Indonesia News

The “Niqab Squad” seeks to bring Muslim women closer to Paradise Four years ago, clothes designer Indadari Mindrayanti created the « Niqab Squad » movement to promote veil wearing. There are now about six thousand members across Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan. The movement was born in Temboro, an Indonesian city east of Jakarta. This movement is regrouping women like Idhanur, a teacher in her thirties, who claimed doing sport like archery and horse riding while wearing Niqab brings her closer to paradise and argued like some other members of the movement that Niqab is protecting her from prying eyes and sexual harassment. However, in Indonesia, wearing the Niqab is often associated with terrorism, because of attacks like that of the Surabaya church in 2018, in which the terrorists wore Niqab. That caused the 2018 ban of Niqab in a Java university for a week. Moreover, the Indonesian minister of religious affairs Fachrul Razi, is advocating a Niqab ban in government buildings. T...

Ban lifted on coral export  During his whole life, Agus Joko Supriyatno farmed corals on Nusa Lembongan coast, a small island next to Bali and made a living out of it. But in 2018, Indonesia government banned the export of corals and the decision was terrible for his production and that of other farms.  Then, the former Minister of Maritime Affairs, Susi Pudjiastuti, had considered it necessary to protect the flora in Indonesian waters from poaching of wild corals. This is why she passed a law which overnight stopped exports of all kinds of coral.  This new law threw M. Supriyatno, like many other farmers, into a very precarious situation. Indeed, based on an estimate, 12,000 citizens lost their jobs.  Before this ban, it was totally legal to export farmed corals and Indonesia was even the biggest supplier in the world. This represented 70% of the coral sold on the world market for marine aquariums.  Edhy Prabowo, Indonesia’s new former...