation's latest bid to collect outstanding debts worth more than US$13 billion, leaving officials frustrated over their blatant attempt to use the legal system to their advantage.
Dan Murphy, Jakarta – Investigators on three continents are moving closer to definitively tying Al Qaeda and its Indonesian allies to the October 12 bomb blast at the Sari Club on the island of Bali that killed at least 190 people.
Tom Fawthrop – The highly politicized Indonesian military, trained in waging terror during more than 30 years of General Suharto's dictatorship, are among the suspects in last month's Bali bombing, according to a respected Indonesian commentator.
Kurniawan Hari, Jakarta – The latest draft of the broadcasting law, to be deliberated in the next two weeks, reveals the ignorance of the House of Representatives and the government in regards public demands for revision of several contentious articles.
Jakarta – As many as 20 military officers went on trial Wednesday for allegedly involvement in the deadly attack at the Langkat police station and the Binjai Mobile Brigade headquarters in September.
The Australian Government is continuing to discuss the prospect of renewing military links with Indonesia's notorious Special Forces, Kopassus.
The Defence Minister, Robert Hill has previously said Australia might work with Kopassus to fight terrorism in the region.
David Costello – Should Australia conduct joint exercises and training with Indonesia's special forces to boost the fight against terrorism and the hunt for the Bali bombers? The question has become a political football in Canberra and Washington.
Matthew Moore, Mark Riley and Mark Baker – The Indonesian President, Megawati Soekarnoputri, has cautioned Australia not to overreact to the terrorism threat and not to harass Indonesian nationals, as the increasingly brittle relationship between the countries became further strained.
Dili – Defense force recruits attacked traffic police in the East Timorese capital Friday, in an apparent act of revenge, injuring at least two officers.
East Timor's first Portuguese-language newspaper in more than a quarter century will be formally launched in Dili Thursday.
Jakarta – Two Indonesian soldiers were among seven people indicted Wednesday in East Timor for killing a Dutch journalist and 19 others during the country's independence struggle in 1999, the UN said in a statement.
Hundreds of demonstrators marched on the Australian embassy in Jakarta yesterday, angry over Australia's raids on Indonesians suspected of having links to the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah.
Protesters blocked the entrance to the embassy, waving banners including "Indonesia under attack" and "Go to hell".
The number of people with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) has increased drastically by 340 percent to 359 in June, 2002 from 51 in 1999 due to the approach used to handle HIV/AIDS cases, according to a local foundation.
Iggy Kim – On October 24, a debate was held in Britain's House of Commons over the Foreign Office's handling of the detention of Lesley McCulloch in Indonesia. The debate was initiated by Alan Reid, the Scottish Liberal Democrats member for Argyll and Bute, where McCulloch's parents live. McCulloch is a British citizen and resident of Australia.
The Federal Opposition is backing away from a Government proposal for Australia to resume military ties with elite Kopassus units from the Indonesian Army.
The move has been proposed by Defence Minister Robert Hill, as part of the response to the Bali bombings.
Roger Maynard, Sydney – The claim that Australia's spy agency passed on intelligence reports to the United States which implicate the Indonesian military in the West Papua mine ambush could add tension to the already uneasy relationship between Canberra and Jakarta.
Max Lane, Jakarta – The "war on terror" propaganda campaign being conducted by the Australian and US governments is providing ammunition for xenophobic right-wing political forces in Indonesia.
[Indonesian police say they have made significant progress in the hunt for the perpetrators of the Bali bombings. They say they've arrested the owner of a minivan which they believe was used in the car-bomb attack last month. But again, questions are again being raised about the efficiency of the Indonesian police in pursuing the investigation.]
Nani Farida, Banda Aceh – The mystery behind the Free Aceh Movement (GAM)'s decision to delay signing a peace agreement with the government was partly explained by a respected Acehnese Muslim leader over the weekend.
[New evidence has emerged that the Indonesian army was directly involved in the ambush that killed two Americans and an Indonesian near the Freeport Gold mine in the Indonesian province of Papua last August. Suspicion for the attack initially fell on the Free Papua Movement.
Ahmad Junaidi, Jakarta – Labor unions demanded City Governor Sutiyoso on Monday to review its decree on the 2003 provincial minimum wage which rules an increase of 7 percent from the current Rp 590,000 to Rp 631,000 per month.
Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, Jakarta – Thousands of workers from eight textile and textile-products factories in Greater Jakarta have been left without jobs and payment after their foreign employers abruptly stopped operations and fled the country in the first half of this year.
Dili – An average of 12 percent of lawmakers do not attend sittings of East Timor's parliament and only one in ten of these absentees offers a valid excuse for their non-appearance, a report commissioned by the Dili parliament reveals.
Jill Jolliffe, Atambua – East Timor's President Xanana Gusmao has called on the United Nations to lower its security rating for West Timor, which is now at a higher stage of alert than Afghanistan or Bali.
Dili – International donations were used to plug East Timor's USD 22 million budget deficit in the financial year 2001-2002, although the world's newest nation's state receipts were higher than anticipated in this period.
Jill Jolliffe, Kupang – President Jose "Xanana" Gusmao has led a delegation of more than 100 East Timorese, including parliamentarians, cabinet ministers, a football team and 16 entertainers, to West Timor in a new bid to empty refugee camps there.
Ellen Nakashima and Alan Sipress, Jakarta – Senior Indonesian military officials discussed an operation against Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. before an ambush near its mine in Papua province that killed two Americans and one Indonesian on August 31, according to intelligence obtained by the United States, a US government official and other sources said.
Paul Tait, Sydney – At least three Papuan men fired about 200 rounds from rifles and shotguns into a convoy of mainly US teachers, killing three, near a huge gold mine in Indonesia's Papua two months ago, ambush victims said on Sunday.
Catherine Porter – John Rumbiak has a theory about the recent bombing in his native Indonesia. It wasn't the work of Muslim extremists in cahoots with the Al Qaeda terrorist network, the human-rights activist says.
On August 31, 2002, unidentified assailants opened fire on an International School bus carrying innocent civilians. American nationals Ted Burcon and Ricky Spear and Indonesian national F.X. Bambang Riwanto were killed.
Leonard C. Sebastian – The Indonesian government has responded to the Bali bombing by issuing two anti-terrorism regulations generally modelled on Canada's anti-terrorism legislation Bill C-36.
Hamish McDonald Herald, Jakarta – United States intelligence agencies have intercepted messages between Indonesian army commanders indicating they were involved in staging an ambush at the remote Freeport-McMoRan mine in which three schoolteachers – two of them Americans – were killed, according to a source close to the US embassy in Jakarta.
Jill Jolliffe, Lacluta – In the remote south coast town of Lacluta, nine villagers accused of violence against their neighbours during 1999 militia attacks have faced their victims in the presence of the community.
Kupang – East Timorese president Xanana Gusmao told a sports stadium filled with East Timorese refugees Saturday that it was their decision whether or not to return home.
But Gusmao told the crowd of about 1,000 people that his country will welcome those who come back.
Bill Guerin – The financial crisis of 1997 brought Indonesia's previously spectacular economic growth to an abrupt halt. Going through the ensuing rigors of massive political change, economic reform and decentralization has left the country ill-equipped to face the very latest challenges of encouraging new inward investment.
Hamish McDonald and Matthew Moore – Early this week, a military attache with a Western embassy in Jakarta was given a tip-off by senior officers in Indonesian armed forces headquarters: the head of the counter-terrorism unit with the Indonesian army's special forces had been identified as a source of the explosives used in the October 12 bombings in Bali.
Kupang – The president of the Democratic Republic of East Timor, Alexander "Xanana" Gusmao, arrived here on Friday morning, amid tight security, for a four-day official trip that will include visits to East Timorese refugee camps.
Jakarta – Undeterred by fierce criticism of his policy, Jakarta governor Sutiyoso has reiterated his intention to close the city to migrants who do not have sufficient money to live on, job offers or a house to stay in.
News that Indonesian soldiers might have been involved in an August ambush in Papua that killed two Americans and an Indonesian and wounded 11 isn't surprising. The history of the chaotic province has been marked by separatist revolts and reprisals; civilian deaths at the hands of the army have occurred before.
Marianne Kearney, Jakarta – The Indonesian Islamic militant group Laskar Jihad had relocated from Maluku to Papua province where it was attacking churches and mosques, church sources said yesterday.
This made a mockery of the group's claims that it had disbanded after the October 12 Bali bombings, they said.
Shawn Donnan, Jakarta – A key member of the US Congress yesterday tied resuming military aid to Jakarta to solving the killing in September of two Americans – for which members of the Indonesian military are now prime suspects.
IV was going to press as news came in of the terrorist bombing in Bali which led to the deaths of almost 200 people. While the Indonesian government has been accused of laxity in its treatment of Islamic militants, it has been ferocious in its repression of genuine movements for self-determination like those in the province of Aceh.
Nethy Dharma Somba, Jayapura – The Police have deployed hundreds of personnel to Indonesia's border area with Papua New Guinea (PNG) to prevent Papua's most wanted man, Benny Wenda, from escaping to the neighboring country after he escaped from jail on Sunday.
A long-awaited round of peace talks between the Indonesian government and separatist rebels from Aceh province will get underway on November 2-5 in Switzerland, Aceh Governor Abdullah Puteh said here.
[With the world's media spotlight heavily focused on the Bali bombings, the plight of Australian academic Lesley McCulloch has been largely forgotten. For the past seven weeks, the British-born Australian resident has been held in a police station in the Indonesian province of Aceh.
Banda Aceh – Four people, including a woman, are the latest casualties of decades-long violence between government and separatist rebel forces in Aceh province, residents said on Wednesday.
They told journalists that two men, including an 18-year-old high school student, were found dead in a oil palm plantation in Paya Rambong, East Aceh, on Tuesday.
[There is a growing backlash in Indonesia over the arrest of Abu Bakar Bashir. A powerful visitor went to visit him in hospital recently, the chairman of one of Indonesia's largest Muslim organisations, Muhammadiyah. After the meeting, Professor Ahmad Syafii Marrif said that Bashir is a "scapegoat", arrested only after pressure from the United States.
Sri Wahyuni and Tarko Sudiarno, Surakarta/Yogyakarta – Hundreds of alumni from Al-Mukmin Islamic Boarding School went on strike in Yogyakarta on Wednesday to protest the police arrest of their headmaster and terror suspect Abu Bakar Ba'asyir.
Graham Matthews, Melbourne – Some 400 people on October 23 attended a forum on the Bali bombings. It was organised by Asialink and was also simulcast on Radio National and was addressed by academics Arief Budiman, Merle Ricklefs and Tim Lindsey, as well as Greg Fergin, political counsellor for the US embassy.