"The greatest threat facing the US is the tyranny of the majority," penned nineteenth-century French writer Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America.

Putri Prameshwari& Arientha Primanita – FPI flexing its muscle again. The Brown Shirts in Nazi Germany did that too – and no one stood up to them – and look what happened.

Gary LaMoshi, Denpasar, Bali – Six years ago, academic Greg Barton understood why Indonesian moderates were reluctant to clash with the country's radical Islamist minority.

Robert M Cutler, Montreal – Jakarta's principal stock market index has more than doubled since President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono won the July 2009 presidential elections with a margin

Pandaya, Jakarta – The generous presidential pardon and remissions granted to graft convicts has strengthened Indonesia's status as a haven for corruption and eroded public trust in Pre

Clifford McCoy – The arrest last week of radical Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir was the highlight of a government crackdown on Islamic militants following the discovery in February

Pandaya – The House of Representatives needs to make a breakthrough to improve its poor legislative performance as indicted by its almost certain failure to reach its target of endorsin

Jason Tedjasukmana – Rising tensions in Papua have Indonesian authorities worried about possible international intervention in the nation's easternmost province, reports the head of a g

Chris Chaplin and Carole Reckinger – West Papuans and Papuans are not only fighting for independence but also to live free of poverty.

Muh Taufiqurrohman – The police's elite Densus 88 counterterrorism unit arrested five alleged terrorists in West Java this past week, and while Abu Bakar Bashir grabbed the headlines, t

The Indonesian government has banned a Dutch funding agency, for allegedly supporting Papuan separatists and running a commercial enterprise.

Al Makin, Yogyakarta – Islam, like Buddhism, teaches us to endure suffering, through which we can learn some lessons including in patience, disquietude and self-control.

The New York Times has called Indonesia a "golden economic child" and said that the nation once known for inefficiency, corruption and instability had earned a new reputation.

Pandaya – The police's failure again on Tuesday to present the court with crucial evidence it had previously claimed to possess – in the form of wiretapped conversations between Corrupt

The release of the International Crisis Group's latest report again highlights the important – yet often neglected – issues surrounding our easternmost province.

A leaked video clip from Indonesian controlled West Papua should be as unsettling for Indonesia as the Wikileaks 2007 video showing a helicopter strike in Baghdad was for the United Sta

Norimitsu Onishi, Jakarta – It is the political relationship that has long mystified Indonesia's chattering classes, one whose ups and downs regularly send tremors throughout the capita

Despite remarkable strides in the last 11 years after the economic, social and political chaos of the Asian financial crisis, Indonesia remains to some extent caught in the coils of Suh

In a widely anticipated move, the US government eventually lifted the 13-year-old ban on Indonesian Army's Special Forces' (Kopassus) participation in any joint Indonesia-US military ac

Debnath Guharoy, Jakarta – The army is in the barracks. The press is free. The constitution is alive.

Andrea Booth – Australia's failure to consult Indonesia about an asylum processing centre in East Timor is likely to exacerbate tensions between our two northern neighbours.

Johannes Nugroho – The government is moving steadily toward a sizeable reduction in fuel subsidies, arguing that budgetary discipline mandates it.

Damien Kingsbury – The announcement by the Gillard government that it intends to use East Timor as a processing stop-over for asylum seekers is either a very clever political ploy or a

Damien Kingsbury – A few years ago, a Burmese couple on the run from that country's brutal military regime sought asylum in Australia.

Explosive gifts of three Molotov cocktails were thrown at 3 a.m. Tuesday at the office of Tempo magazine in Central Jakarta, immediately leading to condemnation all around.

Sara Schonhardt, Semarang, Java – A pitched argument is unfolding between convicted terrorists and high-level criminals detained in a prison in Central Java, where police have been raid

James Van Zorge – Is Indonesia's democracy and long tradition of secularism under threat from an onslaught of Islamic fundamentalism?

Pandaya, Jakarta – The police's threat to sue Tempo magazine over its piggy bank cover is both amusing and intimidating at the same time, although it's possible that they are only sound

Flower garlands and a downpour of congratulations will mark the 64th anniversary of the National Police today, but the celebration has already turned sour following an investigative rep

Most urban swells seem prone to it – gang violence, mob culture and a general abandonment of the law and order.

Bonnie Malkin, Sydney – Anthony Corbyn, who holds dual British and Australian nationality, was attempting to sail from Australia to the Philippines as part of a bid to circumnavigate th

Answer Styannes – Today's UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture offers us a chance to pause and consider the stilted nature of our human rights progress in recent years.

Police have declared Nazriel "Ariel" Ilham, the front man of the popular Peterpan band, a suspect in a pornography case, and his two alleged sex partners in sex videos will very likely

Sara Schonhardt, Jakarta – Shootings, protests and violent attacks are on the rise in Indonesia's easternmost Papua province, home to a low-level separatist struggle and the operations

Mangadar Situmorang – The call for Papuan independence remains strong.

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Damien Kingsbury – Australia's relationship with East Timor is at its lowest ebb since 2005 when Alexander Downer bullied then Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri into accepting a fundamentall

Paul Toohey – East Timorese Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao has taken in recent weeks to heavily bagging Australia, including a strange speech in which he, seemingly apropos of nothing, du

M Zaid Wahyudi – The growing number of ordinary people's votes that are needlessly lost is a direct consequence of the application of an increasingly higher parliamentary threshold.

Simon Roughneen – East Timor's government has declined a proposal by Australian oil and gas company Woodside to process gas drawn from the Greater Sunrise field on board a floating liqu

Baudoin Koening – As a French journalist, I came to Indonesia to draw the portrait of the greatest emerging power of the G20 members and largest Muslim state in the world, in the contex

Pork barrel politics is as commonly practiced and proved effective in its country of origin the United States as in other countries like the Philippines, but it may not be the case in I

Relations between Indonesia and the United States are probably at their historic best, and the planned visit of President Barack Obama to Indonesia this month, which is now postponed, w

A number of senior police officers were reported for conducting suspicious financial transactions.

Elaine Pearson, Jakarta – As US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emphasized in a speech last year, Indonesia has now "embraced democracy."

Asvi Warman Adam, Jakarta – Since its conception in 1945, Pancasila (the five principles of the national ideology) has gone through four stages of history over several administrations:

Gary LaMoshi, Denpasar (Bali) – What a difference a quarter makes.

B. Herry-Priyono, Jakarta – Unlike most accounts these days, this note is not a paean to Sri Mulyani Indrawati; neither is it a swan song for her departure.

In early May violence once again struck in Papua.

Tolerance is the social glue that keeps us from degenerating into conflict.