Indonesian Government Imposes Ban against Female Genital
Cutting
Doctors and nurses in Indonesia have been barred from performing
female genital cutting - a practice sometimes referred to
as female circumcision or female genital mutilation in which
there is a partial or full removal of the labia, clitoris
or both - under a notice issued by the government, a Ministry
of Health official announced on Wednesday (4/10). According
to Sri Hermiyanti, head of the health ministry’s family
health directorate, “hurting, damaging, incising”
and “cutting” of the clitoris are not permitted
under the ban because “these acts violate the reproductive
rights of these girls and harm their organs.” She added
that physicians are allowed to continue performing symbolic
female circumcisions that do not involve physical harm. There
are no established punishments for those who violate the directive,
and it likely will take time for traditional communities to
completely give it up, Hermiyanti said. According to health
ministry spokesperson Soemardi, the government in April sent
an informal notice to health providers informing them of the
ban. Majelis Ulama Indonesia, an umbrella organization for
Muslim religious leaders, has not endorsed the ban, but the
organization does not support obligatory genital cutting,
according to Reuters. The World Health Organization estimates
that two million girls worldwide are at risk of undergoing
genital cutting annually. (October 6th 2006, Reuters).
Indonesia to Sign Asean Treaty on Haze
Indonesia will sign a Southeast Asian treaty to fight annual
brush fires that are once again sending choking smoke across
parts of Malaysia and Singapore, a presidential spokesman
said Thursday (12/10). The announcement came before an emergency
meeting of environment ministers from five regional nations
to discuss how to tackle the illegally set blazes, which have
plagued the three countries and sometimes Thailand during
the dry season since the 1990s. Indonesia is the only country
in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations that
has not ratified the Asean Agreement on Transboundary Haze
Pollution, which the group approved in 2002. A presidential
spokesman, Dino Djalal, said Indonesia would sign the deal.
“It will take a legal process, but that is a process
we will undergo,” he said, without saying when. The
agreement would result in the establishment of a regional
coordinating centre capable of reacting quickly to the smoke.
Malaysia has publicly called on Indonesia to sign the deal
and to do more to fight the blazes. The fires on Indonesia’s
Sumatra Island and its portion of Borneo are mostly set by
farmers or companies as a cheap way to clear land for plantations.
Often on peat land, they smoulder for weeks or months. Across
large parts of both areas Thursday, motorists were forced
to use headlights in the daytime. All flights from and to
at least one Borneo airport were canceled until Saturday due
to poor visibility, a local aviation official said. Fire-fighters
are trying to extinguish the blazes, and the police have arrested
scores of landowners in recent weeks. However, officials said
seasonal rains, forecast to fall in the next few weeks, were
the only way to snuff the fires out. Singapore’s skies
remained hazy Thursday (12/10), though less so than over the
weekend, when the city-state recorded its worst air quality
reading this year. (October 12th 2006, AFP).
Christian Priest Shot Dead in Indonesia
An unidentified gunman shot dead a Christian priest on Monday
(16/10) in Indonesia’s Central Sulawesi province, where
relations between Muslims and Christians are fragile, local
media reports. A witness said that Reverend Irianto Kongkoli
was shot in the head when he was buying construction materials
at a shop in the provincial capital of Palu, 1,650 kilometres
north-east of Jakarta. The situation in Central Sulawesi has
been tense since the executions of three Christian militants
over their role in Muslim-Christian violence that gripped
the province’s Poso region from 1998 to 2001. The three
Christian militants were executed on September 22 by a police
firing squad despite appeals from Pope Benedict and rights
groups. About 800 extra police and troops have been sent to
Poso due to the latest inter-religious tensions. Two Muslim
men were killed last month by a crowd angered by the executions.
The three-year sectarian clashes in Central Sulawesi killed
more than 2,000 people before a peace accord took effect in
late 2001. There has been sporadic violence ever since. (October
17th 2006, Bali Post).
Dutch Man Drowns on Kuta Beach
Dutch national Marcus Ayw drowned on Kuta Beach on Thursday
(5/10). Marcus was swimming with friends in front of the Gado
Gado restaurant when a large wave swept him off of his feet,
and he was dragged out to sea by a strong rip. By the time
the man was located by sea rescue teams he was no longer breathing
and was pronounced dead-on-arrival at the hospital. (October
6th 2006, Denpost).
Danish Broadcast Angers Muslims in Indonesia
A video lampooning the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) broadcast in
Denmark has angered groups in Indonesia, the world’s
largest Muslim-majority nation. Denmark’s national TV2
channel on Friday (6/10) broadcast excerpts from the video
showing the Prophet as a camel and as a drunken terrorist
attacking Copenhagen. The video, filmed in August, was made
by members of the far-right Danish People’s Party. It
shows the Prophet being mocked during a summer party, with
some portraying him as dressed in a turban and wearing a belt
with explosives, as others look on and laugh. “In Islam,
death is the penalty for insulting the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH),
visually through a caricature or verbally, except if the doer
regrets his deed and promises not to repeat it,” said
Fausan Al Ansori, a spokesman for the hard-line Indonesian
Muhajehdin Council. He added: “Danish authorities should
think seriously, are they going to defend, in the name of
human rights, one or two of its citizens who clearly insulted
the Prophet (PBUH) and sacrifice its relations with the Islamic
world?” The Danish embassy in Jakarta had to close down
for weeks in February following angry protests over cartoons
of the Prophet published in the European nation and reprinted
elsewhere. (October 6th 2006, AFP).
Indonesian Mud Flow to be Directed into River
Technicians handling a vast mud flow in Indonesia will pump
the sludge into a local river ahead of the rainy season. Experts
fear the embankments built around villages in the East Java
district to contain the mud will burst when the rainy season
starts. President Susilo Bambang Yudhonyono has approved the
channelling of the mud into a river, which ends up in the
nearby Madura Strait. A UN technical team that visited the
site in July found that while the mud did not appear to be
toxic, its sudden release into an aquatic environment would
kill the ecosystem. The so-called mud volcano began erupting
in late May at a gas drilling site and has displaced about
12,000 people. (October 16th 2006, Radio Australia)
Haze Distresses Orang-utans in Indonesian Reserve
Haze from Indonesian forest fires has disturbed orang-utans
living in a natural reserve on Borneo Island, a park official
said on Monday (16/10), blaming deer hunters for intentionally
torching protected areas. The fires have been burning for
weeks, creating the smoke that has spread over much of Southeast
Asia, triggering fears of a repeat of the months of choking
haze in 1997-98 that cost the region billions in economic
losses. Saut Manalu, a senior official at the Tanjung Puting
national park where 6,000 orang-utans live, told Reuters by
telephone that animals are even more affected by the smoke
than humans. “We can hear them scream late at night,”
he said, adding fires had been found inside the reserve that
occupies a large swathe of land in Central Kalimantan province
on Indonesia’s side of Borneo Island. “The fires
are at the rim while the orang-utans live deeper inside. We
are focusing on how to put out the fires. If they go out of
control, we will take care of the animals. We may need to
evacuate them,” said the park official. Some of those
fires were lit by hunters, Manalu said. “In order to
lure deer, hunters often set ablaze certain areas so that
fresh grass could grow on the burned land. Deer would graze
there because they like young leaves,” he said. (October
16th 2006, Radio Australia).
Bali has Largest Suicide Rate in Indonesia
Of all the provinces in Indonesia, Bali has been found to
have the largest suicide rate in the country. From January
2006 until October 2006 there have been over 127 cases of
successful suicide. The most common method for committing
suicide has been by hanging (101 cases) followed by poisoning.
The most common age group seems to be from age 16 years to
40 years and most of the victims are male. The distribution
was as follows Buleleng 26 cases, Karenasem 23, and Gianyar
16. (October 7th 2006, Bali Post)
Kite Causes Major Power Out throughout Bali
Bali suffered a total power black out on Monday (16/10) morning
at 06.26 hours. This is the first time that the Island has
been totally without power since 1999. The cause of the black
out seems to have been a kite becoming entangled in major
electricity relay devices in Banywangi. The problem was quickly
rectified and the power was restore within just a few hours.
(October 16th 2006, Bali Post).
Two More Bird Flu Cases in Java
Indonesia has recorded the 69th avian influenza infection
in human being, Director of Animal Disease and Health Control
under the Health Ministry Nyoman Kandun said in Jakarta Thursday
(5/10). “A 21-year-old woman from Tulung Agung district
of East Java Province is positively infected by the H5N1,”
Kandun said. The director said the woman who has developed
symptoms since Sept. 19 and hospitalized since Sept. 25 had
had contacts with fowls. She is the sister of a confirmed
H5N1 case, an 11-year-old boy who died on Sept. 18, Kandun
said. A 67-year-old Indonesian woman died of bird flu after
being treated at a hospital for more than a week, marking
the country’s 54th death from the virus, an official
at the health ministry said on Monday (16/10). “The
virus in her was highly pathogenic, very vicious. She is the
54th casualty out of 71 cases,” said Runizar Ruesin,
the head of the health ministry’s bird flu information
centre. The woman from the West Java city of Bandung died
on Sunday night, the official said. Hadi Yusuf, the doctor
who treated her, told Reuters the disease also affected the
woman’s kidneys. (October 6th 2006, Reuters)
One in 10 Indonesia Muslims Back Violent Jihad-Poll
Around one in 10 Indonesian Muslims support jihad and justify
bomb attacks on Indonesia’s tourist island of Bali as
defending the faith, a survey released on Sunday (15/10) showed.
Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country,
with 220 million people, 85 percent of whom follow Islam,
giving the Asian archipelago the largest Muslim population
of any nation in the world. “Jihad that has been understood
partially and practised with violence is justified by around
one in 10 Indonesian Muslims,” the Indonesian Survey
Institute said in a statement. “They approved the bombings
conducted in Bali with the excuse of defending Islam,”
it added, saying the percentage of such support “is
very significant”. While the vast majority of Indonesia’s
Muslims are relatively moderate, there has been an increasingly
vocal militant minority and political pressure for more laws
that are in line with hardline Muslim teachings. The poll
surveyed a random sample of 1,092 Muslim men and women. October
16th 2006, AFP The survey found one in five Indonesian Muslims
more generally supported the aims of Jemaah Islamiah - an
armed movement backing the creation of an Islamic superstate
linking Muslim Indonesia and Malaysia, and Muslim areas in
the Philippines and Thailand. In the past, it has cooperated
closely with al Qaeda’s global anti-Western campaign,
but in recent years many in Jemaah Islamiah have focussed
more on the regional struggle. Indonesia has had a major attack
against high profile Western-linked targets each year from
2002 through 2005. Authorities tied all the attacks to elements
of Jemaah Islamiah. Indonesia is not officially an Islamic
state. (October 16th 2006, AFP).
