Category: indonesia

  • By Julian Isaac

    The Indonesian Military (TNI) is committed to supporting the completion of the Trans-Papua Highway during President Prabowo Subianto’s term in office.

    While the military is not involved in construction, it plays a critical role in securing the project from threats posed by pro-independence Papuan resistance groups in “high-risk” regions.

    Spanning a total length of 4330 km, the Trans-Papua road project has been under development since 2014.

    However, only 3446 km of the national road network has been connected after more than a decade of construction.

    “Don’t compare Papua with Jakarta, where there are no armed groups. Papua is five times the size of Java, and not all areas are secure,” TNI spokesman Major-General Kristomei Sianturi told a media conference at the Ministry of Public Works on Monday.

    One of the currently active segments is the Jayapura–Wamena route — specifically the Mamberamo–Elim section, which stretches 50 km.

    The project is being carried out through a public-private partnership and was awarded to PT Hutama Karya, with an investment of Rp3.3 trillion (about US$202 million) and a 15-year concession. The segment is expected to be completed within two years, targeting finalisation next year.

    Security an obstacle
    General Kristomei said that one of the main obstacles was security in the vicinity of construction sites.

    Out of 50 regencies/cities in Papua, at least seven are considered high-risk zones. Since its inception, the Trans-Papua road project has claimed 17 lives, due to clashes in the region.

    In addition to security challenges, the delivery of construction materials remains difficult due to limited infrastructure.

    “Transporting goods from one point to another in Papua is extremely difficult because there are no connecting roads. We’re essentially building from scratch,” General Kristomei said.

    In May 2024, President Joko Widodo convened a limited cabinet meeting at the Merdeka Palace to discuss accelerating development in Papua. The government agreed on the urgent need to improve education, healthcare, and security in the region.

    The Minister of National Development Planning, Suharso Monoarfa, announced that the government would ramp up social welfare programmes in Papua in coordination with then Vice-President Ma’ruf Amin, who chairs the Agency for the Acceleration of Special Autonomy in Papua (BP3OKP).

    ‘Welfare based approaches’
    “We are gradually implementing welfare-based approaches, including improvements in education and health, with budgets already allocated to the relevant ministries and agencies,” Suharso said in May last year.

    As of March 2023, the Indonesian government has disbursed Rp 1,036 trillion for Papua’s development.

    This funding has supported major infrastructure initiatives such as the 3462 km Trans-Papua Highway, 1098 km of border roads, the construction of the 1.3 km Youtefa Bridge in Jayapura, and the renovation of Domine Eduard Osok Airport in Sorong.

    Republished from the Indonesia Business Post.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Jakarta, Indonesia – Forget the pastel farmhouses of your grandma’s Pinterest board. Indonesia’s ambitious “Red and White Village Cooperatives” (KDMP) program – named after the nation’s flag – is a surprisingly complex and potentially game-changing initiative aimed at revitalizing rural economies. Officially launching next week with a nationwide rollout, the program’s initial success hinges on a handful of pilot villages, most notably Namang in Bangka Belitung, and it’s already sparking debate about whether it’s a genuine solution or just another government buzzword.

    The post Indonesia Red And White Villages Cooperatives appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • In the lead up to Japan’s Upper House elections, scheduled for 20 July, “foreign nationals” have unexpectedly become a topic of discussion during the campaign. Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru’s assertion that Japan needs to determine “who to permit entry into the country” and his Liberal Democracy Party’s demand for “zero illegal foreign nationals” indicate a resurgence of the security-focused rhetoric that has long been a part of Japan’s immigration debate.

    Migration remains a contentious issue across the Global North, often leveraged by right-wing political factions to garner votes and deflect blame for economic uncertainties. Migration is regularly scapegoated and portrayed as the source of social tensions and government shortcomings in addressing economic challenges.

    This has become increasingly the case in Japan. Its national migration policy has reflected a hesitancy to accept a role as a destination for immigrants, even its then- thriving economy began facing a shortage of labour. As of the end of 2024, Japan’s foreign population grown to almost 3.8 million people, according to the Immigration Services Agency. This marks an increase of 10.5% year-on-year, and represents the third consecutive record annual high.

    The populist party Sanseitō has launched a campaign centred around migration issues, advocating for “Japanese First” policies similar to the “America First” approach promoted by Donald Trump. Recently, Sanseitō secured its first two seats in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly at elections held on June 22, and polls suggest it will significantly increase its representation in the national Diet after Sunday’s upper house election.

    Fears among Indonesians

    Indonesia is one important source of migrant workers living in Japan. A netnography analysis I employed for this article, which involves observing and analysing online communities, cultures, and behaviours on social media platforms, reveals various reactions to Sanseitō’s mobilisation of “Japanese First” sentiment from Indonesians living in Japan.

    On 9 July an Indonesian influencer residing in Japan revealed in an Instagram post that he had been contacted by an “important Japanese figure” who urged him to encourage Indonesian migrant workers in Japan to maintain proper conduct to avoid potential rejection in the future. The revelations followed media coverage of “problematic” behaviours of Indonesians in Japan, ranging from visa overstaying to pretty crime to more serious crimes. Within the Indonesian community, concerns were heightened about Indonesian migrants potentially being “blacklisted” by Japan in 2026.

    A concern with defending the good name of the Indonesian migrant community has marked many of the responses to the rise of anti-foreigner political rhetoric. Many comments have centred on the supposedly problematic behaviour of certain Indonesian migrant workers, which has been perceived as drawing increased scrutiny on migration issues during the upper house election campaign.

    For example, the Indonesian Community of Japan (ICJ), one of the largest social media groups of Indonesians in Japan, has also addressed this migration concern. A member, referred to as A (pseudonym), shared his thoughts in a status update on the ICJ platform, highlighting the importance of preserving a positive image within the community:

    “I felt sad when I first read this thread, especially during the campaign season like now, and so many people are agreeing. I hope that those of you who are currently in this position will be kind when picking up and dropping off your children. There may be some people around you who are a little less pleased, even though they don’t really understand the rights regulated by law, but they want to change the law, which seems impossible.” (ICJ, FB, July, 2025)

    A’s post was a response to a Japanese thread that expressed concerns about childcare fees, which the author believes do not serve the interests of Japanese society. The thread questioned why some foreigners can leave their children in daycare while studying, highlighting that newcomers to Japan often have very low childcare fees due to not having a reportable income from the previous year, while Japanese citizens typically pay around ¥50,000– 60,000 (A$500–600). The post also raised questions about how someone can be a student with small children—and expressed confusion about why a particular individual was attending a Japanese university despite not speaking the language.

    The social media group Japan Guide Indonesia, a platform that shares everything about Japan for Indonesians on Instagram has also been a space for similar discussions. One member posted news regarding Prime Minister Ishiba’s plan to create a special unit to monitor foreigners and his plans to review regulations that tighten the entry of foreigners. The post was widely responded to by various comments, most of which blamed “irresponsible” Indonesian people and communities in Japan who they considered unable to maintain the good name of the nation while living there.

    Among the posts expressing concern, some also attempted inject balance by presenting rebuttals written by Japanese NGOs rejecting negative narratives that marginalise foreigners, including an 8 July statement by 274 NGOs voicing their rejection of xenophobia in the election campaign. Eight Japanese NGOs, including the Solidarity Network with Migrants Japan (Ijuren) and the Anti-Poverty Campaign, led the organisation of this joint statement, which opposed the baseless xenophobic comments made by several legislative candidates in the Upper House election campaign.

    More recently the ICJ issued an official statement aimed at the Japanese people, addressing concerns and issues regarding misunderstandings about foreigners. Following this, an official statement was issued by the Indonesian Embassy in Tokyo to clarify the chaos surrounding the rumour on social media that Indonesia will be blacklisted in 2026.

    Subsequently, Indonesia’s Minister of Protection for Indonesian Migrant Workers, Abdul Kadir Karding, addressed influencers with an important message: “Please understand the impact of your posts before sharing them. It’s not just about your image; it can influence Japan’s willingness to employ Indonesians. We must not let the actions of a few individuals jeopardise the opportunities for hundreds of thousands of prospective migrant workers, especially when inaccurate information is spread through social media.” He then stressed the importance of upholding the nation’s good reputation in response to several Indonesian individuals facing issues in Japan that could potentially harm Indonesia’s image.

    Japanese dreams and unrequited love

    Amid the prevalent “Japanese first” narrative and chaotic reactions on social media, Indonesia stands out as one of the countries actively sending migrant workers to Japan. For more than 30 years, the pathway for cooperation on labour migration has been kept open through the Technical Intern Training Program (TITP). During this time, Indonesian migrant workers have played a vital role in addressing gaps in key Japanese industrial sectors, including construction, agriculture, fisheries, food processing, and nursing and aged care.

    But the Japanese government’s policy of openness in accepting workers in these fields has been criticised as sluggish, often leading to the exploitation of migrant workers as if they were disposable. The “temporary” policies, crafted under the guise of preserving the integrity of “Japaneseness,” illustrate Japan’s lack of genuine commitment to facilitating the integration of foreigners into society. Meanwhile, Indonesia, as a sending country, remains entranced by this type of cooperation, which offers a temporary solution to the high unemployment rates at home. The mutual interests of both nations have transformed the migration issue into a bartering transaction.

    Indonesia’s new economy of speed

    Why are millions of Indonesian workers taking up methamphetamine?

    It is therefore not surprising that the hashtag “just run away first (#kaburajadulu)” has gained traction on Indonesian social media, as a reflection of disappointment and despair regarding domestic conditions. This sentiment was met with a promotional response from the Ministry of Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers (KemenP2MI), which aimed to turn dreams of working abroad into reality. , “Go as migrant, go home as a boss” was the slogan endorsed by government-aligned celebrities such as Rafi Ahmad in support of the scheme.

    In reality, not everyone has the privilege to migrate safely. Many Indonesian migrant workers who choose to migrate to Japan to fulfill their dreams face numerous challenges. They often encounter difficulties such as accumulating debts before departure, having their documents withheld (such as diplomas and land certificates), and being coerced into signing agreements that violate their human rights. Not to mention the inhumane departure training system, such as asking prospective workers to sign agreements not to marry, get pregnant, or leave the house, and more. All of these obstacles must be navigated in the hope of escaping uncertainty in their home country and improving their lives in Japan. Upon arriving in the destination country, sometimes they have to accept the painful reality that their love is unrequited.

    Who really needs to maintain their “good name”?

    Overall, framing the issue of migration as a security challenge instead of a humanitarian matter frequently results in policies that violate migrants’ human rights. Moreover, migration is often commodified by irresponsible parties—like labour brokers and so-called “black companies”—by selling the dreams of a better life by exploiting prospective migrants’ vulnerable conditions.

    In the end, the phrase “Japanese first” is being leveraged by certain individuals or groups from the sending country as a means to position themselves as a “gatekeeper’’ (in that they control and regulate movement), instilling anxiety and fear among migrants about the potential loss of opportunities for those unable to meet the “compliance” standards they have set for entering the migrant worker market in Japan. This approach encourages discourages migrants from speaking out, questioning their rights, seeking protection, or simply finding solace amidst the fatigue of the often inhumane working conditions.

    The political climate in Japan as the election approaches has indeed been strategically exaggerated to create fear among potential migrant workers. This approach could potentially normalise, legitimise, and perpetuate inhumane practices in the pre-departure process, purportedly for the sake of ensuring discipline and compliance once workers arrive in Japan. Such a scenario potentially undermines the urgent need for reform in the pre-departure mechanism.

    Indeed, it is essential to maintain the good reputation of your nation wherever you are. Upholding the values and following the rules of the country you reside in is equally important. However, in the end, who should be on blacklists, and be at the centre of politicians’ attention, are the corrupt systems, agencies, brokers who exploit the vulnerabilities of migrant workers, restrict their rights, weaken their solidarity, and prevent their advocacy in the name of gratitude, patience, and obedience.

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    The post “Japanese First” politics creates fears for Indonesians appeared first on New Mandala.

    This post was originally published on New Mandala.

  • Dismantling the ideological architecture of the U.S. empire by exposing how atrocity becomes infrastructure and propaganda becomes profession. From the Ford Foundation’s role in Indonesia’s Cold War genocide to the rise of figures like Orville Schell and Johnny Harris, KJ unpacks how soft power functions as a weapon: manufacturing consent, laundering imperial violence, and shaping global narratives. How US think tanks, journalism schools, and digital platforms are not just media ecosystems, but actually, ideological battlegrounds built atop bloodshed.

    The post Mass Killings, Media Control, and the Machinery of US Soft Power first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • If the Indonesian Air Force (TNI-AU) could have its way, it would be operating fighters galore from aerospace companies emanating from Asia, across Europe and all the way to the USA. However, fiscal realities mean such ambitions remain a pipe dream. In recent times, Indonesia has been linked to the following proposed purchases: American F-15EXs, […]

    The post Indonesia keeps options open with bewildering fighter smorgasbord appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • From the 1960s to the early 1990s, Indonesia’s development strategy was famously shaped by the influence of the “Berkeley Mafia”, a group of US-educated technocrats—including Widjojo Nitisastro, Mohammad Sadli, Emil Salim, J. B. Sumarlin, and Ali Wardhana—so named for their association with the University of California, Berkeley.

    These men held key roles in the finance ministry, the central bank, and other economic institutions, where under the protection of Suharto’s autocratic regime they emphasised pragmatic economic policies, fiscal management, and risk-sensitive governance. After Suharto’s fall, a new generation of PhD economists, such as Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Chatib Basri, Bambang Brodjonegoro, and Suahasil Nazara, inherited the Berkeley Mafia’s dominant influence over Indonesia’s fiscal policies.

    However, following the presidency of Joko Widodo (Jokowi), the technocratic landscape began to shift, with bankers and professional investors gaining greater influence. Like academic technocrats, these bankers and investors are neither elected officials nor formal party members. However, their credentials stem from careers in the private sector—particularly in banking and investment firms—where their expertise in asset pricing, risk assessment, and corporate finance contrasts with the policy-oriented, analytical focus of PhD-trained economists such as the Berkeley Mafia technocrats.

    In this article, I define a “technocrat” as a government official, policymaker, or leader appointed based on technical expertise and professional skills rather than through election.

    Indonesia’s democracy is becoming reactive. Is that good?

    Social media offers an ersatz form of accountability

    The emergence of banker technocrats began with figures such as Agus Martowardojo, who served as Minister of Finance (2010–2013) and later as central bank governor (2013–2018). As CEO of the state-owned Bank Mandiri (2005–2010), Agus played a key role in deepening Mandiri’s integration into capital markets following its stock exchange listing in 2003.

    This trend gained momentum during Jokowi’s first term (2014–2019), particularly with the rise of Budi Gunadi Sadikin, who served as Minister of Health under Jokowi and now under President Prabowo Subianto. As Bank Mandiri’s CEO (2013–16), Budi played a central role in facilitating the 2018 acquisition of a majority stake in the US-owned Freeport McMoRan by Indonesia’s state-owned mining firm Inalum.

    A distinction needs to be drawn between banker technocrats and professional investor technocrats, despite the often-blurred boundaries between the two. While bankers are by their nature professional investment advisors, not all professional investors come from banking. But does this distinction carry real significance? More importantly, how do their differing professional backgrounds shape their approach to governance?

    Bankers largely emerged from the post-reform era of Indonesia’s banking system—particularly within state-owned banks—which tend to adopt a conservative stance on risk. In contrast, professional investors arose from coalitions of conglomerates, creating investment vehicles such as private equity and asset management firms. These conglomerates turned to non-bank financial institutions in response to post-reform regulations that made it difficult for them to establish their own banks.

    These divergent professional paths have shaped not only these two new groups of technocrats’ career trajectories, but also their political networks and technocratic styles once they enter government.

    Pandu Sjahrir takes a selfie with Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, June 2023 (Photo: Pandu Sjahrir on Facebook)

    The emergence of bankers and professional investors

    In the early 1990s, conglomerate-owned banks lent freely to their affiliated companies without oversight, effectively transferring money between entities. This corrupt practice significantly weakened Indonesia’s banking sector, contributing to the 1998 financial crisis.

    As a result of this experience, a key priority of Indonesia’s post-crisis banking reform was to strengthen oversight mechanisms. The reformed regulatory institutions—including the central bank (Bank Indonesia, reformed in 1999), the Indonesia Deposit Insurance Corporation (Lembaga Penjamin Simpanan, established in 1998), and the Financial Services Authority (Otoritas Jasa Keuangan, established in 2011)—have closely monitored bank operations and loan disbursements to ensure financial stability and debt repayment capacity. These efforts have been crucial in maintaining capital circulation between banks and corporations.

    The upshot for Indonesia’s state-owned banks of being subject to this regulatory regime was that they have remained relatively independent from political influence compared to other state-owned enterprises (SOEs) like Pertamina, which are often plagued by corruption and vested interests. As a result, Indonesian SOE banks have remained largely free from scandals, have adopted a conservative approach to risk, and have maintained sound financial performance, as reflected in the capital markets.

    At the same, it became increasingly difficult for Indonesian conglomerates to establish banks due to tighter regulations, many shifted toward more flexible investment vehicles. This shift gave rise to a new wave of domestic investment firms in the early 2000s, including Recapital, Saratoga Capital, Principia, and Northstar Group. These firms fund various domestic projects, often linked to specific businesses groups or conglomerates. For conglomerates, investment vehicles offer greater flexibility than conventional banks. They enable stock buybacks when prices are low, allow investments in high-risk projects that banks might reject, facilitate direct funding from other business groups, and help avoid high bank interest rates and maximise profits.

    Then defence minister Prabowo Subianto with Minsiter for State Owned Enterprises Erick Thohir, June 2023 (Photo: Erick Thohir on Facebook)

    Their rise to power

    The banking sectors and investment vehicles have created two cultures of financial experts in Indonesia—one  often risk-tolerant, and the other risk-averse. But who are these professionals, and how did they get into the government?

    Banker technocrats are represented by figures such as Budi Gunadi Sadikin (Minister of Health, former CEO of Mandiri), Pahala Mansury (former Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and SOEs, former C-level at Mandiri), Ridha D. M. Wirakusumah (CEO of Indonesia Investment Authority) and Kartiko Wiratmojo (Vice Minister of SOEs, former CEO of Mandiri). Professional-investor technocrats include figures such as Rosan Roeslani (Minister of Investment, CEO of Danantara), Pandu Sjahrir (CIO of Danantara, AC Ventures), Thomas Lembong (former Minister of Investment, Principia Group), and Patrick Walujo (CEO of Gojek, North Star Group). Walujo is the only one who has not held a government position, but he remains politically well connected.

    In terms of how they operate, there are two key differences. The first is managerial depth: bankers tend to focus on financial management and operational efficiency. These skills are shaped by a regulatory environment where reputation is defined by the ability to minimise non-performing loans (NPLs) in the conventional banking sector. In contrast, professional investors emphasise valuation and deal-making. Their investment approach typically avoids long-term relationships with assets. Instead, they prioritise gains from selling assets in the capital markets or direct selling, where quick returns are often preferred over long-term holdings.

    The second difference relates to political connections—professional investors often leverage their high-level networks, while bankers rely on institutional relationships. Most leaders in the investment sector come from privileged, well-connected backgrounds. Pandu Sjahrir earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago and an MBA from Stanford; he is also the nephew of Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, one of Indonesia’s key political figures. Rosan Roeslani, a US-educated investor, is a close friend of Sandiaga Uno (former Minister of Tourism) and Erick Thohir (Minister of State-Owned Eterprises). He also maintains strong ties with the Bakrie family, one of Indonesia’s most influential conglomerates. For these figures, connections are crucial in securing investment opportunities.

    Dony Oskaria, Rosan Roeslani and Pandu Sjahrir at the official launch of Danantara, February 2025 (Photo: Pandu Sjahrir on Facebook)

    Many bankers also come from privileged backgrounds, though not to the same extent as professional investors when compared to the current elite among banker technocrats. For example, Budi Gunadi Sadikin earned his undergraduate degree from Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), while Kartiko Wirjoatmodjo and Pahala Mansury graduated from the University of Indonesia. They later pursued master’s degrees at overseas universities, but only after establishing themselves as bankers.

    For banker technocrats, their institutional careers in SOE banks serve as a direct pathway into government, making the banking sector their primary political ladder. In contrast, professional investors have relied much more heavily on high-level social networks to gain access to government circles. Because of that, professional investor technocrats face greater risks from changes of administration and other political shifts among elites. If Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, for example, were to have a political dispute with President Prabowo or his inner circle, it would immediately affect Pandu Sjahrir’s political capital. High-level connections are effective but vulnerable to elite competition. Banker technocrats, on the other hand, are less exposed to these risks since their credentials were built through careers in the SOE banks. In this sense their careers resemble those of academic technocrats, who also maintained a degree of insulation from elite political conflicts, allowing them greater stability in navigating government transitions.

    Health Minister and former CEO of Bank Mandiri, Budi Gunadi Sadikin, speaks with State Secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya ahead of their meeting with President Prabowo, June 2024 (Photo: Kementerian Kesehatan RI on Facebook)

    What this means for Indonesia

    The idea that technocrats are free from political interests has always been misleading—none are truly politically independent. However, the degree and layers of political influence on technocrats are vary.

    While academic technocrats will continue to play a key role, particularly in the Ministry of Finance, the growing influence of bankers and professional investors in strategic economic positions will create competition between different sets of technocratic groups over state economic policies and asset management. This shift gives Indonesian president alternatives in shaping technocratic policies. They can choose from academic technocrats, bankers, professional investors, combination of these backgrounds, or technocrats from other backgrounds.

    Indonesia’s democracy is becoming reactive. Is that good?

    Social media offers an ersatz form of accountability

    President Prabowo has so far appeared to favour loyalty and political connections in his technocratic appointments. A clear example is Danantara, Indonesia’s largest sovereign wealth fund, which directly controls up to US$900 billion in SOE assets and is charged with managing US$20 billion in cash for new investments. Its leadership—Rosan Roeslani, Pandu Sjahrir, and Donny Oskaria—are all professional investors with strong political ties. This stands in stark contrast to Jokowi’s approach. In 2021 he appointed bankers to lead the Indonesia Investment Authority (INA), prioritising conventional bankers over professional investors.

    Rosan, Pandu, and Donny are undeniably successful investors and capable technocrats, well-versed in effective policy execution. However, what distinguishes them is the dominant role of political connections in securing their appointments—a defining trait of professional-investor technocrats. This raises concerns about the lack of diversity in technocratic approaches within Danantara and other presidential economic agendas, where well-connected investors increasingly occupy strategic economic positions.

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    The post Beyond the “Berkeley Mafia” appeared first on New Mandala.

    This post was originally published on New Mandala.

  • Pacific Media Watch

    West Papuan independence advocate Octovianus Mote was in Aotearoa New Zealand late last year seeking support for independence for West Papua, which has been ruled by Indonesia for more than six decades.

    Mote is vice-president of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) and was hosted in New Zealand by the Green Party, which Mote said had always been a “hero” for West Papua.

    He spoke at a West Papua seminar at the Māngere Mountain Education Centre and in this Talanoa TV segment he offers prayers for the West Papuan solidarity movement.

    In a “blessing for peace and justice”, Octo Mote spoke of his hopes for the West Papuan struggle for independence at lunch at the Mount Albert home of New Zealand activist Maire Leadbeater in September 2024.

    He gave a tribute to Leadbeater and the Whānau Community Centre and Hub’s Nik Naidu, saying:

    “We remember those who cannot eat like us, especially those who oppressed . . . The 80,000 people in Papua who have had to flee their homes because of the Indonesian military operations.”

    Video: Nik Naidu, Talanoa TV


    Blessings by Octo Mote.               Video: Talanoa TV

    On Saturday, 12 July 2025 Te Atatu MP Phil Twyford will open the week-long Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) exhibition at the Ellen Melville Centre Women’s Pioneer Hall at 3pm.

    https://www.facebook.com/events/1856900961820487/

    Poster for the Legends of the Pacific: Stories of a Nuclear-Free Moana 1975-1995 exhibition
    Poster for the Legends of the Pacific: Stories of a Nuclear-Free Moana 1975-1995 exhibition, July 13-18.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Indonesian Navy (TNI-AL) is receiving a boost to its upper-end capabilities as it inducts two new classes of frigates. Beginning the charge, the first of four frigates, KRI Brawijaya, was commissioned in Mugiano, Italy on 2 July. KRI Brawijaya (pennant number ‘320’) is the first of two PPA warships manufactured by Fincantieri, originally destined […]

    The post Indonesian Navy cranks up its frigate inventory appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • The Indonesian Navy (TNI-AL) is receiving a boost to its upper-end capabilities as it inducts two new classes of frigates. Beginning the charge, the first of four frigates, KRI Brawijaya, was commissioned in Mugiano, Italy on 2 July. KRI Brawijaya (pennant number ‘320’) is the first of two PPA warships manufactured by Fincantieri, originally destined […]

    The post Indonesian Navy cranks up its frigate inventory appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • French technology company Exail has been awarded a contract to deliver uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) and mine identification and disposal systems to the Indonesian Navy. The company announced on 24 June that it will supply four Inspector 90 USVs, and the Seascan and K-Ster mine identification and disposal systems (MIDS). The systems will be deployed […]

    The post Exail to supply uncrewed mine countermeasures systems to Indonesian Navy appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    The NGO Coalition on Human Rights in Fiji (NGOCHR) has called on Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka as the new chair of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) to “uphold justice, stability and security” for Kanaky New Caledonia and West Papua.

    In a statement today after last week’s MSG leaders’ summit in Suva, the coalition also warned over Indonesia’s “chequebook diplomacy” as an obstacle for the self-determination aspirations of Melanesian peoples not yet independent.

    Indonesia is a controversial associate member of the MSG in what is widely seen in the region as a “complication” for the regional Melanesian body.

    The statement said that with Rabuka’s “extensive experience as a seasoned statesman in the Pacific, we hope that this second chapter will chart a different course, one rooted in genuine commitment to uphold justice, stability and security for all our Melanesian brothers and sisters in Kanaky New Caledonia and West Papua”.

    The coalition said the summit’s theme, “A peaceful and prosperous Melanesia”, served as a reminder that even after several decades of regional bilaterals, “our Melanesian leaders have made little to no progress in fulfilling its purpose in the region — to support the independence and sovereignty of all Melanesians”.

    “Fiji, as incoming chair, inherits the unfinished work of the MSG. As rightly stated by the late great Father Walter Lini, ‘We will not be free until all of Melanesia is free”, the statement said.

    “The challenges for Fiji’s chair to meet the goals of the MSG are complex and made more complicated by the inclusion of Indonesia as an associate member in 2015.

    ‘Indonesia active repression’
    “Indonesia plays an active role in the ongoing repression of West Papuans in their desire for independence. Their associate member status provides a particular obstacle for Fiji as chair in furthering the self-determination goals of the MSG.”

    Complicating matters further was the asymmetry in the relationship between Indonesia and the rest of the MSG members, the statement said.

    “As a donor government and emerging economic power, Indonesia’s ‘chequebook and cultural diplomacy’ continues to wield significant influence across the region.

    “Its status as an associate member of the MSG raises serious concerns about whether it is appropriate, as this pathway risks further marginalising the voices of our West Papuan sisters and brothers.”

    This defeated the “whole purpose of the MSG: ‘Excelling together towards a progressive and prosperous Melanesia’.”

    The coalition acknowledged Rabuka’s longstanding commitment to the people of Kanaky New Caledonia. A relationship and shared journey that had been forged since 1989.

    ‘Stark reminder’
    The pro-independence riots of May 2024 served as a “stark reminder that much work remains to be done to realise the full aspirations of the Kanak people”.

    As the Pacific awaited a “hopeful and favourable outcome” from the Troika Plus mission to Kanaky New Caledonia, the coalition said that it trusted Rabuka to “carry forward the voices, struggles, dreams and enduring aspirations of the people of Kanaky New Caledonia”.

    The statement called on Rabuka as the new chair of MSG to:

    • Ensure the core founding values, and mission of the MSG are upheld;
    • Re-evaluate Indonesia’s appropriateness as an associate member of the MSG; and
    • Elevate discussions on West Papua and Kanaky New Caledonia at the MSG level and through discussions at the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders.

    The Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights (NGOCHR) represents the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (chair), Fiji Women’s Rights Movement, Citizens’ Constitutional Forum, femLINKpacific, Social Empowerment and Education Program, and Diverse Voices and Action (DIVA) for Equality Fiji. Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) is an observer.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    A West Papuan independence movement leader has warned the Melanesian Spearhead Group after its 23rd leaders summit in Suva, Fiji, to not give in to a “neocolonial trade in betrayal and abandonment” over West Papua.

    While endorsing and acknowledging the “unconditional support” of Melanesian people to the West Papuan cause for decolonisation, OPM chair and commander Jeffrey P Bomanak
    spoke against “surrendering” to Indonesia which was carrying out a policy of “bank cheque diplomacy” in a bid to destroy solidarity.

    Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka took over the chairmanship of the MSG this week from his Vanuatu counterpart Jotham Napat and vowed to build on the hard work and success that had been laid before it.

    He said he would not take the responsibility of chairmanship lightly, especially as they were confronted with an increasingly fragmented global landscape that demanded more from them.

    PNG Prime Minister James Marape called on MSG member states to put West Papua and Kanaky New Caledonia back on the agenda for full MSG membership.

    Marape said that while high-level dialogue with Indonesia over West Papua and France about New Caledonia must continue, it was culturally “un-Melanesian” not to give them a seat at the table.

    West Papua currently holds observer status in the MSG, which includes Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Fiji — and Indonesia as an associate member.

    PNG ‘subtle shift’
    PNG recognises the West Papuan region as five provinces of Indonesia, making Marape’s remarks in Suva a “subtle shift that may unsettle Jakarta”, reports Gorethy Kenneth in the PNG Post-Courier.

    West Papuans have waged a long-standing Melanesian struggle for independence from Indonesia since 1969.

    The MSG resolved to send separate letters of concern to the French and Indonesian presidents.

    The OPM letter warning the MSG
    The OPM letter warning the MSG. Image: Screenshot APR

    In a statement, Bomanak thanked the Melanesians of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) of Kanaky New Caledonia for “unconditionally support[ing] your West Papuan brothers and sisters, subjected to dispossession, enslavement, genocide, ethnocide, infanticide, and ethnic cleansing, [as] the noblest of acts.”

    “We will never forget these Melanesian brothers and sisters who remain faithfully loyal to our cultural identity no matter how many decades is our war of liberation and no matter how many bags of gold and silver Indonesia offers for the betrayal of ancestral kinship.

    “When the late [Vanuatu Prime Minister] Father Walter Lini declared, ‘Melanesia is not free unless West Papua is free,”’ he was setting the benchmark for leadership and loyalty across the entire group of Melanesian nations.

    “Father Lini was not talking about a timeframe of five months, or five years, or five decades.

    “Father Lini was talking about an illegal invasion and military occupation of West Papua by a barbaric nation wanting West Papua’s gold and forests and willing to exterminate all of us for this wealth.

    ‘Noble declaration’
    “That this noble declaration of kinship and loyalty now has a commercial value that can be bought and sold like a commodity by those without Father Lini’s courage and leadership, and betrayed for cheap materialism, is an act of historic infamy that will be recorded by Melanesian historians and taught in all our nations’ universities long after West Papua is liberated.”

    OPM leader Jeffrey Bomanak
    OPM leader Jeffrey Bomanak . . . his letter warns against surrendering to Indonesian control. Image: OPM

    Bomanak was condemning the decision of the MSG to regard the “West Papua problem” as an internal issue for Indonesia.

    “The illegal occupation of West Papua and the genocide of West Papuans is not an internal issue to be solved by the barbaric occupier.

    “Indonesia’s position as an associate member of MSG is a form of colonial corruption of the Melanesian people.

    “We will continue to fight without MSG because the struggle for independence and sovereignty is our fundamental right of the Papuan people’s granted by God.

    “Every member of MSG can recommend to the United Nations that West Papua deserves the same right of liberation and nation-state sovereignty that was achieved without compromise by Timor-Leste — the other nation illegally invaded by Indonesia and also subjected to genocide.”

    Bomanak said the MSG’s remarks stood in stark contrast to Father Lini’s solidarity with West Papua and were “tantamount to sharing in the destruction of West Papua”.

    ‘Blood money’
    It was also collaborating in the “extermination of West Papuans for economic benefit, for Batik Largesse. Blood money!”

    The Papua ‘problem’ was not a human rights problem but a problem of the Papuan people’s political right for independence and sovereignty based on international law and the right to self-determination.

    It was an international problem that had not been resolved.

    “In fact, to say it is simply a ‘problem’ ignores the fate of the genocide of 500,000 victims.”

    Bomanak said MSG leaders should make clear recommendations to the Indonesian government to resolve the “Papua problem” at the international level based on UN procedures and involving the demilitarisation of West Papua with all Indonesian defence and security forces “leaving the land they invaded and unlawfully occupied.”

    Indonesia’s position as an associate member in the MSG was a systematic new colonialisation by Indonesia in the home of the Melanesian people.

    Indonesia well understood the weaknesses of each Melanesian leader and “carries out bank cheque diplomacy accordingly to destroy the solidarity so profoundly declared by the late Father Walter Lini.”

    “No surrender!”

    MSG members in Suva
    MSG leaders in Suva . . . Jeremy Manele (Solomon Islands, from left), James Marape (PNG), Sitiveni Rabuka (Fiji), Jotham Napat (Vanuatu), and Roch Wamytan (FLNKS spokesperson). Image: PNG Post-Courier

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    A Fiji-based advocacy group has condemned the participation of Indonesia in the Melanesian Spearhead Group which is meeting in Suva this week, saying it is a “profound disgrace” that the Indonesian Embassy continues to “operate freely” within the the MSG Secretariat.

    “This presence blatantly undermines the core principles of justice and solidarity we claim to uphold as Melanesians,” said We Bleed Black and Red in a social media post.

    The group said that as the new MSG chair, the Fiji government could not speak cannot credibly about equity, peace, regional unity, or the Melanesian family “while the very agent of prolonged Melanesian oppression sits at the decision-making table”.

    The statement said that for more than six decades, the people of West Papua had endured “systemic atrocities from mass killings to environmental devastation — acts that clearly constitute ecocide and gross human rights violations”.

    “Indonesia’s track record is not only morally indefensible but also a flagrant breach of numerous international agreements and conventions,” the group said.

    “It is time for all Melanesian nations to confront the reality behind the diplomatic facades and development aid.

    “No amount of financial incentives or diplomatic charm can erase the undeniable suffering of the West Papuan people.

    “We must rise above political appeasement and fulfill our moral and regional duty as one Melanesian family.

    “The Pacific cannot claim moral leadership while turning a blind eye and deaf ear to colonial violence on our own shores. Justice delayed is justice denied.”

    ‘Peaceful, prosperous Melanesia’
    Meanwhile, The Fiji Times reports that the 23rd MSG Leaders’ Summit got underway on Monday in Suva, drawing heads of state from Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and representatives from New Caledonia’s FLNKS.

    Hosted under the theme “A Peaceful and Prosperous Melanesia,” the summit ended yesterday.

    This year’s meeting also marked Fiji’s first time chairing the regional bloc since 1997.

    Fiji officially assumed the MSG chairmanship from Vanuatu following a traditional handover ceremony attended by senior officials, observers, and dignitaries at Draiba.

    Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape arrived in Suva on Sunday and reaffirmed Papua New Guinea’s commitment to MSG cooperation during today’s plenary session.

    He will also take part in high-level talanoa discussions with the Pacific Islands Forum’s Eminent Persons Group, aimed at deepening institutional reform and regional solidarity.

    Observers from the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) and Indonesia were also present, reflecting ongoing efforts to expand the bloc’s influence on issues like self-determination, regional trade, security, and climate resilience in the Pacific.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Indonesia has long stood as a democratic paradox: a country with vibrant electoral participation and open civic engagement, yet persistent institutional fragility. Over the last decade, another paradox has emerged—one that reshapes the relationship between public opinion and policymaking. As more citizens engage through digital platforms, political decisions have become increasingly reactive, emotionally charged, and performative.

    What we are witnessing is a shift toward what might be called reactive democracy—a form of governance in which legitimacy, through still rooted in elections or institutional authority, is sustained in between elections by the performance of responsiveness to  the social media reactions that determining which issues gain visibility and urgency—and which have increasingly become seen as proxies for the popular will.

    This logic stands in sharp contrast to the model of deliberative democracy, where legitimacy arises not from the volume or velocity of expression, but from its quality. As envisioned by thinkers like Habermas, deliberative democracy depends on inclusive, rational-critical debate—spaces where citizens justify their claims, consider opposing views, and seek mutual understanding. It imagines the public sphere as a space for thoughtful negotiation and the slow formation of reasoned consensus.

    Social media once seemed to promise this very vision: a digitally enabled deliberative space where citizens could bypass traditional gatekeepers and engage directly in democratic discourse. Few techno-utopian thinkers envisioned a future where the interactive features of digital platforms would foster a deeper, more participatory democracy—a kind of virtual town square grounded in openness, reciprocity, and reflective dialogue

    But in practice, platforms are not designed for deliberation—they are designed to capture attention. Reactions—emoji clicks, retweets, algorithmically sorted comments—are designed for speed and simplicity, not for reasoned exchange.

    Though individually fleeting, these digital signals become powerful when taken together, shaping the collective mood as interpreted and amplified by platform algorithms. The result is a connected mass democracy that often feels more reactive than reflective. It is, in many of its manifestations, shallower, more performative, and more susceptible to the distortions of spectacle than the idealist advocates of digital democracy had originally envisioned.

    Governance by trend

    In this environment, policymaking increasingly follows what goes viral, not what is effective. It becomes more performative than deliberative—driven by what trends, rather than what works. The democratic potential of this shift is real, but so are its dangers.

    In early 2025, several high-profile policy U-turns under President Prabowo Subianto’s administration illustrated this dynamic in real time. However, the phenomenon of viral-driven policymaking did not begin with the Prabowo administration. During Joko Widodo’s presidency, there was already a growing pattern of state responsiveness to viral criticism and digital outrage. A long list of Jokowi-era policies—ranging from controversial labour and education regulations to public health mandates and infrastructure plans—were revised, delayed, or scrapped entirely after facing intense online backlash. What started as occasional policy reversals under Jokowi has now become a more consistent and embedded mode of governance under Prabowo.

    One of the first involved an attempt to restrict the sale of 3-kilogram LPG canisters—widely known as tabung gas melon—to licensed distributors. The move disrupted informal retail networks relied on by millions. Within days, social media platforms were flooded with videos of distressed citizens, particularly women and elderly residents, struggling to find affordable gas. As public frustration intensified online, the government quickly reversed course. The canisters returned to warung shelves, and public anger subsided.

    Earlier, backlash also erupted over a proposed increase in the Value Added Tax (VAT) to 12 percent. Fears of rising prices for basic goods spread rapidly across social media. In response, the government hastily clarified that the hike would apply only to luxury items—a move widely interpreted as a reaction to mounting digital outrage.

    A third episode involved a controversial customs regulation limiting the quantity of goods Indonesian citizens could bring home from abroad. The policy was seen as excessive and burdensome. Online, the term “Becuk”—a mocking abbreviation of Bea Cukai (customs office)—went viral, symbolising widespread dissatisfaction. In a rare move, the spokesperson for the ministry of finance, Prastowo Yustinus, took to Twitter/X to crowdsource feedback from netizens. Days later, following intense online criticism and input, the government scrapped the regulation altogether.

    More recently, the Ministry of Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform (Menpan RB) issued a circular announcing delays in the appointment of new civil servants (Calon Pegawati Negeri Sipil or CPNS) and contract-based government employees (Pegawai Pemerintah dengan Perjanjian Kerka or PPPK). The decision sparked public disappointment. Within days, an online petition demanding the fast-tracking of CPNS recruitment began circulating widely, while the hashtag #saveCASN2024 trended across platforms as citizens protested the delay. Following the viral backlash, the government once again revised its position, announcing that CPNS appointments would be accelerated in response to public demand.

    These cases may seem minor, but they reflect a deeper trend. In today’s Indonesia, policy decisions increasingly unfold under the pressure of algorithmically-enabled mobilisation. No longer confined to deliberative forums, data and evidence, or expert panels, policymaking must now survive the court of public virality.

    Then trade minister Zulkifli Hasan acommpanies former president Joko Widodo on a market visit, May 2024 (Photo: Zulkifli Hasan on Facebook)

    From deliberation to digitally amplified emotion

    Indonesia’s digital landscape has expanded rapidly. With over 78 percent internet penetration, the public sphere now includes voices historically excluded from formal politics—housewives, rural youth, street vendors, and informal workers. This democratisation of access has, in many ways, created new spaces for accountability and participatory engagement.

    But social media platforms operate on emotional and algorithmic logic. Viral outrage—not careful deliberation—drives visibility. Research has consistently shown that emotionally charged content is far more likely to be shared and amplified. In this environment, complex and long-term policy issues—such as tax reform, climate adaptation, or education equity—often struggle to gain traction.

    Reactions may appear trivial, but they play a crucial role in digital politics. They not only gauge the popularity of content but also directly affect its algorithmic visibility—and therefore, its influence. The more reactions a piece of content garners, the more prominently social media platforms display it. The “clickers,” “likers,” and “sharers” may be dismissed as mere clicktivists, but they’ve become micro-opinion leaders and amplifiers of political messages.

    In turn, political leaders now obsessively track and optimise for these metrics, treating them as proxies for public approval. This carries a plebiscitary logic, where mass participation comes at the cost of shallow interaction. Only a small subset of activists engage in sustained political discourse, while the majority contribute through simplified acts—clicking “like,” sharing a post, or reacting with an emoji. These actions are individually minor but collectively powerful, accumulating into visible indicators of public sentiment.  It is not always populist leaders driving this shift, but the performative pressures of a digitally mediated public—namely, the growing expectation, amplified by social media, that politicians respond swiftly and visibly to online sentiment, often through symbolic gestures rather than through deliberative policymaking.

    In Indonesia, this logic is becoming institutionalised. Ministries now allocate specific budgets for social media governance—not merely to disseminate policy updates, but to monitor, respond to, and occasionally manipulate public sentiment online. These operations consist of coordinated networks of influencers, content creators, account coordinators, and paid buzzers who work together to steer online opinion in favour of the government and corporate interests. Beyond simply promoting state or corporate agendas, buzzers often engage in targeted attacks against dissenting voices, discrediting and intimidating journalists, activists, and environmental defenders.

    In effect, what Indonesia is witnessing is not merely the digitisation of its democracy. Rather, the rise of buzzers under the umbrella of reactive democracy shows how digital platforms, far from democratising public life, have been adapted to entrench existing hierarchies of power and shield them from accountability.

    As a result, policy decisions are not only swayed by viral public moods but are actively shaped and defended by orchestrated buzzer campaigns, making policymaking increasingly reactive, short-term, and hostile to critical scrutiny.

    Democracy without deliberation?

    To be clear, reactive democracy is not inherently exclusionary. In fact, it often expands participation and strengthens what some scholars call “vertical accountability” from below. It allows citizens—particularly those outside Jakarta or beyond elite circles—to shape national conversations. The ability to film, upload, and amplify grievances in real-time has fostered a new form of political participation—less tied to formal institutions, more rooted in emotional resonance and performative outrage.

    This visibility raises the reputational cost for policymakers who ignore public sentiment. Civil society actors, too, can leverage online momentum to elevate grassroots concerns to national prominence. In many ways, this dynamic has democratised voice. But it has also introduced significant risks.

    The rise of performance politics in Indonesia?

    What does it mean for Indonesia’s political development when elites and voters view democracy in instrumental terms?

    First, reactive governance undermines the predictability and stability that democratic institutions are designed to provide. When policy is shaped by viral outrage, long-term planning becomes difficult. Technocratic expertise may shift from evaluating outcomes to managing narratives. Evidence-based policymaking risks being sidelined by the imperative to act quickly—and visibly.

    Second, not all voices carry equal weight online. Although digital participation is expanding, algorithmic hierarchies still favour particular demographics. Urban, tech-savvy, middle-class users dominate much of the digital space, while rural communities, the elderly, and others on the margins remain underrepresented. What trends online may not reflect a democratic majority—but rather, an emotionally charged, algorithmically curated subset of the public.

    Third, the emotional tone of online discourse can erode the foundation of democratic reasoning. Policies that tackle complex challenges—such as climate change, education reform, or fiscal restructuring—require sustained, inclusive deliberation. These issues rarely go viral. A democracy governed by trending sentiment risks becoming one allergic to difficult truths.

    Fourth, digital discourse is easily manipulated. Political influencers, buzzers, and bots are frequently deployed to manufacture outrage or simulate grassroots support. In such cases, what appears to be “public opinion” may in fact be engineered by vested interests. Reactive governance, then, may end up responding not to the people—but to those who are most skilled at gaming the system.

    Conclusion: toward a more reflective digital democracy

    The rise of reactive democracy in Indonesia reveals a troubling paradox at the heart of its political transformation. On the surface, the digital public sphere appears to have invigorated political participation and enhanced a form of vertical accountability—citizens speaking back to power in real time, holding policymakers to account through viral outrage. Yet beneath this performative responsiveness lies a deeper erosion of institutional strength.

    What appears to be democratic responsiveness is often merely symbolic. Indonesia’s political landscape has become dominated by performance—gestures of attentiveness rather than substantive reform. Policy is increasingly shaped not by careful deliberation or long-term vision, but by what trends online. Public approval is measured in likes and hashtags, not in deliberative consensus. This is accountability in appearance, not in structure.

    Meanwhile, the horizontal and diagonal dimensions of accountability—checks by the judiciary, legislatures, civil society, and investigative media—have weakened significantly in recent years. Formal institutions have been hollowed out or co-opted, and public watchdogs struggle to compete with the speed and spectacle of social media outrage. In this context, digital participation risks distracting from deeper institutional decay, replacing enduring accountability mechanisms with a more volatile and superficial kind.

    Indonesia is not alone in confronting the promises and perils of digital democracy. But the stakes are uniquely high here, where the democratic project has long been shaped by a tension between mass legitimacy and institutional fragility. The challenge is not simply to regulate platforms or improve digital literacy—though these are important steps. It is to fundamentally rethink how democratic accountability is practiced and sustained in the digital age.

    Left unchecked, reactive democracy may lead Indonesia further into a plebiscitary model of governance: one where public input is immediate but shallow, emotionally resonant but policy-thin—ultimately undermining the very institutions needed to support democratic resilience. But if redirected, these new digital dynamics could also be harnessed to strengthen democracy by opening new spaces for deliberation, responsiveness, and inclusion.

    Meeting that challenge requires more than reactive governance. It demands a renewed commitment to building a reflective digital democracy—one that links digital expression to institutional power, and emotional energy to collective reasoning. The task ahead is to ensure that democracy in Indonesia is not only reactive, but also resilient, inclusive, and ultimately, reflective.

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    The post Indonesia’s democracy is becoming reactive. Is that good? appeared first on New Mandala.

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  • Anthony John Stanhope Reid—known to friends, students, and colleagues simply as Tony—passed away on Sunday, 8 June 2025, in Canberra. It was a quiet Sunday, typically devoted to church and reflection with his wife, Helen, his lifelong partner in both scholarship and life. A month earlier, I had an unexpected encounter with Tony in the coffee queue at Canberra Hospital after his oncology consultation. Sitting under the crisp late spring sun, we spoke not about illness but about Helen. “I just want to make sure Helen is taken care of,” he said quietly, deeply concerned she might outlive him.

    Tony Reid’s academic journey began at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, where he was actively involved in the Student Christian Movement. From this early context emerged a progressive intellectual orientation grounded in ideals of social justice and egalitarianism. Unlike many of his contemporaries who focused on Europe or North America, Reid turned decisively toward Southeast Asia—then a marginal region in global scholarship. His aim was not merely to study Southeast Asia but to rewrite its history from within, challenging Eurocentric paradigms and colonial epistemologies. He consistently treated the region not as an object of Western theory but as a generator of knowledge in its own right.

    This epistemological reorientation found its fullest expression in his 1990 magnum opus, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680. In this two-volume work, Reid reconceptualised Southeast Asia as a dynamic and interconnected maritime world, linked by monsoon winds, port cities, commercial exchanges, and religious movements. Rejecting nationalist and colonial historiographies that fragmented the region, he demonstrated that long before European imperialism, Southeast Asia was part of a cosmopolitan and global historical continuum. Through the use of travel accounts, commercial records, and ethnographic detail, Reid uncovered a richly textured world of cultural and economic interdependence.

    Methodologically, Reid was committed to writing history from below. He foregrounded everyday life, material culture, environment, and popular religious practices. His use of early European travel writings and colonial documents was both critical and ethnographic: rather than taking these as objective records, he treated them as refracted lenses through which indigenous societies could be glimpsed—biases and all. In addition, Reid employed economic data such as commodity prices and export statistics to delineate historical turning points, most notably the 17th-century crisis that marked the decline of Southeast Asia’s “Age of Commerce”. His scepticism toward grand, imported theories led him to build grounded historical periodisations based on regional dynamics.

    Although trained within European historiographical traditions, Reid’s ethical and intellectual allegiances were with the marginalized: women, laborers, peasants, diasporic Chinese communities, and adherents of local spiritual traditions. From his doctoral work on anti-colonial resistance in Aceh, completed at Cambridge, to his later studies on Indonesia’s revolution, Reid consistently approached history as a field shaped by the struggles and aspirations of ordinary people. A pivotal moment in this orientation came during his 1966 research trip to Sumatra, where he encountered firsthand the revolutionary fervor and suffering of the local populace. This encounter deeply influenced his 1979 book The Blood of the People, where Reid argued that the 1945–46 Indonesian revolution in Aceh and East Sumatra was a mass social uprising, not merely a political transition orchestrated by elites.

    For Reid, revolution was not just a national event but a profound social rupture with transformative potential. In 2009, he provocatively argued in his book Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism and Political Identity in Southeast Asia that “Indonesia’s unification as a centralized nation-state (not to mention China’s) would have been impossible without it.” Reid framed revolution as the crucible in which new national legitimacies were forged, particularly in the decolonising world of the mid-20th century. Yet he also acknowledged its paradoxes. As he observed in 2011 in To Nation by Revolution: Indonesia in the 20th Century, post-revolutionary states often invoked revolutionary rhetoric to suppress pluralism and dissent: “Revolution did not deliver all it promised, but it opened up possibilities that were once unthinkable.” For Reid, revolution was both emancipatory and wounding, and its unfinished legacies demanded ongoing critical reflection.

    Fragile paradise: Bali and volcanic threats to our region

    The destruction of centuries past should focus the region on preparing for Indonesia’s next mega-eruption.

    Equally significant was Reid’s institutional legacy. He was not only a prolific scholar but a builder of scholarly communities. At UCLA, he founded the Southeast Asia Center, and later became the founding director of the Asia Research Institute (ARI) at the National University of Singapore. ARI was envisioned as an inclusive intellectual space, deliberately interdisciplinary and intergenerational, designed to encourage critical dialogue across national and theoretical boundaries. For Reid, it was also a site of epistemic experimentation: “ARI is a place where you can see whether your theories make sense from an Asian perspective. But not ruling somebody out just because they don’t know enough about Asia,” he once said. In a field often marked by intellectual gatekeeping, ARI under Reid’s leadership became a rare space of openness and intellectual hospitality.

    Hundreds of young scholars benefitted from Reid’s mentorship. He was never a didactic supervisor but rather an empathetic and generous intellectual interlocutor. He would read long drafts by emerging researchers and offer incisive yet encouraging feedback. He always had time for a thoughtful conversation, whether between academic panels or after a spirited game of tennis. He listened carefully, not to interrogate, but to understand. Above all, Reid remained committed to nurturing a new generation of Southeast Asian scholars—those who would write with intellectual freedom, grounded empathy, and regional insight.

    With his passing, Southeast Asian studies has lost one of its most compelling voices. But Reid’s legacy—his commitment to bottom-up history, to intellectual integrity, and to the dignity of marginalised voices—will continue to shape the field for decades to come. His work reminds us that history is not a tool of power but a space for questioning, understanding, and healing. For Anthony Reid, truth-telling about the past was not a threat to the nation but the foundation of its maturity. In this spirit, he remains a guiding light for scholars committed to writing Southeast Asia from within.

    Farewell, Tony.

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    The post Remembering Anthony Reid (1939–2025) appeared first on New Mandala.

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  • By Scott Waide, RNZ Pacific PNG correspondent

    Two international organisations are leading a call for the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) to elevate the membership status of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) at their upcoming summit in Honiara in September.

    The collective, led by International Parliamentarians for West Papua (IPWP) and International Lawyers for West Papua (ILWP), has again highlighted the urgent need for greater international oversight and diplomatic engagement in the West Papua region.

    This influential group includes PNG’s National Capital District governor Powes Parkop, UK’s former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, and New Zealand’s former Green Party MP Catherine Delahunty.

    The ULMWP currently holds observer status within the MSG, a regional body comprising Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) of New Caledonia.

    A statement by the organisations said upgrading the ULMWP’s membership is “within the remit of the MSG” and requires a consensus among member states.

    They appeal to the Agreement Establishing the MSG, which undertakes to “promote, coordinate and strengthen…exchange of Melanesian cultures, traditions and values, sovereign equality . . . to further MSG members’ shared goals of economic growth, sustainable development, good governance, peace, and security,” considering that all these ambitions would be advanced by upgrading ULMWP membership.

    However, Indonesia’s associate membership in the MSG, granted in 2015, has become a significant point of contention, particularly for West Papuan self-determination advocates.

    Strategic move by Jakarta
    This inclusion is widely seen as a strategic manoeuvre by Jakarta to counter growing regional support for West Papuan independence.

    The ULMWP and its supporters consistently question why Indonesia, as the administering power over West Papua, should hold any status within a forum intended to champion Melanesian interests, arguing that Indonesia’s presence effectively stifles critical discussions about West Papua’s self-determination, creating a diplomatic barrier to genuine dialogue and accountability within the very body meant to serve Melanesian peoples.

    Given Papua New Guinea’s historical record within the MSG, its likely response at the upcoming summit in Honiara will be characterised by a delicate balancing act.

    While Papua New Guinea has expressed concerns regarding human rights in West Papua and supported calls for a UN Human Rights mission, it has consistently maintained respect for Indonesia’s sovereignty over the region.

    Past statements from PNG leaders, including Prime Minister James Marape, have emphasised Indonesia’s responsibility for addressing internal issues in West Papua and have noted that the ULMWP has not met the MSG’s criteria for full membership.

    Further complicating the situation, the IPWP and ILWP report that West Papua remains largely cut off from international scrutiny.

    Strict journalist ban
    A strict ban on journalists entering the region means accounts of severe and ongoing human rights abuses often go unreported.

    The joint statement highlights a critical lack of transparency, noting that “very little international oversight” exists.

    A key point of contention is Indonesia’s failure to honour its commitments; despite the 2023 MSG leaders’ summit urging the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to conduct a human rights mission to West Papua before the 2024 summit, Indonesia has yet to facilitate this visit.

    The IPWP/ILWP statement says the continued refusal is a violation of its obligations as a UN member state.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • “A lot of people think we’re building unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) to replace the infantry, but that’s just not true.” On the contrary, “Everything we’re doing is about enhancing the combat effectiveness of these people and their jobs.” That was a key message Milrem Robotics delivered when Patrick Shepherd, the company’s Chief Sales Officer, briefed […]

    The post Interview – Patrick Shepherd, Chief Sales Officer, Milrem Robotics appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Indo Defence 2025, held in Indonesia from 11-14 June, was a busy time for ASELSAN. On 13 June, the Turkish company opened an office in Jakarta, its fourth such office in Asia after previously establishing ones in Malaysia, Pakistan and the Philippines. Meanwhile, ASELSAN signed various accords at Indo Defence 2025, including with PT Len […]

    The post Interview – Ahmet Akyol, President & CEO of Aselsan appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • During the Indo Defence exhibition in Jakarta, South Africa’s Milkor and Indonesia’s PT Dirgantara Indonesia (PTDI) took an important step in strengthening regional defence collaboration by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). This new partnership marks a key milestone in advancing Indonesia’s aerospace capabilities, with a strong focus on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It reflects […]

    The post Milkor Announces New Partnership with PT Dirgantara appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • One product that US firm L3Harris was promoting at the Indo Defence 2025 exhibition, held in Jakarta from 11-14 June, was the ALQ-254 Viper Shield, an electronic warfare (EW) suite designed specifically for the F-16 fighter. Speaking to Asian Military Review, Travis Ruhl, Director, International Business Development, Viper Shield Lead & EW SME at L3 […]

    The post L3Harris promotes Viper Shield for Asian F-16 fighter fleets appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Spectra Group, a specialist provider of secure voice, data and satellite communications systems, is unveiling its new Troposcatter on the Move (TOTM) capability at Indo Defence and will be showcasing this and their other strategic communication capabilities in Booth D167f at Jakarta International Expo, June 11-14th 2025. Asia Pacific nations face unique challenges in achieving […]

    The post Spectra Group unveils Troposcatter on the Move (TOTM) to Asia at Indo Defence appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • ASELSAN strengthened its presence in Southeast Asia through collaborations in the fields of joint development, joint production, global supply chain integration and the official opening of its Indonesia office at INDO DEFENCE in Jakarta, Indonesia. ASELSAN, Türkiye’s leading defense company, signed five agreements at INDO DEFENCE that will increase its influence in the Indonesian defense […]

    The post ASELSAN deepens ties with Indonesia at INDO DEFENCE appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Editor’s note: this piece was originally posted at New Mandala on 3 October 2017 and is being republished in light of the news of Prof Anthony Reid’s passing on 8 June 2025. The ANU Indonesia Institute has posted a note reflecting on the enormous contributions of “Pak Tony” to the study of Southeast Asia, and you can read a tribute to him written by his former PhD student Dr Myra Mentari Abubakar at the Indonesia Council.

    ••••••••••••

    Mount Agung’s rumbling may or may not portend a massive eruption on the scale of a century. Fortunately the probability this time is for great disruption to air traffic, tourism, and the local economy, rather than massive death and homelessness.

    But among the constant eruptions of Indonesia’s many volcanoes (66 currently being monitored, with 50–60 more considered “active”), huge ones will come. They will be enormously destructive to Indonesia, will impact the world’s climate, and will challenge Australia’s capacity to manage without air traffic while assisting millions of displaced Indonesians to survive and recover. Even the moderate ones that are likely to occur every decade, causing dislocations to hundreds of thousands, need to be prepared for in a systematic way.

    The ring of fire

    The truth is that the chain of volcanoes in the Sunda Islands of Indonesia, from Sumatra through Java and Bali to Timor, constitutes the most dangerous of the world’s tectonic interfaces [see map below]. The northward-moving Australian plate thrusts under this chain at a rate of about 6cm a year, gradually curling downward the southern coasts of the Sunda chain until that pressure is released as the outer coast springs back upward. This causes a massive earthquake in each sector, or subduction zone, as the outer crust of the plate springs up by as much as 5 metres. The 9.2 magnitude quake of December 2004 at the northwestern end of this chain was the wakeup call. It triggered the “Indian Ocean” tsunami that killed nearly 200,000 people in Sumatra and thousands more around that ocean’s shores.

    The geologists went seriously to work on Sumatra after this crisis, and have now demonstrated a 7,000 year series of previous mega-events generating tsunamis, occurring irregularly but on an average once in 450 years. Nobody has done this kind of sophisticated geoscience elsewhere in Indonesia, and less still in the Nicobars—the other centre of the 2004 quake—where an over-sensitive Indian government has continued to exclude foreign aid workers and researchers. But the existing historical record makes clear that events at least as big have occurred repeatedly along this chain and as far as the Solomons. The great naturalist Rumphius survived a tsunami in Ambon in 1674 that may have been the world’s highest wave ever described, at around 100 metres.

    How does this pattern of subduction and release at the world’s most dangerous tectonic interface affect the eruption of the volcanoes that are its most spectacularly visible demonstration? So far, the science has to say, “it’s very complicated”. The periodicity of mega-eruptions is one of the great unknowns. But Indonesia has such a major share of the world’s dangerous volcanoes that recurrence somewhere is inevitable.

    Table 1. Direct and longer-term deaths from modern SE Asian eruptions
    Year Volcano VEI Deaths: direct Long term estimate
    1991 Pinatubo (Luzon) 5 700
    1963 Agung (Bali) 5 1,580 >50,000 (see below)
    1919 Kelud (East Java) 4? 5,110 120,000
    1883 Krakatau (Sunda Strait) 6 30,000 >100,000
    1822 Galunggang (West Java) 5 >4,000 ?
    1815 Tambora (Sumbawa) 7 11,000 >100,000

    The VEI of Table 1 refers to the logarithmic Volcanic Explosivity Index, whereby a mighty 7 (like Tambora) throws out over 100km3 of volcanic material, 10 times that of a VEI 6 (like Krakatau) which in turn ejects 10 times more than a 5 (like Gunung Agung in 1963).

    Perhaps it may be comforting for those awaiting catastrophe in Bali that the biggest explosive eruptions we know much about, Tambora in 1815 and Krakatau in 1883, appear to have occurred where there was not a prior record of regular eruptions every decade or two, or even the three in two centuries (1808, 1843, 1963) we know for Agung. Merapi, clearly visible from Yogyakarta and Surakarta and central to the mythology of these traditional Javanese capitals, is the best-known example of a “manageable” volcano with frequent eruptions. It has sent lava flows down the mountain towards the cities every decade or so, without killing more than a few hundred unlucky souls or displacing more than a few thousand. Kelut and Galunggang have been a little less frequent but more murderous, whereas Tambora had no known precedents.

    The 1963 Agung eruption

    The precedent everybody in Bali is very well aware of is Mount Agung’s eruption of 1963, which occurred at an exceptionally traumatic time for Bali. The economy was close to a century-long nadir as a result of the prolonged crisis of Indonesia’s transition to independence and Sukarno’s confronting, rather than encouraging, foreign investment and aid. Political polarisation was intense. The Left in Bali saw destruction of the privileges of the upper-caste triwangsa and the remaining influence of the island’s rajas as a necessary part of Indonesia’s unfinished revolution. Traditionalists believed that would mean the end of Bali’s unique civilisation. The priests decided they needed to cleanse Bali through a massive Eka Dasa Rudra ritual, last held in the nineteenth century. Though designed specifically to appease the powerful spiritual forces of the volcano, it failed spectacularly to do so. Many of those engaged in making offerings at the crater were among those killed as it erupted.

    The series of eruptions, most severe on 17 March and 16 May 1963, left Bali in misery. Some 1,580 people were reported killed by the rapid lava flows and accompanying poisonous gases. If a comparable eruption occurred tomorrow, the death toll would be greatly lessened by the warning systems now in place and the much better communication and support systems to get people out. The most impressive example of a major Southeast Asian eruption where the immediate deaths were relatively few was Pinatubo, close to population centres in Luzon, Philippines. Some 100,000 were successfully evacuated before the eruption, the worst in our region in the past half-century. Pinatubo cooperated with the geologists by gradually increasing the intensity of its rumbling, making the warnings believable to an always reluctant-to-move population.

    Balinese farmers contemplate ruin of their crops after the 1963 eruption. (Photo: AP/Horst Faas)

    Bali in 1963 was in no such state. Nor did it have the resources or organisation to cope with the terrible aftermath. Sukarno, embarking on his “Confrontation” of Malaysia, sought no international aid and discouraged publicity. The eruptions were estimated to have destroyed some 50,000 to 62,000 hectares of farmland, a fifth of which was irrigated riceland which had supported over 100,000 people. Livestock were decimated, with 3,467 cattle and 5,858 pigs lost, the basis of many livelihoods in worst-hit Karangasem. Governor Suteja said in April that, “We have to feed 85,000 refugees and we simply do not have the food to do it.” Reports of malnutrition and death from starvation became widespread in the local press, though downplayed in national media wanting to show Bali as harmonious.

    How great the longer-term effect of this destruction of livelihoods was on Bali’s population is difficult to assess. In earlier times, destruction of agriculture in this intensive rice-growing area meant death by starvation, unless escaping through bondage to some less devastated place. Bali in 1963 did in principle have a country behind it, but the circumstances of the time meant little aid was forthcoming.

    The best way to calculate the 1963 eruption’s effect on Bali’s population should be the two national censuses of 1961 and 1971, Indonesia’s first as an independent country. These have many shortcomings, but do provide the broad outlines. Indonesia’s population as a whole grew by 2.08% per annum between the two censuses, whereas Bali’s population grew by only 0.75%. There was therefore a “missing” population of 67,000 that would have been expected if Bali was more “normal” in this period.

    Table 2. Missing population (thousands) in three easternmost districts (kabupaten)
    Kabupaten 1961 census 1971 census “missing” between censuses
    Karangasem 261 267 53
    Bangli 124 138 14
    Klungkung 128 139 18
    ALL BALI 1,783 2,120 67
    I am grateful for the assistance of demographer Hasnani Rangkuty for her work on this census data.

    The situation was complicated by a second phenomenon between the two censuses that may have made Bali abnormal. The political killings of communists and other leftists in 1965–6 are also thought to have impacted Bali more than Indonesia as a whole. Though nobody knows the numbers, estimates as high as 100,000 have become current for the number of victims in Bali.

    The regional dispersion of the “missing” population at the 1971 census data appears to show, however, that the eruption of Agung was a much bigger factor. All the loss of normal population growth was in the eastern kabupaten of Karangasem (the site of the volcano) and its neighbours Bangli and Klungkung. On the other hand, the massacre of Leftists was understood to be mainly in the west of the island. The three districts of Jembrana, Buleleng, and Gianyar were all headed by bupati (regents) from the PKI (the Indonesian Communist Party) or its ally Partindo, and leftist activism had been concentrated there. In these western districts population growth between 1961 and 1971 was above the Bali average.

    Population flight from east to west after the eruption may have masked the demographic effect of killings in the west to some extent. Nevertheless the eruption was a much bigger factor in Bali’s excess mortality in the 1960s than has been acknowledged.

    Bigger eruptions will come

    The twentieth century, when seismography and tectonic theory began to make possible a modern scientific understanding of earthquakes and eruptions, was a relatively “mild” one for Indonesia geologically. The twenty-first century has in its first decade already far exceeded the number of casualties from geological disasters in the whole twentieth century. In the nineteenth, the two eruptions of Tambora (1815) and Krakatau (1883) both far exceeded anything known in the twentieth.

    In that “mild” century Indonesia’s population grew five-fold from 40 to 205 million, despite one of the world’s more successful birth control policies after 1970. When population data began to be systematically collected around 1820, Indonesia’s population was strikingly low in comparison with India, China, Japan or Europe. This was despite having among the more benign climates and most fertile soils in the world, and a population history going back tens of thousands of years. Bali, with an estimated 600,000 people in 1600, appeared to have grown hardly at all by 1820. The reality, it now appears, is that Indonesia’s population growth must have been very uneven, with high growth in many periods interrupted not only by wars, but also by effects on agriculture of massive eruptions like that of Tambora.

    Gunung Tambora photographed from the International Space Station in 2009. (Photo: NASA Earth Observatory)

    Only recently have the dots been connected to show the major effects of Tambora’s 1815 eruption on world climate. A “year without summer” followed the eruption in the northern hemisphere in 1816, with crop failures and famines in Europe, North America, and China. Tambora’s effects on our own region are far less well known.

    The indigenous population of northern Australia, who must have heard the explosion and seen some of the ash effects, were not taking notes. We do know, however, that the ash—which fell not only on Sumbawa itself but the neighbouring islands to the west, Lombok and Bali—caused the destruction of agriculture in the year that followed, and a massive loss of population. A Dutch observer counted 34 corpses of people trying to escape starvation along a 25km stretch of track between Badung and Gianyar in 1818. Bali exported nothing in the decade that followed except slaves, desperate to escape starvation by selling themselves to the slave traders. Yet 25 years later it was restored and flourishing with the beneficial fertilising effects of the ash fall, exporting large amounts of rice to Singapore and elsewhere.

    Only in 2013 were the scientific and historical dots joined to show that the source of another huge disruption of global climate in 1258 was caused by a massive eruption on Bali’s neighbour to the east, Lombok, the previous year. This was another VEI 7, with greater emissions than Tambora, and therefore something the contemporary world of scientific measurement has not yet had to deal with directly. Although the effects on the northern hemisphere have again been traced with far greater care than those in our own neighbourhood, it seems clear that Bali experienced another devastation from this closer eruption. There is a significant thirteenth century gap in the Balinese dated inscriptions that are the most reliable means of historical dating. Balinese and Lombok chronicles of later date suggest that a nascent Lombok civilisation was destroyed about this time, and that Bali was at such a low ebb that the first of the series of colonisations from Java’s Majapahit (on various readings dated 1262 or 1284) encountered little resistance.

    How will the future differ from the past?

    Today the populations exposed to the effects of any repetition of a Tambora-sized eruption have increased many-fold, and become about 50% urban. This population is no longer directly dependent on its own crops for survival. Trade and aid should spare the immediately affected region from famine resulting from the destruction of local crops. Governments today believe it is their responsibility to ensure the survival of populations so threatened, and to a great extent have the resources to do so. As the 2004 tsunami disaster showed, the world is capable of great generosity in contributing to the process of disaster relief and reconstruction, especially in a place like Bali that is familiar to the world’s tourists.

    Jim Scott in memoriam, Southeast Asian studies in perpetuum

    “The field of Southeast Asian studies has come to resemble the region as he saw and celebrated it, warts and all”

    Tourism to Bali had begun in the 1920s, but only a tiny handful of mostly Jakarta-based visitors were coming at the time of the 1963 eruption. Bali’s international airport was not opened until 1968, after which the mass traffic built up to the four million a year who visit today. This vast expansion will be fundamentally positive in helping Bali to respond to a really major eruption. Bali’s infrastructure is now exceptionally good, and the thousands of hotels could be turned to emergency purposes when foreign tourists stopped coming. International sympathy and media attention could be expected to be good for Bali, and one hopes that would serve as a stimulus for aid organisations to assist the exceptionally under-developed and vulnerable islands to its east—Sumbawa, Flores, and Timor.

    On the other hand, the disruption to air traffic in a major eruption of the scale of Tambora or even Krakatau would be unprecedented. Only in the era of jet engines has this become a serious problem, when only eruptions of VEI 5 (Pinatubo)—or more often 2, 3 or 4—have had to be dealt with.

    Although the density of flights in Europe ensured that Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull (2010) caused the greatest cancellation of flights so far, it is our region that has caused the greatest damage to planes. Only when two 747s lost engine power flying into the ash thrown out by Mount Galunggung in West Java in 1982—one of them narrowly averting a crash after losing all four engines—was the aviation world spurred into serious action.

    In the 1990s a system of reporting activity and advising pilots was gradually put in place. The world has been divided into nine regions, each monitored by a Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre (VAAC). Our region, including the dangerous volcanic arc from Sumatra to the Solomons, is monitored by the VAAC Darwin. Insurance companies have ensured that airlines heeded their advice. In the last decade, as travellers to Bali have been painfully aware, warnings from VAAC Darwin have caused flights between Australia and Indonesia to be grounded with unprecedented frequency on account of the following moderate Indonesian eruptions:

    • Sangeang Api (Sumbawa), May 2014
    • Kelut (East Java), November 2014. Two engines were damaged beyond repair in one Jetstar flight which did not hear the warning, though the flight was completed.
    • Raung (East Java), July–August 2015 (twice)
    • Rinjani (Lombok), November 2015 to August 2016, (three times).

    Nobody knows what the effect of a repetition of a Tambora-scale eruption would be on today’s jet-dependent world. One hopes that some fraction of the large defence budgets of Australia and Singapore are being devoted to modelling and preparing for the appropriate response to a major disaster far more likely (indeed certain, in a longer time frame) than a repetition of the past military threats that have fed outdated military insecurities. Cooperation between military and emergency services in these two rich countries and under-resourced Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and East Timor must begin before the disaster occurs, to establish trust, communication lines, and strategies. This kind of military and strategic engagement between neighbours has no down side in threatening others. It should be the minimum we ask of our governments.

    Enjoyed this article? Subscribe to New Mandala

    Keep up to date with opinionated, informed and accessible commentary on Southeast Asia from leading researchers. Leave your email address in the field below and you’ll receive new posts in your inbox as they are published.

    The post Fragile paradise: Bali and volcanic threats to our region appeared first on New Mandala.

    This post was originally published on New Mandala.

  • Editor’s note: this piece was originally posted to New Mandala on 3 October 2017 and is republished in light of the news of Prof Anthony Reid’s passing on 8 June 2025. The ANU Indonesia Institute has posted a note reflecting on the huge contribution ‘Pak Tony’ made to the study of Southeast Asia, and you can read a lovely tribute to him written by his former PhD student Dr Myra Mentari Abubakar at the Indonesia Council.

    ••••••••••••

    Mount Agung’s rumbling may or may not portend a massive eruption on the scale of a century. Fortunately the probability this time is for great disruption to air traffic, tourism, and the local economy, rather than massive death and homelessness.

    But among the constant eruptions of Indonesia’s many volcanoes (66 currently being monitored, with 50–60 more considered “active”), huge ones will come. They will be enormously destructive to Indonesia, will impact the world’s climate, and will challenge Australia’s capacity to manage without air traffic while assisting millions of displaced Indonesians to survive and recover. Even the moderate ones that are likely to occur every decade, causing dislocations to hundreds of thousands, need to be prepared for in a systematic way.

    The ring of fire

    The truth is that the chain of volcanoes in the Sunda Islands of Indonesia, from Sumatra through Java and Bali to Timor, constitutes the most dangerous of the world’s tectonic interfaces [see map below]. The northward-moving Australian plate thrusts under this chain at a rate of about 6cm a year, gradually curling downward the southern coasts of the Sunda chain until that pressure is released as the outer coast springs back upward. This causes a massive earthquake in each sector, or subduction zone, as the outer crust of the plate springs up by as much as 5 metres. The 9.2 magnitude quake of December 2004 at the northwestern end of this chain was the wakeup call. It triggered the “Indian Ocean” tsunami that killed nearly 200,000 people in Sumatra and thousands more around that ocean’s shores.

    The geologists went seriously to work on Sumatra after this crisis, and have now demonstrated a 7,000 year series of previous mega-events generating tsunamis, occurring irregularly but on an average once in 450 years. Nobody has done this kind of sophisticated geoscience elsewhere in Indonesia, and less still in the Nicobars—the other centre of the 2004 quake—where an over-sensitive Indian government has continued to exclude foreign aid workers and researchers. But the existing historical record makes clear that events at least as big have occurred repeatedly along this chain and as far as the Solomons. The great naturalist Rumphius survived a tsunami in Ambon in 1674 that may have been the world’s highest wave ever described, at around 100 metres.

    How does this pattern of subduction and release at the world’s most dangerous tectonic interface affect the eruption of the volcanoes that are its most spectacularly visible demonstration? So far, the science has to say, “it’s very complicated”. The periodicity of mega-eruptions is one of the great unknowns. But Indonesia has such a major share of the world’s dangerous volcanoes that recurrence somewhere is inevitable.

    Table 1. Direct and longer-term deaths from modern SE Asian eruptions
    Year Volcano VEI Deaths: direct Long term estimate
    1991 Pinatubo (Luzon) 5 700
    1963 Agung (Bali) 5 1,580 >50,000 (see below)
    1919 Kelud (East Java) 4? 5,110 120,000
    1883 Krakatau (Sunda Strait) 6 30,000 >100,000
    1822 Galunggang (West Java) 5 >4,000 ?
    1815 Tambora (Sumbawa) 7 11,000 >100,000

    The VEI of Table 1 refers to the logarithmic Volcanic Explosivity Index, whereby a mighty 7 (like Tambora) throws out over 100km3 of volcanic material, 10 times that of a VEI 6 (like Krakatau) which in turn ejects 10 times more than a 5 (like Gunung Agung in 1963).

    Perhaps it may be comforting for those awaiting catastrophe in Bali that the biggest explosive eruptions we know much about, Tambora in 1815 and Krakatau in 1883, appear to have occurred where there was not a prior record of regular eruptions every decade or two, or even the three in two centuries (1808, 1843, 1963) we know for Agung. Merapi, clearly visible from Yogyakarta and Surakarta and central to the mythology of these traditional Javanese capitals, is the best-known example of a “manageable” volcano with frequent eruptions. It has sent lava flows down the mountain towards the cities every decade or so, without killing more than a few hundred unlucky souls or displacing more than a few thousand. Kelut and Galunggang have been a little less frequent but more murderous, whereas Tambora had no known precedents.

    The 1963 Agung eruption

    The precedent everybody in Bali is very well aware of is Mount Agung’s eruption of 1963, which occurred at an exceptionally traumatic time for Bali. The economy was close to a century-long nadir as a result of the prolonged crisis of Indonesia’s transition to independence and Sukarno’s confronting, rather than encouraging, foreign investment and aid. Political polarisation was intense. The Left in Bali saw destruction of the privileges of the upper-caste triwangsa and the remaining influence of the island’s rajas as a necessary part of Indonesia’s unfinished revolution. Traditionalists believed that would mean the end of Bali’s unique civilisation. The priests decided they needed to cleanse Bali through a massive Eka Dasa Rudra ritual, last held in the nineteenth century. Though designed specifically to appease the powerful spiritual forces of the volcano, it failed spectacularly to do so. Many of those engaged in making offerings at the crater were among those killed as it erupted.

    The series of eruptions, most severe on 17 March and 16 May 1963, left Bali in misery. Some 1,580 people were reported killed by the rapid lava flows and accompanying poisonous gases. If a comparable eruption occurred tomorrow, the death toll would be greatly lessened by the warning systems now in place and the much better communication and support systems to get people out. The most impressive example of a major Southeast Asian eruption where the immediate deaths were relatively few was Pinatubo, close to population centres in Luzon, Philippines. Some 100,000 were successfully evacuated before the eruption, the worst in our region in the past half-century. Pinatubo cooperated with the geologists by gradually increasing the intensity of its rumbling, making the warnings believable to an always reluctant-to-move population.

    Balinese farmers contemplate ruin of their crops after the 1963 eruption. (Photo: AP/Horst Faas)

    Bali in 1963 was in no such state. Nor did it have the resources or organisation to cope with the terrible aftermath. Sukarno, embarking on his “Confrontation” of Malaysia, sought no international aid and discouraged publicity. The eruptions were estimated to have destroyed some 50,000 to 62,000 hectares of farmland, a fifth of which was irrigated riceland which had supported over 100,000 people. Livestock were decimated, with 3,467 cattle and 5,858 pigs lost, the basis of many livelihoods in worst-hit Karangasem. Governor Suteja said in April that, “We have to feed 85,000 refugees and we simply do not have the food to do it.” Reports of malnutrition and death from starvation became widespread in the local press, though downplayed in national media wanting to show Bali as harmonious.

    How great the longer-term effect of this destruction of livelihoods was on Bali’s population is difficult to assess. In earlier times, destruction of agriculture in this intensive rice-growing area meant death by starvation, unless escaping through bondage to some less devastated place. Bali in 1963 did in principle have a country behind it, but the circumstances of the time meant little aid was forthcoming.

    The best way to calculate the 1963 eruption’s effect on Bali’s population should be the two national censuses of 1961 and 1971, Indonesia’s first as an independent country. These have many shortcomings, but do provide the broad outlines. Indonesia’s population as a whole grew by 2.08% per annum between the two censuses, whereas Bali’s population grew by only 0.75%. There was therefore a “missing” population of 67,000 that would have been expected if Bali was more “normal” in this period.

    Table 2. Missing population (thousands) in three easternmost districts (kabupaten)
    Kabupaten 1961 census 1971 census “missing” between censuses
    Karangasem 261 267 53
    Bangli 124 138 14
    Klungkung 128 139 18
    ALL BALI 1,783 2,120 67
    I am grateful for the assistance of demographer Hasnani Rangkuty for her work on this census data.

    The situation was complicated by a second phenomenon between the two censuses that may have made Bali abnormal. The political killings of communists and other leftists in 1965–6 are also thought to have impacted Bali more than Indonesia as a whole. Though nobody knows the numbers, estimates as high as 100,000 have become current for the number of victims in Bali.

    The regional dispersion of the “missing” population at the 1971 census data appears to show, however, that the eruption of Agung was a much bigger factor. All the loss of normal population growth was in the eastern kabupaten of Karangasem (the site of the volcano) and its neighbours Bangli and Klungkung. On the other hand, the massacre of Leftists was understood to be mainly in the west of the island. The three districts of Jembrana, Buleleng, and Gianyar were all headed by bupati (regents) from the PKI (the Indonesian Communist Party) or its ally Partindo, and leftist activism had been concentrated there. In these western districts population growth between 1961 and 1971 was above the Bali average.

    Population flight from east to west after the eruption may have masked the demographic effect of killings in the west to some extent. Nevertheless the eruption was a much bigger factor in Bali’s excess mortality in the 1960s than has been acknowledged.

    Bigger eruptions will come

    The twentieth century, when seismography and tectonic theory began to make possible a modern scientific understanding of earthquakes and eruptions, was a relatively “mild” one for Indonesia geologically. The twenty-first century has in its first decade already far exceeded the number of casualties from geological disasters in the whole twentieth century. In the nineteenth, the two eruptions of Tambora (1815) and Krakatau (1883) both far exceeded anything known in the twentieth.

    In that “mild” century Indonesia’s population grew five-fold from 40 to 205 million, despite one of the world’s more successful birth control policies after 1970. When population data began to be systematically collected around 1820, Indonesia’s population was strikingly low in comparison with India, China, Japan or Europe. This was despite having among the more benign climates and most fertile soils in the world, and a population history going back tens of thousands of years. Bali, with an estimated 600,000 people in 1600, appeared to have grown hardly at all by 1820. The reality, it now appears, is that Indonesia’s population growth must have been very uneven, with high growth in many periods interrupted not only by wars, but also by effects on agriculture of massive eruptions like that of Tambora.

    Gunung Tambora photographed from the International Space Station in 2009. (Photo: NASA Earth Observatory)

    Only recently have the dots been connected to show the major effects of Tambora’s 1815 eruption on world climate. A “year without summer” followed the eruption in the northern hemisphere in 1816, with crop failures and famines in Europe, North America, and China. Tambora’s effects on our own region are far less well known.

    The indigenous population of northern Australia, who must have heard the explosion and seen some of the ash effects, were not taking notes. We do know, however, that the ash—which fell not only on Sumbawa itself but the neighbouring islands to the west, Lombok and Bali—caused the destruction of agriculture in the year that followed, and a massive loss of population. A Dutch observer counted 34 corpses of people trying to escape starvation along a 25km stretch of track between Badung and Gianyar in 1818. Bali exported nothing in the decade that followed except slaves, desperate to escape starvation by selling themselves to the slave traders. Yet 25 years later it was restored and flourishing with the beneficial fertilising effects of the ash fall, exporting large amounts of rice to Singapore and elsewhere.

    Only in 2013 were the scientific and historical dots joined to show that the source of another huge disruption of global climate in 1258 was caused by a massive eruption on Bali’s neighbour to the east, Lombok, the previous year. This was another VEI 7, with greater emissions than Tambora, and therefore something the contemporary world of scientific measurement has not yet had to deal with directly. Although the effects on the northern hemisphere have again been traced with far greater care than those in our own neighbourhood, it seems clear that Bali experienced another devastation from this closer eruption. There is a significant thirteenth century gap in the Balinese dated inscriptions that are the most reliable means of historical dating. Balinese and Lombok chronicles of later date suggest that a nascent Lombok civilisation was destroyed about this time, and that Bali was at such a low ebb that the first of the series of colonisations from Java’s Majapahit (on various readings dated 1262 or 1284) encountered little resistance.

    How will the future differ from the past?

    Today the populations exposed to the effects of any repetition of a Tambora-sized eruption have increased many-fold, and become about 50% urban. This population is no longer directly dependent on its own crops for survival. Trade and aid should spare the immediately affected region from famine resulting from the destruction of local crops. Governments today believe it is their responsibility to ensure the survival of populations so threatened, and to a great extent have the resources to do so. As the 2004 tsunami disaster showed, the world is capable of great generosity in contributing to the process of disaster relief and reconstruction, especially in a place like Bali that is familiar to the world’s tourists.

    Indonesia and North Korea: warm memories of the Cold War

    Friendly ties to Pyongyang have been an emblem of non-alignment for generations of Indonesian foreign policy makers.

    Tourism to Bali had begun in the 1920s, but only a tiny handful of mostly Jakarta-based visitors were coming at the time of the 1963 eruption. Bali’s international airport was not opened until 1968, after which the mass traffic built up to the four million a year who visit today. This vast expansion will be fundamentally positive in helping Bali to respond to a really major eruption. Bali’s infrastructure is now exceptionally good, and the thousands of hotels could be turned to emergency purposes when foreign tourists stopped coming. International sympathy and media attention could be expected to be good for Bali, and one hopes that would serve as a stimulus for aid organisations to assist the exceptionally under-developed and vulnerable islands to its east—Sumbawa, Flores, and Timor.

    On the other hand, the disruption to air traffic in a major eruption of the scale of Tambora or even Krakatau would be unprecedented. Only in the era of jet engines has this become a serious problem, when only eruptions of VEI 5 (Pinatubo)—or more often 2, 3 or 4—have had to be dealt with.

    Although the density of flights in Europe ensured that Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull (2010) caused the greatest cancellation of flights so far, it is our region that has caused the greatest damage to planes. Only when two 747s lost engine power flying into the ash thrown out by Mount Galunggung in West Java in 1982—one of them narrowly averting a crash after losing all four engines—was the aviation world spurred into serious action.

    In the 1990s a system of reporting activity and advising pilots was gradually put in place. The world has been divided into nine regions, each monitored by a Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre (VAAC). Our region, including the dangerous volcanic arc from Sumatra to the Solomons, is monitored by the VAAC Darwin. Insurance companies have ensured that airlines heeded their advice. In the last decade, as travellers to Bali have been painfully aware, warnings from VAAC Darwin have caused flights between Australia and Indonesia to be grounded with unprecedented frequency on account of the following moderate Indonesian eruptions:

    • Sangeang Api (Sumbawa), May 2014
    • Kelut (East Java), November 2014. Two engines were damaged beyond repair in one Jetstar flight which did not hear the warning, though the flight was completed.
    • Raung (East Java), July–August 2015 (twice)
    • Rinjani (Lombok), November 2015 to August 2016, (three times).

    Nobody knows what the effect of a repetition of a Tambora-scale eruption would be on today’s jet-dependent world. One hopes that some fraction of the large defence budgets of Australia and Singapore are being devoted to modelling and preparing for the appropriate response to a major disaster far more likely (indeed certain, in a longer time frame) than a repetition of the past military threats that have fed outdated military insecurities. Cooperation between military and emergency services in these two rich countries and under-resourced Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and East Timor must begin before the disaster occurs, to establish trust, communication lines, and strategies. This kind of military and strategic engagement between neighbours has no down side in threatening others. It should be the minimum we ask of our governments.

    Enjoyed this article? Subscribe to New Mandala

    Keep up to date with opinionated, informed and accessible commentary on Southeast Asia from leading researchers. Leave your email address in the field below and you’ll receive new posts in your inbox as they are published.

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    This post was originally published on New Mandala.

  • State-owned company PT Pindad unveiled two new armoured vehicle platforms at Indo Defence, held in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta from 11-14 June 2025. One was an armoured personnel carrier (APC) version of the Harimau medium tank, while the other was the new Anoa 3 6×6 APC. A spokesperson from PT Pindad said the 30-tonne […]

    The post PT Pindad unveils new armoured vehicles destined for the Indonesian Army appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • At the recent Indo Defence exhibition, Milkor was privileged to engage in an insightful interview with Asian Military Review at our booth. The discussion encompassed key aspects of the Milkor 380 UCAV and the Milkor Commander, highlighting our continued commitment to advancing innovative defence solutions.

    The post MILKOR at Indo Defence 2025 in Jakarta appeared first on Asian Military Review.

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  • The US company Leonardo DRS has enjoyed considerable success in the Indonesian market with its vehicle-mounted tactical router/server units and rugged tablets and displays. The company manufactures Data Distribution Unit – Expendables (DDUx) that integrate voice, data, video and various sensors, as well as MRT104 multifunction rugged tablets and MRD121 multifunction rugged displays. These are […]

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  • By Caleb Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific journalist

    Further reports of civilian casualties are coming out of West Papua, while clashes between Indonesia’s military and the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement continue.

    One of the most recent military operations took place in the early morning of May 14 in Sugapa District, Intan Jaya in Central Papua.

    Military spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Iwan Dwi Prihartono said in a video statement translated into English that 18 members of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) had been killed.

    He claimed the military wanted to provide health services and education to residents in villages in Intan Jaya but they were confronted by the TPNPB.

    Colonel Prihartono said the military confiscated an AK47, homemade weapons, ammunition, bows and arrows and the Morning Star flag — used as a symbol for West Papuan independence.

    But, according to the TPNPB, only three of the group’s soldiers were killed with the rest being civilians.

    The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) said civilians killed included a 75-year-old, two women and a child.

    Both women in shallow graves
    Both the women were allegedly found on May 23 in shallow graves.

    A spokesperson from the Indonesian Embassy in Wellington said all 18 people killed were part of the TPNPB, as declared by the military.

    “The local regent of Intan Jaya has checked for the victims at their home and hospitals; therefore, he can confirm that the 18 victims were in fact all members of the armed criminal group,” they said.

    “The difference in numbers of victim sometimes happens because the armed criminal group tried to downplay their casualties or to try to create confusion.”

    The spokesperson said the military operation was carried out because local authorities “followed up upon complaints and reports from local communities that were terrified and terrorised by the armed criminal group”.

    Jakarta-based Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono said it was part of the wider Operation Habema which started last year.

    “It is a military operation to ‘eliminate’ the Free Papua guerilla fighters, not only in Intan Jaya, but in several agencies along the central highlands,” Harsono said.

    ‘Military informers’
    He said it had been intensifying since the TPNPB killed 17 miners in April, which the armed group accused of being “military informers”.

    RNZ Pacific has been sent photos of people who have been allegedly killed or injured in the May 14 assault, while others have been shared by ULMWP.

    Harsono said despite the photos and videos it was hard to verify if civilians had been killed.

    He said Indonesia claimed civilian casualties — including of the women who were allegedly buried in shallow graves — were a result of the TPNPB.

    “The TPNPB says, ‘of course, it is a lie why should we kill an indigenous woman?’ Well, you know, it is difficult to verify which one is correct, because they’re fighting the battle [in a very remote area],” Harsono said.

    “It’s difficult to cross-check whatever information coming from there, including the fact that it is difficult to get big videos or big photos from the area with the metadata.”

    Harsono said Indonesia was now using drones to fight the TPNPB.

    “This is something new; I think it will change the security situation, the battle situation in West Papua.

    “So far the TPNPB has not used drones; they are still struggling. In fact, most of them are still using bows and arrows in the conflict with the Indonesian military.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • JSC ROSOBORONEXPORT (part of Rostec State Corporation) will be showcasing the latest Russian military equipment at Indo Defense Expo 2025. The event will be held from June 11 to 14 at Jakarta International Expo, Kemayoran, Indonesia and the Russian special exporter will be presenting more than 250 Russian products for the armed forces. “The Russian […]

    The post ROSOBORONEXPORT to take part in re-equipping Indonesian Armed Forces appeared first on Asian Military Review.

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  • Open your fridge, pantry, or bathroom cabinet, and you’re likely to find a product containing carrageenan, a gelling substance derived from red seaweed. It is an essential part of modern daily life, found in everything from processed foods to cosmetics and medicine.

    A thickener in your yoghurt and a stabiliser in your shampoo, carrageenan is used all over the world, but it comes primarily from one place: Indonesia, where seaweed is almost exclusively harvested by household operators. A boom in the industry, born of surging demand for carrageenan, has lately integrated these producers into the global market. The results are rapidly reshaping not only the economy of rural coastal Indonesia, but also its physical, social, and political landscape.

    My doctoral research concentrated on how this has played out in South Sulawesi province, which is home to 11% of Indonesian households involved in marine fisheries—the highest proportion of all Indonesia’s provinces. As they become more connected to global fisheries markets, control over increasingly valuable sea space becomes more contested, and conflicts intensify. When villagers reach out to grassroots state actors for mediation and formalisation of their claims, new institutions governing resource access emerge, disrupting longstanding norms of collective ownership and transforming communal property into a privatised commodity. By examining this process, my research underscores how the privatisation of common-pool resources—shaped by global market forces and state intervention—has redefined local institutions of access, shifting from traditional, collective governance to new, market-driven forms of resource control.

    Centuries-old maritime commerce

    South Sulawesi’s coastal communities have a long history of regional and international trade, being rooted in the maritime culture of the Bugis and Makassaresse, the two largest ethnic groups in the region, whose maritime commerce dates back to at least the 5th century, peaking between the 15th and 18th centuries.

    Makassar, the provincial capital, was a key trading hub for commodities such as spices and sea cucumber (trepang), connecting South Sulawesi to China, India, and the Malay Peninsula. Bugis–Makassar fishers even expanded their fishing grounds to northern Australia. After losing dominance over regional trade routes to European colonial powers in the 18th century, the Bugis and Makassaresse adapted by engaging in new marine commodities, such as shrimp, crab, and seaweed.

    My research focused on two coastal villages, Laikang Village in Takalar District and Pitu Sunggu Village in Pangkep District.

    Location of research sites in South Sulawesi (Image: Indonesian Geospatial Information Agency)

    Laikang is a Makassarese village located along an 8-kilometre coastline facing the Flores Sea. Until the 1990s, most households there relied on farming, with coastal residents balancing farming and subsistence fishing, while landless families often depended on fishing, farm labour, and seasonal migration. The village transitioned from land-based farming to seaweed cultivation after a surge in global prices in the early 2000s.

    The second site, Pitu Sunggu, is a smaller Bugis village along the Makassar Strait. It saw a surge in shrimp production in the 1990s, driven by demand from the United States and Japan. This led to the conversion of rice fields into shrimp ponds (tambak), which became especially profitable when the value of the rupiah collapsed during the 1997–98 Asian Financial Crisis, bringing considerable wealth to landowners. Many of today’s village leaders emerged from those prosperous tambak families. When shrimp farming declined due to disease outbreaks, seaweed cultivation arrived in the village around 2007, with former fishers and tambak farmers turning to it as a new primary source of livelihood.

    In both Laikang and Pitu Sunggu, demand from US firms like Phillip Seafood has since the early 2000s also fuelled crabbing, particularly because the two crops’ respective high and low seasons coincide. Today, both villages have diversified economies. Wealthier families are involved in seaweed and crab trading and processing, while poorer households continue to depend on fishing, crabbing, seasonal migration, and casual work, particularly in seaweed farming and crab processing facilities.

    How carrageenan reshaped coastal livelihoods

    In South Sulawesi, red seaweeds are major crops for carrageenan production. To cultivate them, farmers require sea space (locally known as lokasi), along with seeds, plastic bottle floats, nylon ropes, and small boats. Labour is divided by gender: women usually handle the labour-intensive task of binding seeds—which often requires the hiring of paid workers—while men are responsible for planting, maintaining, and harvesting the seaweed at sea.

    Seaweed is harvested 40 to 45 days after planting, requiring significant upfront costs. Some farmers are self-funded, but many depend on loans from village traders, who provide not only financing for farming but also for personal needs like school fees, healthcare, and cultural ceremonies. After harvest, the seaweed is sun-dried and traders sell it to exporters or processors in Makassar—often financially supported by overseas buyers, mainly from China.

    L: Women workers tie seaweed seeds before planting them in Laikang, 30 May 2022. R: Red seaweed is sun-dried on a pier in Pitu Sunggu after harvest, 12 June 2022. (Photos: author)

    Before the rise of seaweed cultivation, the coastal waters of South Sulawesi villages were seen as communal property, freely accessible to local fishermen and families for harvesting marine resources, both for subsistence and income. Villagers employed various fishing methods, sometimes involving a more permanent use of sea space to construct bamboo fish traps like bagang or serobila. The first-come-first-served principle applied, with villagers investing labour and capital to claim exclusive access rights over certain areas and establish a sense of ownership over them. Until recently such claims were not common, as most villagers were engaged in land-based agriculture—growing crops like rice, corn, sweet potatoes, and mung beans.

    As demand for carrageenan seaweed surged, however, the situation began to change. Seaweed farming, introduced in the 1990s and booming after 2010, gained popularity due to rising global demand for carrageenan in the food processing sector, as well as innovations in low-cost processing technology, which made it a more appealing additives for various industries. For many fishing households in South Sulawesi, the promise of higher earnings prompted a shift away from traditional fishing, leading to increased competition for sea space to establish seaweed plots.

    The tall bamboo structure is a traditional “bagang” fish trap standing next to structures used for seaweed and lobster farming in Laikang (Photo: Risya Arsyi)

    Growing competition and disparity

    The customary rules governing bagang and serobila fishing traps in South Sulawesi served as precursors to claims over sea space for seaweed farming. Though access was generally open, it often depended on one’s social identity as a local resident. In the early years of seaweed farming, migrants could still secure plots. But as the value of sea space increased with rising global prices of seaweed, the local identity factor became more critical. In 2021, Indonesia’s Central Statistics Agency estimated that approximately 90% of Indonesia’s seaweed farmers cultivated the crop within their own villages. While these sea space claims are not formally recognised by state authorities, villagers often refer to them with terms such as “own” (milik) or “have” (punya) in everyday conversation, implying a widely understood sense of ownership. Some villagers even considered these access rights permanent, believing they could pass them down to their children, and many did so.

    However, the practice was not without challenges and disputes. Competition for sea space intensified in 2014, as more villagers sought to establish lokasi in the wake of several years of surging seaweed prices. Many villagers who worked in other places returned to Laikang and Pitu Sunggu to secure plots, with each rise in seaweed prices spurring new claims. While wealthier households were better positioned to capitalise on this situation, many poor fishers in the coastal hamlets did the same, often with financial support from traders who provided loans in exchange for future harvests.

    The profitability of seaweed farming became clear, and speculation soon followed. Some villagers staked claims by marking lokasi without bringing them into production, resulting in many sites being left underutilised and causing tensions between those with large holdings and those with smaller or no holdings. This issue became more pronounced recently, especially when seaweed prices continued to rise, reaching a historic high in 2022.

    A traditional serobila fishing trap is seen from above (https-:adycandra.com:sero:) and from the side in Laikang, 17 May 2022 (Photo: author)

    By the late 2010s, the most productive seaweed farming areas had already been claimed, turning sea space into valuable individual assets, with access largely controlled by early claimants. The commodification of sea space expanded through mechanisms like selling, leasing, and sharecropping. While being a local resident was not required for participation, social networks remained crucial. Latecomers and outsiders, like one man who bought a lokasi for Rp3 million in 2017 without a written agreement (a common practice for transferring lokasi rights), had to negotiate access through local social structures. Having previously been a rice farmer, he found earning money from the sea much easier than from the land. Others gained temporary access by “borrowing” lokasi, often from family or by maintaining good relations with early claimants. Lending was seen as an act of goodwill, strengthening social ties and fostering a sense of obligation from the recipient. As one wealthy seaweed farmer explained to me: lending plots helped build relationships for future assistance. Another one said he often received seaweed or seeds from a relative who used his plot.

    Despite the sense of community and mutual support, not everyone benefited equally. While wealthy pioneers often emphasised community values and referred to the farming collective as “family”, poorer farmers felt the increasing disparity. One farmer in his mid-50s, limited by a small plot and lacking capital for quality seed and equipment, expressed frustration, saying: “the rich get richer because they benefit the most from seaweed farming, but we are not getting anywhere”.

    As the value of seaweed farming areas grew, social and economic stratification deepened. What was once an open-access system evolved into a more complex sociopolitical landscape, where historical claims, social networks, and capital determined who could access sea space. Early pioneers reaped rewards as seaweed prices surged, expanded their holdings, hired workers, or diversified into trade. Others, however, were limited to smaller operations. While seaweed farming created economic opportunities for coastal communities, it also soon fuelled tensions within them.

    Conflict over sea space

    In the early days of seaweed farming, when South Sulawesi coastal waters were used primarily for fishing, tensions between seaweed cultivators and fishers were common, sometimes escalating to violence. Seaweed farms obstructed access to fishing grounds and risked of entangling nets, which led some fishers to deliberately damage seaweed lines. Both sides claimed the sea as common property, justifying their rights to use it. Despite attempts at mediation from village authorities, these tensions existed until the late 2000s, when a shift occurred: many fishers, faced with declining fish stocks due to overfishing, turned to farming seaweed. This transition not only transformed the local economy, but also social structures and institutions, driven by new norms and practices within the community.

    As seaweed farming became the dominant livelihood, its economic importance and larger investments created foundations for conflict resolution. While conflict between fishers and seaweed farmers decreased, tensions began to rise among the farmers themselves. A 50-year-old female seaweed binder told me there were so many conflicts over lokasi that “sometimes brothers fight with each other; fathers fight with their sons”.

    Cultivated seaweed plot (“lokasi”) in Pitu Sunggu, 15 June 2022 (Photo: author)

    The most common disputes stem from overlapping claims—often on uncultivated lokasi or when one party seeks to expand their area. A 2012 case from Pitu Sunggu illustrates the dynamics of such disputes. When Ridwan (not his real name) took a job in Kalimantan and allowed Hamid (name also changed) to use his lokasi under a verbal agreement that he would reclaim it upon his return. Verbal agreements, typically witnessed by neighbours, are a customary way to transfer lokasi rights. However, when Ridwan returned in 2018, he found Hamid’s son cultivating the site. Hamid then asked Ridwan to share part of it with his son, who had no plots at the time. Reluctantly, Ridwan acquiesced, saying, “I was being kind”—a sentiment laced with both resentment and social pressure.

    Disputes frequently arise along boundary markers. Ilham (also a pseudonym) explained the subtle nature of such conflicts: “Some people move their lines and anchors little by little until they cross into the boundaries of others’ uncultivated locations. When the owner of that lokasi complains, they claim it’s been there all along”. This highlights the inherent challenges in establishing and enforcing claims to sea space.

    Another source of conflict is the violation of common space. In both villages, there has long been an understanding that the spaces between plots should remain open. Yet with the surge in seaweed prices in 2021–22, some farmers began expanding into these paths. While they initially faced strong social rebuke from fellow cultivators, congestion worsened by 2022, eventually reaching the pier area. One farmer, frustrated by the encroachment, recalled warning an encroaching cultivator’s uncle: “I won’t be responsible if your nephew’s ropes get damaged in the boatways”. This led to a physical altercation, requiring mediation by a village leader to preserve the open boatway.

    But enforcing community norms has its limits, especially when disputes involve powerful local elites. For marginalised groups, asserting rights to common spaces often requires courage, and they typically avoid direct confrontations. Many fear damaging relations with influential figures—such as seaweed traders and employers—or facing social exclusion that could threaten their already vulnerable livelihoods.

    Creating “an air of legality” in resource distribution

    Across Indonesia and much of the Global South, smallholders like South Sulawesi’s seaweed farmers are increasingly integrated into industrialised value chains, navigating the boom-and-bust cycles of global commodity markets while contending with local dynamics. Despite these pressures, they exhibit adaptability in response to shifting livelihood opportunities. The seaweed expansion in South Sulawesi shows how global market integration not only transforms local economies but also reshapes resource governance and power structures, as it intersects with local social norms and unequal resource distribution. While these informal institutions reflect local agency and adaptability, competition for resources frequently leads to conflict—and the state often looms large as the ultimate authority in protecting resource access and property claims.

    Coffee, conflict, and inadvertent state-building in Vietnam

    How state-building can work from the bottom up

    Thus while claims to sea space in my field sites are often legitimised through informal practices, resolving disputes typically requires appealing to authority. In both villages, local leaders, despite lacking a clear legal mandate, have played an active role in mediating conflict, sometimes with success. This dynamic creates a fluid relationship between informal institutions and formal authority. As uncertainty over the permanence of claims became a major source of discord, in 2019, for example, the village government of Laikang sought to reinforce its authority over sea space by drafting a village regulation aimed at formalising and adjusting the informal rules governing access.

    The draft regulation proposed a rather progressive reform: any lokasi abandoned for three consecutive years would revert to the common resource pool, making it available for others to use. The process would involve consultations with both the village government and the previous owner to reach a mutually beneficial solution, including a compensation mechanism. This shift, which challenged the traditional permanence of rights held by lokasi owners, sparked intense debate within the community. Those with smaller lokasi generally supported the draft, seeing it as a way to achieve a fairer redistribution of resource access, while those with larger or multiple lokasi saw it as a violation of established practices.

    The draft village regulation sought to formalise claims over sea space, placing enforcement responsibility on state authorities. Though not grounded in statutory law, it would provide an “air of legality” by involving state structures. At the time, many villagers were inclined to follow the lead of their relatively well-educated leaders who were not reliant on seaweed farming for their livelihoods. But a subsequent change in village leadership—marked by economic and political interests favouring the status quo—led to a decline in the village government’s commitment to these reforms.

    Indonesia already has a legal framework governing coastal space, although it is not widely known or understood among local communities. The 2007 Law on the Management of Coastal Zones and Small Islands mandates that regional governments to establish marine zoning plans, and requires permits to be issued by provincial—not village—authorities, except for recognised so-called adat communities—often Indigenous groups that follow traditional laws. While villagers were unaware of these regulations, the provincial Bureau of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries was well-informed about the informal use of sea space but said it was currently focusing on large enterprises operating beyond four miles offshore. Regulations restrict large-scale seaweed farming to areas beyond four miles offshore to prevent competition with small-scale fishers, and obtaining permits requires community approval.

    But when the government announced in 2022 that several large companies had expressed interest in seaweed production in South Sulawesi, and two were eventually granted location permits, their operations were halted due to community resistance, which called for fairer distribution of profits. Many villagers expressed doubts about greater government involvement, uncertain if it would protect their property rights or lead to dispossession.

    This tension underscores broader concerns about increasing state control, which is often seen as reducing local access to resources and shifting power to external actors. In practice, control over sea space in these villages remains a hybrid system, where informal community norms coexist with state authority.

    Conclusion

    The integration of South Sulawesi’s coastal communities into the global seaweed market has transformed coastal sea space from communal property into a privatised commodity. As in many other parts of the Global South, this process has given rise to new ways for communities to determine access to resources is based on factors like capital, social identity and relationships, and labour, reflecting the mechanisms outlined in Ribot and Peluso’s access theory. Indeed, this shift parallels the commodification of land in other parts of Indonesia where, as Tania Li has detailed, communities similarly use the term lokasi to establish permanent ownership. As seaweed farming expanded, maritime lokasi became commercialised—bought, leased, and sharecropped—yet what Nancy Peluso has called an “ethic of access” persists, allowing for shared use to resolve conflicts and maintain social harmony.

    But while possession may well be nine-tenths of the law in Indonesia—the remaining one-tenth, the formal recognition by state authorities, still plays a crucial role, particularly when possession is contested. However, seeking state intervention carries risks, as legal systems can be manipulated by predatory governments, leading to dispossession of local communities. Although the Indonesian state has played a relatively minor role in mediating coastal space rights, my research shows signs of its increasing involvement, especially as powerful industrial actors begin to show interest in these areas. As pressures from both the market and the state’s expanding role are growing, how coastal communities in South Sulawesi will navigate these shifts in governance will become a pivotal challenge—one that will shape their future access to key resources and the security of their livelihoods.

    ••••••••••

    This post is part of a series of essays highlighting the work of emerging scholars of Southeast Asia published with the support of the Australian National University College of Asia and the Pacific.

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    Acknowledgements

    This article is based on a chapter from the author’s PhD thesis that was also published as a co-authored article at the Journal of Agrarian Change. The PhD thesis was funded by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade through the Australia Awards Scholarship. The author wishes to acknowledge Zulung Walyandra, Radhiah Ruhon, Risya Arsyi, Imran Lapong, Aqilah Nurul Khaerani Latif, Mustakim Saleh, and the Partnership of Australia Indonesia Research (PAIR) project team for their invaluable contributions and assistance during fieldwork in South Sulawesi. The author is also profoundly thankful to the local communities in the two villages of South Sulawesi for their hospitality and cooperation during the 2022 fieldwork.

    The post Sea space, conflict and state building in Sulawesi appeared first on New Mandala.

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