Internet ban during Papua antiracist unrest ruled unlawful
The Jakarta State Administrative Court (PTUN) ruled on Wednesday that it was unlawful for the government to shut down the internet in Papua and West Papua during heightened security tensions caused by antiracism protests in the two provinces last year.
The panel of judges found that the government had violated...
ASEAN chair Vietnam proposes face-to-face summit in June: RI Foreign Ministry
Vietnam has made a proposal as this year's ASEAN chair for the regional bloc to hold a physical summit later this month despite the COVID-19 pandemic, a senior official from the Indonesian Foreign Ministry has said.
Should the face-to-face meeting be realized for the 36th ASEAN Summit – instead of a virtual...
Indonesia Deploys Military to Enforce ‘New Normal’ in Jakarta
Soldiers were deployed to the Bundaran HI MRT Station in Central Jakarta on Wednesday to enforce "new normal" health protocols as the government prepares to relax large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) put in place to curb the spread of Covid-19.
President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo said yesterday a total of 340,000 police officers and soldiers will be deployed in 25 cities across Indonesia...
A massive database of 8 billion Thai internet records leaks
Thailand’s largest cell network AIS has pulled a database offline that was spilling billions of real-time internet records on millions of Thai internet users.
Security researcher Justin Paine said in a blog post that he found the database, containing DNS queries and Netflow data, on the internet without a password. With...
Philippines tops world for online child sex abuse: Study
MANILA (AFP) - The Philippines has become the world's largest known source of online child sexual exploitation, with endemic poverty helping drive a surge in abuse, a report said on Thursday (May 21).
Parents and relatives were responsible for facilitating the abuse in nearly all cases, according to the International...
Land conflicts flare across Asia during coronavirus lockdowns
Lockdowns to contain the novel coronavirus in Asia have made farmers and indigenous people more vulnerable to losing their land, according to land rights activists who are backing new technologies to help track the growing number of conflicts.
More than 4.4 million people have been reported to be infected by...
Indonesia edging towards 1,000 new infections in a day for the first time.
Indonesia has recorded a huge jump in its daily coronavirus infections, with 973 new patients confirmed on Thursday.
The jump in new infections easily beats the previous one-day record of 693 infections, set just a day earlier and again calls into question the Indonesian government's handling of the crisis -...
House approves revised Mining Law amid outcry
As the country grapples with the COVID-19 crisis, lawmakers have approved a controversial revision of the 2009 Coal and Mineral Mining Law, despite outcry from civil society organizations.
The new law, aimed at developing Indonesia’s downstream mining industry and increasing economic growth, will allow miners to extend permits through a...
Mine Blasts Kill 2 Rohingya Girls in Rakhine as UN Extends Arrangement with Myanmar
Mine blasts in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state killed two Rohingya children and injured another child as they picked mangoes in a deserted village on Wednesday, with the government military and the rebel Arakan Army blaming each other for the deadly explosions, locals said.
The blast highlighted the peril and instability...
ASEAN has failed to cooperate on COVID-19, leaving marginalized groups exposed
Editorial
As we settle into the age of the coronavirus, scathing critiques of government responses to the pandemic are increasingly common in the media—tropes of foreign policy analysis play out on the pages of The New York Times and The Guardian. For Southeast Asia, the now-tired hot take is that countries in China’s backyard...
