Jakarta Informer

Indonesia’s strategic importance is of growing interest to the jousting superpowers of the US and China – and it wants friends

Australia might be asked to fund detention centers in Indonesia to help Jakarta deter asylum-seekers from using the nation as a staging point. Jakarta’s plan, which would lock up all asylum-seekers currently free in the community, comes amid pressure from Julia Gillard for a regional solution to the politically explosive problem. The Australian has learnt [...]

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono rebuked his country’s police force at a ceremony to commemorate its 64th anniversary yesterday, saying he has received millions of public complaints about the force that has been tainted with allegations of graft. His comments came in the wake of a firebomb attack on the office of a news magazine [...]

US President Barack Obama on Thursday postponed his trip to Indonesia and Australia until June as he attempts to push his historic health care reform bill through Congress. “We greatly regret the delay of the trip,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters, but he added the “passage of health insurance reform is of paramount [...]

Police used teargas against hundreds of protesters which threw stones at them on Tuesday outside the Parliament of Indonesia in Jakarta. It was a demonstration over a controversial bank bail-out which turned violent. The protesters, armed with sticks, burned flags of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party and threw stones and bottled water at the [...]

Prostitutes in Indonesia will soon have to pay a 10% income tax, if it is for the member of the Regional House of Representatives in Indonesia’s Batam island. Riky Solihin, member of the National Awakening Party – PKB – requested that an income tax of 10% should be paid from all prostitutes at rehabilitation centers [...]

Authorities removed a statue of Barack Obama from a park in the Jakarta due to a public backlash.It was moved today to a elementary school nearby where the U.S. president went to as he was a child. The statue, inspired by a childhood photograph of the 10-year-old Obama and made of bronze, was the target [...]

The Philippines announced on Wednesday one of the co-founders of the Abu Sayyaf extremist group had been arrested after being detained at Jakarta airport using a false passport. Indonesian authorities picked up Abdul Basir Latip at Jakarta airport on November 21, but he was only brought back to Manila on Wednesday, said Philippine National Bureau [...]