Nurdin Hasan, Banda Aceh – Aceh Governor Zaini Abdullah has criticized the action by security forces to forcefully seize hundreds of flags bearing the symbol of the now-disbanded separa

Nurdin Hasan, Banda Aceh – Shariah Police in West Aceh said on Sunday that they have arrested total of 35 food vendors in the district for selling meals during Ramadan while other peopl

Ina Parlina and Yuliasri Perdani, Jakarta – Home Minister Gamawan Fauzi is claiming that the Aceh administration has opened negotiations to change its official provincial flag and coat

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Nurdin Hasan – Dozens of plain-clothes security forces moved through the streets of Aceh's Lhokseumawe city early Friday morning, seizing hundreds of flags bearing the symbol of the now

Nurdin Hasan, Ketol, Central Aceh – The sound of a hammer banging on tin echoes through this small village hemmed in by hills.

Robertus Wardi – Officials in Jakarta have lashed out at the Aceh administration for its insistence on flying the flag of a now-disbanded separatist group as its provincial standard.

Angela Dewan, Lhokseumawe – As the sun sets over Aceh province on the westernmost tip of Indonesia and the call to prayer blares from mosque speakers, five policemen leap onto the back

Hotli Simanjuntak and Nadya Natahadibrata, Banda Aceh/Jakarta – More than 7,400 people have joined an online campaign calling on the government to launch a probe into the death of a wil

SP/Muhammad Hamzah, Banda Aceh – Police were investigating last night after an East Aceh legislator's car was found to have been shot at by an unknown party in the early hours of Sunday

Nurdin Hasan, Banda Aceh – A rescue team involving the military, police and volunteers is struggling through rain and rubble to search for bodies and deliver aid, which survivors of Tue

Banda Aceh, Indonesia – Soldiers, police and volunteers fanned out across an earthquake-damaged region of western Indonesia on Wednesday, scouring the debris of fallen homes and landsli

Shane J. Barter – The highly anticipated 2014 Indonesian national elections are fast approaching.

Banda Aceh – The government in Aceh has claimed that a social media movement aiming to discredit Shariah law in the province exists, though it has refused to provide any details on who

Nadya Natahadibrata, Jakarta – A coalition of women's rights groups report that cases of violence against women have been on the rise in Aceh in the past two years.

Nurdin Hasan – A police officer was publicly caned in an Aceh district on Tuesday for violating Shariah law, making him the first law enforcer to receive such a punishment.

Camelia Pasandaran – A women's rights group has criticized a move by North Aceh's district head to ban women in the area from dancing in public places.

Nurdin Hasan, Banda Aceh – Police in Indonesia's westernmost city have thwarted the caning of a police officer and two other people convicted by Aceh's morality police of gambling, high

The Forestry Ministry has denied claims by several environmental groups that 1.2 million hectares of protected forest in Aceh will be cleared if the province's proposed spatial planning

Nadya Natahadibrata, Jakarta – More than a million people worldwide have joined online calls for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to block the Aceh administration's plan to open prote

More than a million people across the globe have signed an online petition demanding the Indonesian government to cancel the plan to open the protected virgin rainforest in Aceh to comm

Jakarta – The Institute for the Free Flow of Information (ISAI) announced on Tuesday that Aceh is the least likely province to allow press freedom and the most dangerous for journalists

Nurdin Hasan, Banda Aceh – The Aceh Legislative Council (DPRA) is mulling a Shariah bylaw that would mandate tougher sentences for convicted rapists than those doled out under the Indon

Ina Parlina, National – The two-week deadline has passed but the central government and the Aceh provincial administration are no closer to resolving the controversial plan to change th

A dispute over a flag in Aceh is testing the limits of autonomy, provoking Indonesia's central government and could pave the way for separatist factions to emerge, the International Cri

Camelia Pasandaran & Nurdin Hasan, Banda Aceh – Homosexual men and women living in Indonesia's strictly conservative Aceh province would be publicly lashed 100 times under a new byl

Nurdin Hasan, Banda Aceh – The Banda Aceh Administrative Court on Friday ruled in favor of a palm oil company in its lawsuit against the Aceh governor's revocation of its permit to clea

Index: ASA 21/011/2013

Ina Parlina, Jakarta – Constitutional Court chief Akil Mochtar said on Tuesday there was no need to fret about Aceh's official flag, which resembles the flag of the now-defunct separati

Nurdin Hasan, Banda Aceh – Dozens of legislative candidates vying for the 81 seats in the Aceh provincial legislature in the 2014 general election have flunked a Koran proficiency test

Banda Aceh – As many as 1,231 legislative candidates from across Aceh will take a Koran recital test organized by the Aceh Independent Election Monitoring Committee (KIP) as part of a r

Yuliasri Perdani, Jakarta – The latest study from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Indonesia found that the local administration in Aceh is the worst performer when it come

Nurdin Hasan, Banda Aceh – Police in Aceh suspect a political motive is behind the murder of a local politician who was gunned down by unknown assailants on Friday morning.

Jakarta – An online petition against forest clearance in Aceh has the support of 20,000 netizens.

Nurdin Hasan, Banda Aceh – All candidates contesting next year's legislative elections in Aceh will be required to take a Koran proficiency test, a member of the province's electoral bo

Laura Dawson, Gabriel Kereh & Tito Summa Siahaan – The specter of a resurgence in violence in Aceh looms large unless past rights abuses are properly addressed, a human rights group

Niniek Karmini, Jakarta, Indonesia – An international rights group urged Indonesian authorities on Thursday to seek justice for victims of a separatist conflict in Aceh province that en

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The Indonesian government has said it aims to approve within a month a plan that would free up vast swathes of protected virgin rainforest on Sumatra island for commercial exploitation.

Michael Bachelard – A mining company has boasted of an Indonesian government decision to free up 1.2 million hectares of virgin forest in Aceh for commercial exploitation.

Victims and family members are still waiting for the Indonesian authorities to provide them with truth, justice and full reparation almost eight years after the end to the devastating A

Hotli Simanjuntak, Banda Aceh – The Aceh Legislative Council (DPRA) is accelerating the deliberation of a provincial qanun (bylaw) to establish the Commission on Truth and Reconciliatio

Thirty-five women in Aceh's city of Lhokseumawe have been let off with a warning after the Shariah police caught them straddling a motorcycle and not wearing appropriate Islamic dress.

Imran MA, Lhokseumawe – Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) officers and Sharia police (Wilayatul Hisbah) began conducted raids on motorcycle riders on the main roads of Lhokseumawe city in

Nurdin Hasan – A plan to draft a bylaw on how Islamic men and women in Aceh's Bireuen District should dress as Muslims is a wasteful effort that nobody needs, activists say.

Nurdin Hasan, Banda Aceh – The Bireuen Legislative Council in Aceh are preparing a draft bylaw on how Islamic men and women in the district should dress as Muslims.

Ezra Sihite & Nurdin Hasan, Jakarta/Banda Aceh – Military chief of staff Adm.

Nurdin Hasan – A teacher at an Islamic boarding school in Aceh sustained serious injuries after being beaten by the parents of a student he disciplined.

Rizky Amelia – The current furor over a decision by authorities in Aceh to adopt the flag of a defunct separatist group as the provincial standard highlights regional dissatisfaction wi

Ina Parlina, Jakarta – The President is telling the people of Aceh to follow the law and to only fly the Indonesian flag – and not a flag inspired by a former separatist movement – for