On his recent whirlwind visit to Jakarta, US president George Bush pledged $157 million over six years to improve the country’s school system. Bush’s move followed similar attempts at introducing changes in the educational systems of a number of Muslim countries, including Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, since the 9/11 attacks.

In response to the local outcry, the US ambassador to Indonesia, Ralph Boyce, quickly issued a statement reassuring Indonesians that Washington did not intend to interfere in the curriculum of Islamic schools.

But not everyone in the US government seems to think so. Both US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz have separately raised the issue of combating anti-American influence in ‘radical’ Islamic schools. Former US ambassador to Indonesia, Paul Wolfowitz, said: ‘What they are taught there [Islamic schools] is not real learning. It’s not the tools for coping with the modern world. It’s the tools that turn them into terrorists’.

Dianthus Saputra Estey
Aljazeera net
24 November 2003

The United Nations’ new report on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) revealed that injecting drug use ‘is the major driver’ of the spread of HIV/AIDS in Indonesia. Condom use remains low, even in the commercial sex trade, where ‘it is estimated that fewer than 10 per cent of the between 7 million and 10 million Indonesian men who avail themselves of the services of sex workers use condoms consistently’.

Epidemiologist Elizabeth Pisani says that Indonesia has one of the fastest growing epidemics in the world today. Among female sex workers, the rate of Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV) infection is eight per cent in both Riau, home to a red light district popular among some Singaporeans, and Merauke in Papua province.

The Jakarta Post
1 December 2003

President Megawati Sukarnoputri signed a decree extending the military operation in Aceh for another period of six months, as of 18 November 2003. According to Presidential Decree No. 97/2003, the first six-month operation had made developments in Aceh which must be maintained and increased for the sake of the Unitary Republic of Indonesia’.

The Jakarta Post
19 November 2003

Human Rights Watch has released a report saying that the Indonesian government has blocked Indonesian and foreign correspondents from covering the military campaign in Aceh. ‘Whenever the press has pulled away the shroud of secrecy around Aceh, it has exposed serious abuses’, the report states.

Since martial law began, Indonesian security forces have verbally and physically intimidated journalists in Aceh. Military officials have arbitrarily detained correspondents in the field. GAM had also intimidated ournalists, abducting several journalists in June 2003. Even while riding in clearly marked press vehicles in Aceh, numerous journalists have also been shot at by unknown gunmen.

Saman Zia-Zarifi
Asia Division of Human Rights Watch
26 November 2003