December 23, 2014 edition
The summons came as a surprise to Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, editor-in-chief of English-language daily The Jakarta Post. He had just presided over a meeting when he received the letter with the insignia of the Jakarta Police on Tuesday two weeks ago. The letter told him to meet up with a police investigator and stated that he was suspected of a crime. "How could this be?" Meidyatama remembers thinking at the time.
The police had named Meidyatama a suspect in a religious defamation case. This was related to a caricature about the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) that the daily had carried on July 3. Two days after the cartoon was published, Jakarta Police spokesman Senior Commissioner Rikwanto announced Meidyatama's status as a suspect. According to Rikwanto, Meidyatama was being charged under Article 156a of the Criminal Code, which carried a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment.
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December 16, 2014 edition
It was a tense bottle of beer. The five friendsKuswanto, Susanto, Suprat, Soleh and Mukiyiwere sitting at the Kafe Perdana on the ring road in Kudus, Central Java, their usual hangout spot. "To, you get out of here," one of them said, trying to persuade Kuswanto to leave.
Kuswanto, 29, shook his head. He had been receiving phone calls and text messages from his friends for a week. They wanted him to flee because the police intended to arrest him. According to his associates, the police suspected that Kuswanto was part of a gang of robbers that had stolen from an ice cream warehouse. On the night of November 15, 2012, six days before the friends shared their beer, the warehouse had been robbed by a gang of thieves.
Before they finished the bottle, a group of plainclothes police officers appeared and approached Kuswanto and his friends. "Oh, Pak Joko," said Kuswanto. As an informant who often gave information to the police, Kuswanto recognized one of the officers. This time, however, the cop was far from friendly. "Come on. Follow me," he said. He grabbed Kuswanto's shoulder and dragged him to a Daihatsu Xenia car parked in front of the caf. His four friends were put in two other cars. "I counted 13 of them," Kuswanto told Tempo last week.
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January 1, 1970 edition
THE antigraft investigators could not figure out how to open the iron safe in the back of a house in Surabaya last week. They spent hours fiddling with its key code, to no avail. Efforts to drill it open were also in vain.
Fortunately, the two locksmiths that had assisted the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) had not left yet. After opening all the locked doors in the house, they were asked to crack the safe. Eight hours after the safe was located, they finally got it open at 11pm.
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January 1, 1970 edition
THE atmosphere at Merdeka Square in Langsa, Aceh, on Friday afternoon two weeks ago was upbeat. Hundreds of people were crowding the stage to watch a flogging. Some of them held their camera phones in anticipation.
By 4pm, the car carrying the convicts arrived, its siren wailing. As they were taken onstage one by one, the spectators cheered. Following the convicts was a man in a green robe. His head was covered with a green clothall except for his eyes. He looked like a ninja.
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November 18, 2014 edition
One thousand and three hundred pages worth of lawsuit dossiers were flown from Aceh to Jakarta in early October. The papers were carried by Muhammad Nur, director of the Indonesian Environment Forum (Walhi) of Aceh, and his peers Cut Mirna, Syafruddin and Muhammad Syahputra. On October 9, Muhammad Nur delivered documents relating to the lawsuit against Qanun (Bylaw) No.19/2013 on the Aceh spatial plan by to the secretariat of the Supreme Court. "Here's the duplicate," said Nur, showing a pile of documents as thick as a pillow to Tempo.
Walhi alleges that Aceh's new spatial plan violates a number of laws and enable harm to its environment and forests. The plan was greenlighted by the Aceh Legislative Council (DPRA) on December 27, 2013, and enacted on March 3. But Walhi said it conflicted with 11 other laws and several regional regulations. These include Law No.11/2006 on the Aceh Administration and Law No.26/2007 on the National Spatial Layout.
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January 1, 1970 edition
The chill blowing from the air conditioners failed to absorb the 'heat' of a discussion at the Riau governor's office on Friday two weeks ago. Representatives from six regency administrations and 15 plantation companies were tense as the results of an extraordinary audit into forest and land fire compliance were announced. "Nearly all those present showed dismal faces," Mas Achmad Santosa, the law enforcement monitoring deputy at the Presidential Working Unit for the Supervision and Management of Development (UKP4), told Tempo last week.
The audit results painted an ugly picture of the performance of the companies and regencies. Fifteen companies whose land had caught fire early in the year got negative report cards, with the predicates 'disobedient' and 'very disobedient' written on them. Of the six regency administrations in Riau, four were deemed 'less obedient'. Only two regencies received positive marks: Bengkalis ('obedient') and Siak ('fairly obedient').
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January 1, 1970 edition