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Locating the historical Kartini
A new feature film has prompted a renewed interest in the life of national hero Kartini. Like so many iconic figures of history, over the last century, Raden Adjeng Kartini (21 April 1879-17...
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Telegrams confirm scale of US complicity in 1965 genocide
An alleged communist is questioned under gunpoint by Indonesian soldiers in 1965. There is much outrage in the United States that a foreign state might have attempted to influence its 2016...
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Could violence against the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia happen again?
Property and businesses owned by Chinese Indonesians were targeted in the widespread rioting and violence that broke out in cities including Jakarta, Medan and Solo, from 12-15 May 1998. This month...
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Forced atonement? Dutch apologies and compensation for colonial era rights...
From 1945-1949, Dutch troops fought against pro-independence Indonesian forces, resulting in 150,000 Indonesian and 5,000 Dutch deaths. Photo from Dutch National Archives. This year marks 70 years...
View ArticleTalking Indonesia: China, Indonesia and the Cold War
During the New Order period, there were allegations that China was actually behind the Indonesian Communist Party’s alleged coup attempt on 30 September 1965. In the chaos that followed, anti-China and...
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Learning (or failing to learn) from the lessons of the 1918 Spanish Flu
The Spanish Flu is estimated to have killed between 21.5 and 50 million people worldwide. This image from the US National Museum of Health and Medicine. On 23 March, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo...
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The Australian left is known for backing Papuan independence – but it wasn’t...
Greens MP Adam Bandt wore a Morning Star flag pin in his lapel when he met President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo in February. Photo by Adam Bandt (Twitter). For nearly 60 years, successive Australian...
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Talking Indonesia: transnational human rights activism
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Indonesia was estimated to have between 55,000 and 100,000 political prisoners as a result of the army-led anti-communist violence of the mid-1960s. Some of these...
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