There’s a notorious stretch of road in Indonesia, by the border of North Sumatra and Aceh provinces, that passes through kilometres and kilometres of oil palm plantations. There are few people there, ...

Louis Plottel is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto. His current research looks at methamphetamine consumption among young men in Aceh, Indonesia, examining the impact of labour and economic ...

Defying expectations and previous patterns, in the midterm elections held on 12 May the Filipino electorate generated neither dominance to any single political bloc nor a clear two-way split between ...

Philippine Senator Maria Josefa “Imee” Marcos-Manotoc has emerged as a tactically disruptive actor in the aftermath of the midterm elections held on 12 May. While her younger brother, President ...

The last week has seen a wave of huge protests around Indonesia against the new so-called omnibus law—a massive law that amends 79 existing statutes and is touted by the government as easing ...

With over 2.8 million confirmed cases and 50,341 deaths from COVID-19, the Philippines is suffering one of the worst outbreaks in Southeast Asia. However, despite its dire situation, the country has ...

Are Indonesia’s political parties all alike? Are some more in favour of political reform than others? Do some favour business interests while others see themselves as siding with the poor? And does it ...

The past year or so has seen conspicuous setbacks to Indonesian democracy’s capacity to protect many social rights, including of some of the more vulnerable members of society—most notably women, ...

Photo courtesy of Akshay Mahajan (Creative Commons licence) After a long period of relative silence, the most tragic period in Cambodia’s history has experienced a renaissance of interest. Spurred by ...

For the first time, a resistance movement against military rule is welcoming and aiding soldiers who choose to join the ‘people’s side’. This post is an abridged version of an article that appears in ...

“Fake news” has become a buzzword in the contemporary political lexicon around the world. In Indonesia, there has been significant concern about the so-called rise of berita hoax (“hoax news”) in the ...

Readers who received the email notification of the new post “Indonesians want a more diverse legislature” should know that this piece was published under the wrong byline. The piece wasn’t authored be ...