Indonesia 2001

Yearbook 2001

Indonesia. Parliament increased the pressure on President Abdurrahman Wahid to resign after a committee found him “likely” to be involved in two corruption cases. He was pricked twice, and despite the May prosecutor’s dismissal of the suspicions, Parliament accelerated the work of putting the president before the national court. The criticism now concerns general incompetence and his inability to overcome Indonesia’s economic and separatist problems.

Before the parliamentary session of Parliament in July, Wahid announced a state of emergency, but the Supreme Court unlawfully declared the decision and the security forces refused to obey orders to evacuate Parliament. Instead, Wahid was deposed and succeeded by Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Hamzah Haz, leader of the Muslim party PPP, was elected new vice president.

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The new government granted expanded autonomy and increased control over its natural resources to the troubled provinces of Aceh on Sumatra and Irian Jaya on New Guinea. Irian Jaya changed his name to Papua and got the right to use his own flag and national anthem.

President Sukarnoputri also traveled to Aceh asking for forgiveness for mistakes made by previous governments. Independence movements, however, rejected limited autonomy and violence continued in both provinces. Hundreds of people were killed in Aceh during the year, and in November Independence leader Theys Eluay was assassinated.

I’s financial problems continued. The budget deficit and inflation increased, and central government debt was as large as the entire gross domestic product. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) held a $ 400 million loan following criticism of I’s slow economic reforms. The IMF demanded, among other things, a tighter budget and increased independence for the central bank. In order to reduce the budget deficit, the government reduced the subsidies on, among other things. fuel, electricity and pharmaceuticals, which led to sharp price increases.

The extensive capital flight of recent years continued. In 2001, at least $ 10 billion was estimated to disappear from the country. In October, however, the IMF considered that Indonesia was on the right track and resumed loan payments, after which other lenders offered $ 3.14 billion. Of that sum, however, 1.3 billion depended on rapid economic reforms.

The United States was not interested in human rights in the country, but focused on military cooperation and in September 2012, the United States sold 8 Apache attack helicopters to the country.

In February 2013, the Free Papua Movement in Irian Jaya attacked a division of soldiers and killed 8. It caused the tension to rise dramatically in Irian Jaya. In April, police attacked a congregation of Papuans gathered for prayer in Aimas near Sorong in protest of the transfer of Irian Jaya in 1963 from Dutch colonial rule to Indonesian colonial rule. Two were killed at the scene and one died a few days later. 22 were arrested and 7 of them charged with treason.

In March 2013, eight soldiers from the Indonesian Army Special Unit Kopassus murdered 4 unarmed prisoners in Cebongan prison outside Yogyakarta. Three of the soldiers were subsequently sentenced to 6-11 years in prison and the other 5 shorter prison sentences. Human rights organizations welcomed the verdict as a step towards ending traditional impunity in the country. As in Denmark, police officers and soldiers are rarely convicted of their criminal acts.

Indonesia is the transit country for many refugees en route from Asia to Australia. In 2013, the country contained approx. 10,000 refugees from Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Burma who were in a kind of legal limbo since Indonesia has no asylum law.

In July 2013, the Parliament passed a new NGO law, which on a number of points impeded restrictions on the right to speech, assembly and religion. The law largely prohibits foreign aid to Indonesian NGOs and also prohibits NGOs from spreading ideas of atheism, communism and Marxism-Leninism that are all considered contrary to Pancasila.

In August, the government allowed free download of the movie The act of Killing from the internet. The partly Danish-funded documentary showed the role of the state and its death patrols in the massacre of 500,000 – 1,000,000 Indonesians in 1965-66. The government thereby lifted the de-facto ban that had, for almost 50 years, overturned merely mention of the massacre.

The July 2014 presidential election was won by Joko Widodo of PDI-P with 53.2% of the vote. His counterpart Prabowo Subianto from PGIR had to settle for 46.8%. Subianto, however, objected to the result, believing that there had been systematic, structural and massive irregularities in the election process. He therefore brought the outcome before the Indonesian Constitutional Court, which, however, after 3 weeks of processing the complaint unanimously rejected it. Widodo had a past as a popular governor of Surakarta and since Jakarta. He was the country’s first president, not the origin of the military or the country’s political and economic elite.

In September, the Aceh Parliament passed a supplementary law based on Shariah that banned sex between same-sex, pre-marital, adultery, alcohol, gambling, sexual abuse, rape, allegation of adultery without evidence and staying in the same room with people of the opposite sex without being related to the person in question. The punishment for these wrongdoings was stingy. In May, a woman in Aceh was subjected to a group rape of 8 men who accused her of adultery. She was then sentenced to trial for adultery.

Population 2001

According to Countryaah, the population of Indonesia in 2001 was 226,289,359, ranking number 4 in the world. The population growth rate was 1.360% yearly, and the population density was 124.9135 people per km2.

Indonesia Population Graph

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