Indonesia has seen steady economic growth over the last two decades, but the manufacturing sector has continuously underperformed. The decline of the sector is particularly evident in low employment figures and a lack of productivity. Regionally, most industries remain concentrated in just a few provinces, despite efforts by the Jokowi administration to address this disparity through improvements in infrastructure. What explains the decline in manufacturing in Indonesia? Is the country in the mi...
Jun 20, 2018•28 min
Twenty years after the beginning of military reforms, Talking Indonesia speaks to Dr Jess Melvin about the state and position of the military in contemporary Indonesian society. Has the military come terms with some of the darkest chapters in its past? Looking at current trends, are we seeing a progressive 'return' of the military in the political sphere?
Jun 07, 2018•26 min
More than 50 years on from the 1965-66 mass killings and 20 years after the fall of the New Order authoritarian government, how is Indonesia facing up to this violent past? How does this past impact on the present? What is being done to resist enduring impunity in democratic Indonesia? Jemma Purdey explores these issues with Galuh Wandita, Director and co-founder of non-government organisation, Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR), a Jakarta-based NGO working on human rights and accountability in the ...
May 23, 2018•34 min
Two decades after the fall of Suharto, the nature of Indonesian democracy and the trajectory of political reform remain a matter of animated debate in Indonesia and abroad. Undeniably, fundamental change has taken place since the end of Soeharto's authoritarian New Order regime. By the same token, the continued prominence of political and business figures who rose to the prominence during the New Order is just one reminder that the long shadow of the Suharto era has never entirely lifted. What h...
May 09, 2018•33 min
Indonesia’s blasphemy legislation gained global attention during the trial of former Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok) in 2017. But apart from Ahok, many other Indonesians have also faced blasphemy charges in recent years, even though the constitutionality of the law has been challenged repeatedly. Why is blasphemy such a serious offence in Indonesia? What do recent blasphemy cases have in common and where do they differ? And how do they fit into broader legal developments and polit...
Apr 25, 2018•29 min
The mass demonstrations against former Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama in 2016 and 2017, and rising intolerance against religious and sexual minorities have raised concerns about the growing influence of more conservative forms of Islam in Indonesia. The popularity of radical and conservative clerics such as Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) leader Rizieq Shihab and celebrity preacher Felix Siauw have also led to questions about new forms of religious authority in contemporary Indones...
Apr 11, 2018•33 min
Indonesia's environmental challenges are vast and the impacts of forest degradation, in particular, have implications globally as well as locally. For many years within civil society environmental groups and academics have worked at all levels - international, national and local - to raise awareness, enable local communities and lobby government. The search for solutions involves negotiating a complex web of cultural, geographic, economic and structural political forces. How is Indonesia balanci...
Mar 28, 2018•29 min
Indonesia's current criminal code dates to colonial rule, with efforts to complete and enact a new draft of the code consistently foundering. Under the administration of President Jokowi, the drafting process has gained new impetus, however, and a sense is growing that a new criminal code will be enacted this year. At the same time, civil society activists and legal experts have lined up to criticise regressive aspects of the present draft, including a proposed criminalisation of all extramarita...
Mar 14, 2018•42 min
Violent Islamist extremism has been a serious security threat in Indonesia for nearly two decades now. But while terrorist networks continue to recruit new members, there are also former militants who have turned their back on violence and terror. What prompts such acts of disengagement? Why do some terrorists quit, while others don’t? And what can governments and peace activists learn from previous patterns of disengagement? In this week’s Talking Indonesia podcast, Dr Dirk Tomsa discusses thes...
Feb 28, 2018•29 min
Young Indonesians are often misunderstood. The older generations perceive them as entitled, unmotivated, apathetic, and narcissistic, a far cry from the image of the pemuda, or the revolutionary youth who fought for the country’s independence. But what do Indonesian young people actually think about the social, political and economic issues around them? Do they care about social inequality and environmental degradation? How do their consumption patterns reflect their values and aspirations? Dr C...
Feb 14, 2018•31 min
Ethnic Chinese make up an estimated 1-2 percent of Indonesia's population. Of this group, a tiny minority are Muslim. As such, ethnic Chinese Muslims occupy a unique and significant position where the religious majority intersects with this ethnic minority, which has long assumed a role of economic middleman and been used as political scapegoat. In many ways Chinese Muslims in Indonesia disturb both their religious and ethnic identity groups. At its best, their position in society serves to high...
Jan 31, 2018•29 min
The prohibition of pornography has been a hotly debated and controversial area of law in Indonesia, attracting the attention both of Islamic conservatives and activists promoting freedom of expression. Several public figures have been investigated and prosecuted under questionable circumstances, raising concerns that the law is being applied arbitrarily. Most recently, The police investigation of Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) leader Rizieq Shihab and his female follower Firza Hussein has put pro...
Jan 17, 2018•37 min
Vigilantism made headlines in Indonesia in 2017 owing to a spate of so-called "persecution" incidents, entailing physical intimidation or violence against online critics of prominent religious figures. But these incidents are just one manifestation of the broader phenomenon of vigilantism, which remains widespread in democratic Indonesia. How pervasive is vigilante violence, and what patterns do we see in its distribution, its perpetrators and its targets? What drives this phenomenon, and how do...
Dec 20, 2017•33 min
In the shadow of Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody crackdown on drugs, Indonesia has been fighting its own war on drugs. Under President Joko Widodo, executions for drug traffickers were resumed and, more recently, researchers have recorded a growing number of fatal police shootings of drug suspects. As in the Philippines, the government’s hard-line stance toward drugs has broad public support, which makes it difficult for proponents of a more humane drug policy to provide effective counter-narratives. S...
Dec 06, 2017•29 min
October 2017 marked three years since President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo came to power. Elected in 2014 as a symbol of hope for Indonesia’s progressives, Jokowi won support with lofty promises of infrastructure building, better governance, improved welfare, and economic growth, among others. As Indonesia gears up for another round of important elections, the time is right to assess Jokowi’s leadership. Has he lived up to expectations and campaign promises? How does the Indonesian public view his pre...
Nov 22, 2017•32 min
How does support for political Islam correlate with other political attitudes in Indonesia, such as support for decentralisation, choice of a political party, anti-Chinese sentiment, and so forth? How have the correlations between support for political Islam and other political attitudes manifested in the actual political behaviour of Indonesians, and what implications might they bear for forthcoming elections in Indonesia over the next two years? Dr Dave McRae explores these issues with Dr Dieg...
Nov 08, 2017•31 min
Last month protesters disrupted a meeting at the offices of the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation (LBH Jakarta)and its national umbrella body, the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI). In what was a first for the NGO, police did not initially prevent the protesters from blocking meeting, an academic discussion on 1965-66. What does this attack signal for human rights and civil society in Indonesia? Is democracy in peril? In this week's podcast, host Dr Jemma Purdey explores these questions with le...
Oct 23, 2017•23 min
In 2016, Tempo magazine named Istirahatlah Kata-Kata (Solo, Solitude) its film of the year. The arthouse film attracted acclaim at festivals around the world, and played to packed houses in cinemas across Indonesia. Since its release, it has sparked discussion, especially among younger audiences, about its subject, poet and activist Widji Thukul, and the mystery still surrounding his disappearance in the last weeks of the New Order. The film raises more questions that it answers about Widji’s di...
Oct 12, 2017•30 min
In the midst of growing nationalism, the notion of 'food sovereignty' has come to occupy an increasingly prominent place in food policy within Indonesia. But what does food sovereignty mean, and is it being used within Indonesia in similar ways to which it is understood globally? How effective are food sovereignty policies in enabling Indonesia to tackle the considerable challenge of ensuring all of its citizens have access to sufficient food, and is it possible the government might adopt an alt...
Sep 27, 2017•32 min
Indonesia’s tertiary education institutions have long performed poorly in global university rankings. Among the various deficits that are routinely recorded for Indonesian universities are low teaching and research quality, inadequate levels of knowledge transfer and a lacking international outlook. The Indonesian government has repeatedly expressed its concern about the dismal results in the rankings, but despite a number of initiatives to transform the country’s leading universities into world...
Sep 13, 2017•30 min
The vast number of Indonesian migrant workers working abroad have long been a prominent feature of Indonesia's labour market. Indonesian government policy on migrant workers tends to come into the public spotlight primarily when cases of maltreatment and abuse towards these workers emerge, not infrequently spurring the government to impose moratoriums on departures to particular countries and regions. For its part, the Jokowi government has voiced an aspiration to halt the departure of domestic ...
Aug 31, 2017•29 min
The Jakarta gubernatorial election, held earlier this year, was perhaps the most divisive and bitterly fought campaign seen in modern Indonesian politics. Social media and the internet played a large role in the campaign, which was characterised by racism and sectarianism. But how much can we blame the internet for the bitterness of the campaign and how much is it explained by Indonesia’s conservative turn more generally? How did technology impact on this election? Are we seeing a new platform f...
Aug 16, 2017•29 min
In line with Indonesian President Joko Widodo's vision to establish Indonesia as a global maritime fulcrum, Indonesia in February this year issued its first National Ocean Policy. Drafting of the policy was overseen by the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs, newly formed as part of the Jokowi administration, which in July also launched a new map of Indonesia that alters some of Indonesia's maritime boundaries, and renames part of the area of the South China Sea that Indonesia claims as i...
Aug 03, 2017•30 min
Jemma Purdey talks with Deasy Simandjuntak about the latest challenge to the independence and authority of Indonesia's Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), this time from the House of Representatives (DPR),which has initiated an inquiry into the institution. What triggered the inquiry? What are the implications for the KPK? Talking Indonesia, co-hosted in 2017 by Dr Dave McRae, Dr Jemma Purdey, Dr Charlotte Setijadi and Dr Dirk Tomsa, presents extended interviews each fortnight with experts ...
Jul 19, 2017•28 min
Jakarta’s urban village (kampung) communities have received considerable attention in the last few months amid the hotly contested Jakarta gubernatorial election. While most of the election coverage focused on race and religious issues, former Governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama’s track record of forced evictions of kampungs along Jakarta’s riverbanks also stirred much controversy. Kampung residents and activist groups condemn these evictions as unlawful and undemocratic. Yet many Jakartans a...
Jul 05, 2017•30 min
Wildlife trafficking is thought to be the third largest illegal trade after drugs and weapons. As a global hot spot for this illicit trade, Indonesia is not only a source country for the rapidly growing international market, but it is also home to a huge domestic market, especially for songbirds. In recent years, the volume in trafficking has risen dramatically and for many of the archipelago’s endangered species, poaching is now as big a threat as habitat loss. Why has wildlife trafficking reac...
Jun 21, 2017•32 min
We continue our conversation about the state of women’s activism in Indonesia in the midst of a conservative turn that has seen a particular focus on women’s bodies and non-traditional sexualities. In this podcast we explore the ways in which issues important to women, including sexuality and religion, are being shared and communicated beyond the conventional media. How has digital media created spaces for a diversity of views written by and for Indonesians? What does an Indonesian ‘feminist’ pu...
Jun 07, 2017•27 min
In May, the Indonesian government announced it would ban the Indonesian branch of Hizbut Tahrir, an Islamist organisation which seeks to replace democratic governments with an Islamic caliphate through non-violent means. Indonesia is not the first democracy to consider a ban of Hizbut Tahrir - the organisation has been banned from public activities in Germany, and Great Britain and Australia, amongst others, have considered proscribing the organisation without ultimately doing so. Banning an ext...
May 24, 2017•31 min
The past decade has seen increased global interest in Indonesian art and along with it, interest in the long-neglected field of Indonesian art history. Until quite recently, art history resources were limited, particularly relating to lesser known artists and works produced during tumultuous periods. Today, institutions like the Indonesian Visual Arts Archive (IVAA) in Yogyakarta are doing their best to fill these gaps by building art archives and making them accessible to the public. But much w...
May 10, 2017•27 min
On 21 April, Indonesia celebrated Kartini Day, commemorating Raden Ageng Kartini, a national hero and pioneer of the emancipation of women. More than a century since her death, gender, sexuality and morality are highly contested issues in politics and society. In recent times, a conservative turn in Indonesia has seen extreme voices come to the fore in mainstream Islam, leading to attacks on non-traditional sexualities and women’s bodies. What is the present state of the women’s movement in Indo...
Apr 26, 2017•29 min
