Ardimas Sasdi, Jakarta – The process of ending hostilities in troubled Aceh, which has been underway for the last five months, has entered a new, critical phase, which if not handled pr

Dili – Police in East Timor have launched a crackdown on prostitution, raiding two massage parlors in the past month and arresting four people, an officer said Friday.

Devi Asmarani, Jakarta – Unhappiness with the way some countries have been treating its citizens abroad is behind Indonesia's tit-for-tat decision to scrap visa-free entry privileges gr

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, Jakarta – Adding insult to injury of the employees of state-owned Djakarta Transportation bus company (PPD), the government has planned to lay off about 2,000 wor

Jakarta – Indonesia threatened yesterday to resume full combat operations in restive Aceh province as fresh clashes between troops and rebels killed four people, putting yet more strain

Jakarta – Indonesia's army commander yesterday warned rebels in Aceh province to drop their independence bid or face a military crackdown in the latest challenge to a four-month peace d

Tiarma Siboro, Jakarta – The Indonesian Military (TNI) has found strong indications of the involvement of its own members in a recent burglary at the Wamena military district's arsenal

Jakarta – The Star Party of Reform (PBR) failed on Wednesday to make good on its earlier boast that it would gather one million supporters in a rally against the US-led attack on Iraq.

Jakarta – Some 600 people rallied on Wednesday outside the US embassy, torching an effigy of a gun-toting US President George Bush and describing the war in Iraq as genocide.

Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri is facing the apparent unravelling of the peace pact in Aceh province.

A'an Suryana, Jakarta – The role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to oversee the country's economic reform program is still crucial to help maintain investor confidence in the e

The Federal Government has been accused of leaving East Timorese asylum seekers to starve by cutting off their welfare payments while they wait to hear if they are allowed to stay in Au

Bandung – Hundreds of elementary school students staged a rally in front of the West Java provincial legislature building, demanding the local administration to waive their monthly scho

Devi Asmarani, Jakarta – Internal security and transnational crime will be the biggest threat to Indonesia's security and the military should be given more powers to handle them, a gove

Bill Guerin, Jakarta – Cash-strapped state-owned television station Televisi Republik Indonesia (TVRI) has 7,158 employees and 395 relay stations in 26 provinces.

Shawn Donnan and Taufan Hidayat – When Singapore's ST Telemedia paid $630m last November for a 42 per cent stake in Indosat, Indonesia's number two telecommunications carrier, it was wi

Jakarta – Some 57 small islands in Indonesia are ready to receive investors willing to develop businesses there, the fishing ministry's Director General for Coastal Areas and Small Isla

Dili (Agencies) – Prosecutors in East Timor said on Wednesday they have indicted 16 people including eight Indonesian army officers for crimes against humanity before and after the terr

Human rights activists and legal experts in East Timor have condemned proposed moves to limit the freedom of foreigners.

Banda Aceh – Indonesia's peace pact in Aceh suffered major blows on Tuesday when nine people were reported killed and peace monitors separately ordered their teams across the province t

William Birnbauer – A benign attitude to his country's tormentors is not widely understood, but East Timor's "Mandela" wants to move on. William Birnbauer reports.

Dean Yates, Jakarta – A decision by Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri to split restive Papua into three provinces has created serious tension and could spark violence, a respec

Sonia Kolesnikov, Singapore – The Indonesian economy has so far proven robust, weathering the Bali storm of last October.

Hans Gebze is a West Papuan student based in Yogyakarta. He has been involved in political struggle since before 1998.

Nethy Dharma Somba, Jayapura – After four days of an operation to recover 29 stolen rifles and the rebels who allegedly stole them, combat soldiers from the Army's Special Forces (Kopas

Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, Jakarta – About 3,000 bus drivers, conductors and staff of state-owned Jakarta Transportation company (PPD) planned to strike on Wednesday and attend a rally de

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja and Muninggar Sri Saraswati, Jakarta – The government has forged ahead with its plan to revoke the visa-free facility extended to nationals of 48 countries despite

Jakarta – With the war in Iraq moving closer to its third week old, anti-American protesters in the country displayed no signs of fatigue as they continued to voice their demand for an

Max Lane, Jakarta – On March 30, at least 100,000 people marched through this city's streets to protest against the invasion of Iraq by the United States and its British and Australian

As East Timor prepares to mark its first anniversary of independence, the nation's opposition parties have united to present a strong alternative to the government.

Jakarta – Three student activists were tried in court on Monday for public disorder following a rally near the residence of President Megawati Soekarnoputri in January.

Jakarta – The Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) strongly protested the police's decision to declare an editor of Tempo magazine, Ahmad Taufik, as a suspect in a defamation case.

Cynthia Banham – Refugee groups are claiming the Federal Government is close to making a decision on the fate of East Timorese asylum seekers that would prolong their limbo status for t

President Megawati Sukarnoputri has urged police to cease their involvement in illegal logging and timber smuggling.

Jakarta – Indonesia and South Korea are considering co-operating to build a $A334 million nuclear power plant in Madura Island just off the densely populated province of East Java.

Bill Guerin, Jakarta – Eddie Widiono Suwondo, president of state power utility Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN), is struggling to bring the virtually bankrupt monopoly back into the blac

A long-running industrial dispute in Indonesia has come to an end.

The fragile peace pact in Indonesia's troubled Aceh province has come under further strain, with the office of an international peace monitoring group attacked on the weekend, the secon

Jakarta (Agencies) – Hundreds of people besieged a peace monitoring office in the restive province of Aceh on Monday, one day after a separate facility was torched, in the latest blow t

Banda Aceh – International peace monitors in Indonesia's Aceh province yesterday said they would withdraw from the south of the province after a mob of up to 900 people threatened to bu

President Xanana Gusmao concedes security will be a concern when United Nations peacekeepers pull out of East Timor.

Dili – Most of East Timor's opposition parties signed a so-called "national unity platform" Monday, bitterly criticizing Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri's cabinet and demanding the formati

Bandung – Megawati Soekarnoputri, chairwoman of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) said on Saturday that her party had contributed only a little to the nation.

Jakarta – Thousands of people on Sunday took part in anti-war protests in several cities across the country, AFP reported.

Jakarta – The Golkar Party made a belated debut in the anti-war protest stakes on Sunday, more than two weeks after many other groups took to streets across the country to condemn the U

Jerry Norton, Jakarta – The president of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, told a conference of Islamic women on Monday that women across the world should launch a mov

Tangerang – After a three-day rally, some 900 factory workers of PT Hancook Ceramics Indonesia, in the Pasar Kemis district of Tangerang, went on strike from Friday to Saturday demandin

Nethy Dharma Somba and Tiarma Siboro, Jakarta/Jayapura – Army Chief of Staff Gen.

Ellen Nakashima, Jakarta – On a recent day in a weathered courthouse in Jakarta sat defendant Tono Suratman, an army brigadier general accused of failing to prevent two massacres in Eas

Jakarta – The two largest political parties came under fire from a small party on Friday for not joining the antiwar rallies against the United States-led strike on Iraq, which has now