Indonesia Topics

JAKARTA, April 22 (Xinhua) — The sacred flame of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games on early Tuesday arrived in Indonesian capital of Jakarta, the 14th leg of its global torch relay.

A chartered plane carrying the flame, which was ignited on March 24 in ancient Olympia of Greece, landed on the Halim military airport at local time 12:05 a.m. from Kuala Lumpur, capital of Malaysia.

Jiang Xiaoyu, vice president of the Beijing Organizing Committee of Olympic Games (BOCOG), carried the lantern of the flame and walked off the plane.

Upon arrival at the airport, the flame received a warm welcome by a cheering crowd, among whom are Vice President of the Indonesian National Sports Committee Hendarji Soepandji and other senior sports officials as well as more than 100 workers from Chinese companies in Indonesia.

Chinese ambassador to Indonesia Lan Lijun also came to the airport to welcome the flame of the Beijing Olympics, which is scheduled to be held this August.

The Jakarta leg of the torch relay, which will be held at the Gelora Bung Karno Sports Complex, central Jakarta, will start on Tuesday afternoon. Eighty torchbearers will take part in the event. (source)

It’s a big game, big match, big result and big supporters between Manchester United and Arsenal will be happening tonight (13/4). But it’s a shame, Indonesian-football-lovers wouldn’t be able to watch this super big match tonight (13/4). Astro Nusantara, the holder of English Premier League broadcast rights in Indonesia, is being temporarily off-air due to some frequency problems with the Department of Communication and Information.

This will dissapoint most Astro TV’s customers whom most of them must be an English Premier League (EPL) die-hard fans. Astro Nusantara is one of the pay-TV players in Indonesia and is a Malaysia based company.

Indonesia Consumer Watch (YLKI) suggests Astro’s customers to take this matter to the court. This is obviously Astro’s stupid fault as they did not control and obey their obligation to the rule of Department of Communication & Information.

It seems that Astro will have a huge problem with their customers. Let’s wait.

What do you think? Bring EPL back to free-tv?

UPDATED
MATCH RESULT:
#MANCHESTER UNITED 2
- Ronaldo “54 (Pen)
- Hargreaves “72

#ARSENAL 1
- Adebayor “48

Indonesia’s government finally unblocks the giant vide-sharing website YouTube after blocking the site for one week. This happens after a letter cloming to the Minister’s desk from Google, YouTube owner.

Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication Muhammad Nuh apologizes of the blocking. The government done this to prevent the access of FITNA movie.

“We didn’t mean to block the whole access to YouTube. We were meant to block some cautious content in there,” Says Nuh in his office.

From now, Youtube is officially unblocked from Indonesia. But Nuh hopes that YouTube gives their best effort to prevent FITNA in Indonesia, as Google promised in their response.

Indonesia’s government is targeting 2.3 million China’s travellers to Indonesia by the co-operation of the Department of Culture & Tourism with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC).

“With 23 million of active ICBC’s customers, if we get 10% from those customers, then 2.3 million travellers will head to Indonesia,” says The Minister of Culture & Tourism Jero Wacik.

Department of Tourism’s Director General of Marketing Sapta Nirwandar said that this target is very much realistic. “It’s a realistic target by us,” says Nirwandar. “Chinese travellers are usually spending US$600 for 5 days stay. Some high class customers usually US$1000-US$2000. That’s only the travel package not including personal shopping.”

“We are targeting 180 million dollars for the revenue,” says Nirwandar.

RI’s Consulate General in Sydney (KJRI) in conjunction with Garuda Indonesia will held “Discover Indonesia: to further promote tourism industry other than Bali. They introduce this event to some Australia’s media and travel agencies.

For 2 weeks in the end of July, the program is going to be held to promote “Visit Indonesia 2008″ to Sydney and other of our administrative juridiction,” Says Pratito Soeharyo Minister Counsellor of Information & Media. “About 20-ish travel agency will be invited to create various holiday packages to Indonesia.”

In fact, echo-tourism will be the main focus especially in Kalimantan, Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi and Papua. “We will send some letters to these provinces’ governor, and I really hope a positive response for them to participate by giving 2 main tourism objects in their region,” Says Soeharyo. “This is not only the tourism destination itself, but also accommodation, transport and safety.”

Some of the travel agencies who will be invited are from Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Cairns, Townsville, dan kota-kota lain yang ada di Queensland, New South Wales, dan South Australia.

“We want to focus on other tourist destination besides Bali,” Says Soeharyo.

Here are the new Indonesian Ambassadors to several countries:

1. Abdul Rahman Saleh Denmark, Lithuania
2. Andi M. Ghalib India
3. Banua Radja Manik Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica
4. Budi Bowoleksono Kenya, Seychelles, Uganda, Mauritius, the United Nations Environment Program, the United Nations Center for Human Settlements
5. Da’i Bachtiar Malaysia
6. Djafar Husein Sri Lanka, the Maldives
7. Hamid Awaluddin Russia, Belarus
8. Harry Purwanto Finland, Estonia
9. M. Wahid Supriyadi United Arab Emirates
10. Muhammad Hatta Thailand, UN ESCAP
11. Michael Menufandu Colombia
12. Nurul Aulia Yemen
13. Pitono Purnomo Vietnam
14. Yuri Octavian Thamrin The United Kingdom, Ireland, the

ISPs in Indonesia are obeying the instructions of Minister of Communication & Information Muhammad Nuh. Not just YouTube, MySpace and Multiply, some of the most accessed websites in Indonesia are also banned.

Minister Nuh’s official letter were not explicitly contained about banning those website. But apparently, the major ISPs are doing beyond the instructions.

Some of the news are here. This is a reaction of Indonesia’s government over the Movie, Fitna, made by Dutch politician’s Geert Wilders.

APJII or Indonesian Internet Service Provider Association eventually blocked Youtube access through Indonesia Internet Exchange. Thus, majority of Indonesians who use this line will be unable to open Youtube. This has been an official command from Indonesia’s Minister of Information & Communication Muhammad Nuh.

However, APJII cannot guarantee that the access over Youtube is fully blocked from entire Indonesia. APJII head Sylvia Sumarlin says,”Because there are also several other lines, ISPs are usually have redundancy”.

This action is a response towards official letter from the Minister of Information and Communication to block Youtube over the distribution of Fitna the movie which can harm the unity and tolerance between believers in Indonesia.

On April 2nd, Indonesia government have asked Youtube to remove several Fitna videos for 2 days. However, there are still no response.

Sumarlin states that APJII will also coordinate with Mastel, Imoca, Awari and others regarding mechanism on blocking some other harmful sites. “We don’t want to be discriminative to Youtube, we will also consider others,” says Sumarlin.

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - More than 150 academics, educational experts and professionals are participating in an education seminar hosted by the Australian Embassy here on Thursday to discuss current and future challenges in the education sector.

Australian Ambassador to Indonesia, Bill Farmer, opened the seminar and welcomed the cooperation between Australian and Indonesian education practitioners.

“Australia and Indonesia have a long tradition of academic and research collaboration and I am pleased to be able to support the sharing of expertise between Australian and Indonesian universities at this seminar today,” said Farmer.

Senior representatives from Australian`s La Trobe University delivered presentations on current issues and challenges for education and language in today`s globalised world.

“The current widespread interest in developing expertise in English and other languages alongside the national language and local languages in Indonesia make a focus on this topic very timely,” said Dr Lynda Yates, Associate Dean (International), La Trobe University.

“Recently we have seen worldwide trends towards bilingual education in an effort to keep up with the communication needs of globalization,” said Yates.

Meanwhile Professor Vaughan Prain, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Education, outlined the latest understandings of how students learn and implications for effective classroom teaching.

Australian alumnus Dr James Riady, CEO of Lippo Group and founder of Pelita Harapan Educational Foundation, was also a keynote speaker at the seminar.

Dr Riady was presented with the Australian Alumni Award for Entrepreneurship in February 2008.

The seminar was organized by Australian Education International and is part of a regular seminar series presented throughout the year. (Antara)

Indonesia said Tuesday it would block access to YouTube unless the video-sharing Web site removes an anti-Muslim film by a Dutch lawmaker within 48 hours.

Communications and Information Minister Mohammad Nuh said the government sent a letter to the site informing it of its demand on Tuesday.

“The deadline is two days. If (the film) is not removed by that time, we will block YouTube under cooperation with the Internet service providers,” Nuh told reporters in the capital, Jakarta.

Anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders posted the 15-minute film on LiveLeak.com on Friday. It has since been available on other blogs and file-sharing sites, including YouTube.

Last year, Thailand blocked YouTube for four months because of clips it deemed offensive to the king. The ban was lifted after YouTube’s owner, Google Inc., agreed to not allow videos that break Thai laws or offend the Thai people.

In February, YouTube was inaccessible globally for several hours after the government of Pakistan blocked it, citing what it said were clips in which Wilders made denigrating remarks about Islam.

Wilders’ film intersperses scenes of recent terror attacks with versus from the Quran, Islam’s holy book, and speeches from Islamic extremists calling for attacks on non-Muslims. It has been condemned as racist and misleading by governments around the world.

Earlier Tuesday, about 50 people rallied outside the Dutch Embassy in Jakarta calling for Wilders to be put to death.

“Islam is a holy religion,” Shodiq Ramadan told about 50 protesters who shouted in agreement. “Those who have insulted it deserve to be sentenced to death.”

Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim nation, but its government is secular and hard-line interpretations of the faith generally do not attract much support.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who relies on the support of several Islamic parties in parliament, has condemned the film and urged protesters in Indonesia - a former Dutch colony - to stay calm. (courtesy: The Jakarta Post)