Muhammad Taufiqqurahman, Makassar – A group calling itself the Indonesian Muslim Brigade (BMI) has seized books they say smack of communism from a Gramedia bookstore in the South Sulawesi capital of Makassar, including books by Franz Magnis-Suseno.

M Rosseno Aji, Jakarta – The Jakarta Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) says that there has been 26 cases of alleged violence against journalists reported to police in 2019 but not one has been investigated as a crime let alone taken to trial.

Deti Mega Purnamasari, Jakarta – Democracy in Indonesia has declined for the first time since the beginning of the reformasi era – the political reform process that began in 1998. The cause of the decline in democracy is of high levels of discrimination against minorities.

Felix Nathaniel – Social media has been abuzz after the TNI’s (Indonesian military) official Twitter account carried a cartoon about Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) practices. The following day, the police (Polri) also spoke out on the issue saying that LGBT is a disease that requires early prevention.

Ade Tri – The presidential and legislative elections are over and the noise of the strident sound of the “festival of democracy” is no longer to be heard.

Jakarta – The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) says that the deployment of the TNI (Indonesian military) and Polri (Indonesian police) personnel to help extinguish forest and land fires (Karhutla) fails to address the root cause of the problem.

Jakarta – The TNI’s (Indonesian military) information centre has verified that @Puspen_TNI uploaded a comic strip on its Twitter account explaining the risks of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) practices.

From an oped piece titled Risks of a Fat Coalition

Concern has been expressed in both the Indonesian and foreign mainstream media that President Joko Widodo’s ruling coalition – which now holds around 60 percent of the seats in parliament – has become too “fat”.

The National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) says that eighty percent of the land destroyed by forest fires in Indonesia this year will be converted into plantations, pointing the blame for the fires at unsustainable practices in the country’s agriculture industry.

Jakarta – The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) says that 2,087 out of 4,258 hotspots recroded between January and July were located on concession land. Concession land is land for which the government has given land use rights or permits to companies or other agencies.