Salon.com > Indonesia

Workers stage May Day protest for higher wages, better conditions

Wed, 01 May 2013 11:53:00 +0000

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Tens of thousands of low-paid workers took to the streets on May Day to demand higher wages, better benefits and improved working conditions a week after a building collapse in Bangladesh became a grim reminder of the dangers of lax safety regulations in poor countries.

Laborers in Indonesia, Cambodia, the Philippines and elsewhere marched and chanted en masse Wednesday, sounding complaints about being squeezed by big business amid the surging cost of living. Asia is the manufacturing ground for many of the world's largest multinational companies.

Thousands of garment factory workers in Bangladesh also paraded through the streets calling for safeguards to be put in place and for the owner of the collapsed building to be sentenced to death.

In Indonesia, the world's fourth-most populous country, tens of thousands of workers rallied for higher pay and an end to the practice of outsourcing jobs to contract workers, among other demands. Some also carried banners reading: "Sentence corruptors to death and seize their properties" and protested against a proposed plan for the government to slash fuel subsidies that have kept the country's pump prices among the cheapest in the region.

ExxonMobil sued for allegedly brutalizing Indonesians

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:06:00 +0000

LHOKSEUMAWE, Aceh — Syukri A-Wahap still bears scars from the two days he spent tied to a chair at a military checkpoint here in northern Indonesia in 2003.

Indonesian soldiers who suspected he was aiding separatist rebels used their guns to try and beat a confession out of him. With the butt of an SS1 rifle they cracked his skull and busted his lower lip.

Syukri says he now suffers from short-term memory loss, pointing to a zigzag scar beneath a shock of thick, black hair.

“I didn’t feel anything,” he said, recalling the lengthy interrogations. “It felt like I was already dead.”

His story is one of thousands involving kidnap, torture, rape and murder at the hands of the Indonesian military, which some victims here say was aided by US oil giant ExxonMobil.

“Startup” visas could be the next green cards

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 20:34:00 +0000

A cocktail shaker full of whiskey and juice marks the start of happy hour. But we are not at a bar. This is The Hatchery, a sprawling office space in San Francisco and an incubator for startups. It’s non-stop work here, so a weekly in-house cocktail hour is one perk.

Two entrepreneurs, James Richards, 25, and Michael Smith, 29, take a break. They met in Indonesia, where Richards is from, and now work on their startup called Advisable, an online marketplace for lawyers.

Will it work? It might.

Richards is one of Columbia Law School’s youngest ever graduates. He passed the New York bar exam at age 20. Co-founder Michael Smith is a programming whiz from Belgium. But there’s the snag. While Richards’ legal residency is taken care of, Smith’s visa isn’t certain and it could force him out of the country soon.

“It’s that period in between,” worries Smith. “It’s hard to tell what happens because we work best when we physically work in the same place and because of this visa issue we’re going to be in different parts of the world.”

They know that a wobbly outlook in the startup world is not good.

Death by soap opera?

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 21:31:00 +0000

Soap opera-crazed Indonesia is watching a tragically ironic drama play out in the death of a 9-year-old, whose parents blame a hit soap for playing a role in their daughter's death.

"Love in Paris" is a romance starring a young starlet, actress Michelle Zudith, whose character suffers from leukemia and is expected to die before 20 -- a plot device that affects her search for love.

Ayu Tria Desiani was a 9-year-old who suffered leukemia in real life. According to the Jakarta Globe, she frequently required treatment in hospitals. After experiencing a burst blood vessel, the Globe reports, she was rushed to an ICU ward yesterday.

Turns out the ward was filled with atypical guests: the perfectly healthy cast and crew shooting a scene for "Love in Paris."

6 outrageous incidents of discrimination against nonbelievers

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 17:26:00 +0000

"Oh, you atheists are always whining about how put-upon you are. You don't experience real discrimination: not like African-Americans, or gays, or women, or immigrants. So knock it off with the pity party."

You may have heard this refrain. You may have even sung it yourself. So let's look at this question for a moment: Are atheists subjected to real discrimination?

It's certainly true that, in the United States, while atheists do experience real discrimination, it's typically not as severe as, say, racism or misogyny. Or rather, since I don't think comparing discriminations is usually all that useful: Anti-atheist discrimination takes different forms. It's not like the systematic economic apartheid African-Americans experience, or the systematic enforcement of rigid gender roles women experience. It takes other forms: such as social ostracism; bullying in schools; public schools denying atheist students the right to form clubs; religious proselytizing promoted by the government; widespread perceptions of atheists as untrustworthy; businesses denying equal access to atheists and atheist organizations; government promotion of religion in social service programs; government promotion of religion in the military. And it's true that atheists have significant legal protection in the United States: people sometimes break those laws, and those laws aren't always enforced, but we do have these laws, and they do help.

Are you the next Mark Zuckerberg?

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 17:28:00 +0000

Bankers around the world know there are profits to be reaped by making loans to promising small businesses that fall just short of traditional definitions of “creditworthy.” Ever since Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus’ Grameen Bank pioneered “microfinance” by making tiny loans to single mothers in Bangladesh, development policymakers also have believed that getting credit to small businesses—those too large for Grameen-style microloans but still lacking collateral or credit history—is not only possible, but the key to helping a nation’s economic growth. So how to figure out who’s a good risk for a loan—and who isn’t?

Foster Friess on Obama’s Indonesian roots

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 22:56:00 +0000

TAMPA -- Foster Friess, the billionaire GOP donor who bankrolled Rick Santorum’s presidential bid, looms over us in the air-conditioned hallway between the two main buildings here at the Republican National Convention as he explains why Obama is bad for America. “It’s so sad to see how few people in the Obama administration have any private sector experience. President Obama’s over in Indonesia when guys like me were at a paper route,” the Wyoming billionaire said when asked what he hopes to see in Mitt Romney’s speech tonight. “President Obama, I don’t know what experience he had at that same age when he was in Indonesia. So I think it’s hard for him to grasp that America entrepreneurial spirit."