Freedom News

Discrimination under Covid-19

This text was contributed to Freedom by Fanny Syariful Alam: the regional coordinator and program director of Bandung School of Peace Indonesia, a youth organization working to empower youth in the city of Bandung, West Java, to improve tolerance, empathy and collaborative engagement to accomplish peace and social justice. Since COVID-19 was discovered in Wuhan,

Solidarity for West Papua is overdue

“Those Papuans of yours are some 700,000 and living in the Stone Age” said John F Kennedy in 1963, as he approved an agreement to hand over control of West Papua to Indonesia, ceded from the Dutch. That figure the US president so glibly negated an entire people with was a few hundred thousand off

Indonesia: hundreds of Papuans arrested over self-determination rally plan

Indonesian police and military troops arrested hundreds of Papuans on Monday in order to prevent them protesting in demand of the release of political prisoners and for the support of Asian, Caribbean and Pacific states self-determination. The arrests follow a series of non-violent protests organised by West Papuan activists. More than 300 people were arrested,

Indonesia: local activists sentenced to prison

The 7 prisoners from Sukorharjo in Central Java province charged for involvement in the riots outside the PT. RUM synthetic textiles factory faced their final hearing last Tuesday. The conflict between RUM and the local residents began in October last year, when RUM opened the factory. Since then, the inhabitants of 16 nearby villages reported putrid

Indonesia: 86 families fight against new Yogyakarta airport development

Some weeks ago, we reported that the Indonesian government, represented by the State Owned Enterprise PT. Angkasa Pura I agreed, in cooperation with investors, for the construction of an international airport megaproject in the coastal region of Kulon Progo. The project, known as NYIA (New Yogyakarta International Airport), met with a significant resistance from the

Indonesia: solidarity call for anarchists imprisoned in Yogyakarta

Some worrying news reached us from Indonesia. On Mayday this year, workers, students and youths took to the streets of Yogyakarta to protest against the ‘feudal monarchy society and the repression of the state apparatus in building the New Yogyakarta International Airport (NYIA) infrastructure mega project that rid the peasants of Kulon Progo’. During the protest,