January 12, 2016 edition

Cholil Mahmud felt a certain nagging in the back of his mind throughout the entire recording process. They were in the throes of cutting Sinestesia, the band Efek Rumah Kaca's third album.
Cholil realized he was missing the old days, when Efek Rumah Kaca was still an anonymous group, whose music was hardly ever heard by anybody. In those days and for many years, the band only rehearsed in studios, never performing on stage in front of a live audience. In Cholil's view, those were their salad days when Efek Rumah Kaca was still pure and innocent.

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More Special Report articles in other editions

January 5, 2016 edition

The room is a prison cell for female inmates. But its interior resembled a hotel room. There is a home theater set in the corner. Rows of DVDs neatly fill the rack beside the television. There is also a large sofa and a double bed. In the cell, Mirna takes it easy, doing time for bribery in her work as a broker selling large tracts of land.
Maera Panigoro's acting role as Mirna is brief, only about 10 minutes long. However, Maera gives a convincing portrayal of an influential person who enjoys special facilities and privileges in prison. Her acting totally convinces audiences how morally corrupt our prisons are. Any inmate with money can bribe prison officers for these special rights. And one of them regularly calls in a beautician to give her a facial.

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December 29, 2015 edition

Becoming distracted by shimmering transformations is surprisingly easy in a country like Indonesia where national development is an imperative. Front-page stories from 2015 have told us that transformations are happening all around usfrom democratic consolidation at the regional level to disquieting new trends in violent crime. But such changes, as refreshing as they may be, do not come close to representing the big picture.
Take for instance the violent begal robbery phenomenon that made the headlines early last year. The incidents caused hysteria among residents of Greater Jakarta, stoked both by a sharp increase in sensationalist media reporting of such crimes and dramatic accounts spread by word-of-mouth and social media.

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December 22, 2015 edition

Lying in state at the Adi Jasa funeral home on Tuesday, December 15, Ben Anderson was clad in a brown-colored Madura batik shirt. "That's my batik shirt," said Sugito, the driver who always accompanied Anderson since 2009 whenever he toured East Java. Sugito wiped his tears and tenderly touched the edge of the laced cloth covering the coffin.
Anderson arrived in Surabaya with his close friend, Edward Hasudingan, a.k.a. Edu, five days earlier. Both met in 2004 when Edu studied at Ithaca College in the United States. They stayed at Hotel Santika Pandegiling in Surabaya.

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November 10, 2015 edition

The Outsider
Bung Tomo was the only non-Jakarta youth chosen as a committee member of the New People's Movement (GRB), a forum comprising nationalist leaders.

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