Social Movements

Making idealism work is very hard. NORI ANDRIYANI, with extraordinary honesty, tells why.

Authorities blame the recent Jakarta riots on the coalition PRD. It has hundreds of members, but military leaders liken it to the PKI of the 1960s, which had millions. Who are these 1990s activists? VANNESSA HEARMAN visited with one of the coalition partners earlier this year, and filed this inside story.

Students are few in number but loom large on the political stage. The PRD affair demonstrated this once more. In this reflective essay, ARIEL HERYANTO asks why this should be so.

The World Bank has joined the IMF in a huge rescue package. Indonesian non-government organisations (NGOs) presented this memo to World Bank president James Wolfensohn in Jakarta.

Authoritarian Southeast Asian governments have been dealt a blow by market forces, says MICHAEL VATIKIOTIS, but democracy will not flourish until people begin to organise locally.

What should democracy activists do in these last days of the New Order? DANIEL LEV offers some pointers.

We, more than one hundred Indonesian and non-Indonesian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) participating in the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (Infid), are deeply concerned about the ongoing economic turmoil in Indonesia which many fear may lead to political turmoil as well.

Women’s movement activists and artists unite

The TNI wants more than just the defeat of GAM

Victims of the May 1998 riots seek justice and healing

Taking a legal approach to fighting discrimination

140,000 progressive Muslim volunteers monitored Indonesia’s April elections

Protest poetry lives on in post-Suharto Indonesia

Munir’s death robbed Indonesia not only of a unique intellectual and activist, but of one of its brightest hopes for the future

Elections do nothing to eliminate sources of social tension

Military-inspired nationalism hurts those who defend the Acehnese

A voice from Aceh’s civil society movement says it’s time for self-criticism

Why is solidarity for Aceh so much weaker than for Timor?