When we amended the 1945 Constitution in 2000-2002, we decided power must no longer be concentrated in the hands of a single person as it was when Soeharto ruled the country unopposed f

Steven Sengstock – A month has passed since the death of Alfredo Reinado in a fire-fight at the home of East Timor's President Jose Ramos Horta.

Recent reports of a mother and her two children who died of hunger in the South Sulawesi capital Makassar and of five people who died of malnutrition-caused illnesses in the East Nusa T

What an unfortunate year for Indonesia's tourism industry.

Bribery issues filled public spaces last week, following the dramatic arrest of a top prosecutor by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

A month on from the shooting of East Timor's President Jose Ramos-Horta, the BBC's Lucy Williamson reports on the government's handling of the crisis.

Following the attack on East Timor president Jose Ramos Hortes, Carole Reckinger and Sara Gonzalez Devant report on the complexities surrounding the current crisis.

Henriette Sachse – The recent attacks on East Timor's president and prime minister are a severe setback on the path to democracy.

The government is risking piling big mistakes on top of huge errors, all at the expense of the basic foundation of the economy, by stubbornly refusing to bring domestic fuel prices clos

Usman Hamid and Eko Waluyo, Jakarta/Sydney – The recent visit of Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda to Australia on February 7 aimed to re-enforce the framework for security co

Even with so many laws and regulations already enacted to enforce the sustainable management of our forest resources, illegal logging has remained common throughout the country.

Diane Farsetta – In May 1998, when General Suharto was forced to step down as president of Indonesia, the members of the Madison chapter of the East Timor Action Network (ETAN) decided

The government has finally settled the sharia debate, which has dogged Indonesia these past few years, essentially rejecting demands that sharia-based laws introduced in many regencies

Philip Setunga, Hong Kong/China – It may seem a simple matter of coincidence that the week Indonesian ex-president Soeharto was buried with state honors, the killers of human rights act

The politics of the mudflow have become even, well, muddier, recently.

Bob Boughton – The mayhem in Dili last Monday, in which rebel soldier Alfredo Reinado was shot dead and East Timor's President Jose Ramos Horta badly injured, raises a fundamental quest

Paul Toohey, Dili – East Timor is a changed land, with what remained of its simple innocence lost the moment gunmen opened fire on its most revered statesmen.

Lindsay Murdoch, Darwin – A chill breeze was blowing across the ruins of the old Portuguese fort on a hill overlooking the small town of Maubisse in East Timor's rugged mountains.

Jonathan Head, Dili – They gave Alfredo Reinado a hero's burial, his coffin draped in the red, black and yellow flag of East Timor.

Alfredo Reinado 1966-2008

The House of Representatives plenary session Monday on Bank Indonesia's emergency liquidity credits to distressed banks during the economic crisis only strengthened public frustration o

Donald Greenlees, Dili – Before President Jose Ramos-Horta was shot outside his home on Monday, the Nobel Peace laureate was not overly concerned about his personal security in a countr

Michael Leach – When I wrote on Monday that disarming the increasingly threatening and erratic Major Alfredo Reinado had become a critical priority for national unity in East Timor, the

Justin Randell – Genocidal mass murderer and former Indonesian dictator Suharto died in hospital in Jakarta on January 27, aged 86, never having faced justice for the millions of people

Simon Montlake and Nick Squires, Bangkok/Sydney – A foiled dawn attack Monday by rebel soldiers on East Timor's President Jose Ramos-Horta, who was shot and seriously wounded, has roile

East Timor's maverick seemed desperate for martyrdom

Many government critics, non-governmental organizations and the media perhaps do not realize, or pretend not to realize, that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's anti-corruption offens

Loro Horta, Dili – Since the 2006 deployment of Australian peacekeeping troops to East Timor, the Australian Defense Force (ADF) has been confronted with a persistent anti-Australian se

Jakarta is flooded, again. Just one day of incessant rain, from Thursday night through Friday morning, was enough to paralyze the capital with floods.

Neil Campbell – An incident during my recent visit to Timor-Leste gave a useful insight into the difficult security conditions in the small, young and troubled independent state.

It may not look very scary to you or me, but to the Government of Indonesia it is a dangerous threat to the "unity of the nation".

There was a sense of deja vu when former president Soeharto was admitted to Pertamina Hospital in Jakarta over the weekend.

Deadly natural disasters look to have struck too early for Indonesia, just after the country won praise for hosting a key climate change conference in Bali last month.

The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) reported a decrease of 921,000 in the number of unemployed people between August, 2006 and August, 2007, to about 10 million or slightly over 9 perce

Aboeprijadi Santoso, Amsterdam – When Iraqi journalist Muntader Al-Zaidi threw his shoes at President George W. Bush it was to many, myself included, a deja vu.

Neles Tebay, Abepura, Papua – Papua Province has been the only Indonesian province still rebellious against the Jakarta-based central government.

Riding on the confidence and bullish market sentiment generated by the estimated 6.3 percent growth in 2007, the Indonesian economy is forecast to continue surging this year.

As we begin the New Year, we are all asking the same question: What does 2008 have in store for us? Looking at the horizon, one could say plenty.

As the curtains open on the new year we will note down 2007 as the year of a greatly bullish stock market with a rise of over 50 percent in the composite index, making it among the best

Sylvia Yazid, Melbourne – It has been more than three decades since the first wave of Indonesians left the country to work overseas.

Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo, Jakarta – The first day of 2007 was marked by a jetliner going missing, in what some later saw as a sign of things to come: It was the first in what was to be

At first, they attacked churches and prevented Christians from attending Sunday prayers – and the police largely turned a blind eye.

Karen Michelmore, Jakarta – Australia's relationship with Indonesia is full of new promise.

We cannot help but feel more cynicism toward our parliament, which has no sense of urgency in addressing the real issues.

Leon Agusta, Jakarta – After a disappearance from public attention, the anti-pornography and anti-porn bill has now resurfaced with the new name "Anti-Pornography Bill", when several fa

Is all really quiet on the front line in the war against human rights abuses? Some people in Indonesia certainly think so.

Joe Collins – The 1st of December was West Papuan National Day or National flag day.

Bill Guerin, Jakarta – Former three-star general Sutiyoso is Indonesia's epitome of a strong leader, first as Jakarta's military commander and until earlier this year as the capital cit

It was certainly good news for Indonesia that it moved up the latest Human Development Index, the internationally accepted standard for measuring a country's welfare.

Aboeprijadi Santoso, Amsterdam – Little news basically came from Sydney's Coroner Court inquest into the deaths of Australian-based journalists in Balibo, East Timor (1975) – except tha