Writer
Duncan Graham
Duncan Graham has been a journalist for more than 40 years in print, radio and TV. He is the author of People Next Door (UWA Press) and winner of the Walkley Award and Human Rights awards. He is now writing for the English language media in Indonesia from within Indonesia.
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Killing Times: Indonesia grapples with legacy of government-organised mass murder
When is a purge a genocide? When a young Australian researcher finds solid evidence that’s long eluded international scholars, proving the minds of millions have been poisoned with lies. Continue reading »
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Season’s fearings in Indonesia this Christmas
Will it be safe for Christians this Saturday night in Indonesia? The signs of the festive season used to be plastic mistletoe and corflute Santas in shopping malls. Now in East Java’s second biggest city it’s armoured cars outside churches. Continue reading »
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Indonesian sex ban: One law for us, another for them?
It seems Indonesia’s new bonk-ban laws are discriminatory and racist. Bad news if you believe legal systems should be impartial, but good tidings for ‘bule’ (white skin foreigners). So sayeth a governor. Continue reading »
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Indonesia bans sex outside marriage amid sweeping law changes
Lock your bedroom: The state is perving. The G20 in Bali last month was a splendid success – and not just because world leaders talked to each other proving differences can sometimes be understood, if not always accepted. Continue reading »
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Infatuated with US politics, does the media remember the third-largest democracy in the world: Indonesia?
Americans will get to the ballot box in late 2024. Such is our infatuation with US politics that by Guy Fawkes’ night we’ll have absorbed enough minutia to know more about their electoral system than ours. Does anyone in the media remember Indonesia? Continue reading »
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Sending a 13-year-old Indonesian child to an Australian adult prison
Sentencing 13 year old children to adult jail is injustice of the highest order. On some lists Australians are world leaders in shame. Like locking up and brutalising children as Four Corners has shown – and not only our own. We’ve treated Indonesian kiddies just as badly. Continue reading »
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How did Dag Hammarskjöld die? The CIA and Indonesian connection
More than six decades after his plane crashed it remains the great Cold War mystery: Was UN secretary-general (1953-61) Dag Hammarskjöld killed by sabotage, a technical fault, pilot error or air attack? If he was assassinated who was the mastermind? Continue reading »
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G20 forecast: Bleak outlook, chances of thunder
It’s the meeting season in Indonesia, but the chances of viable offspring are slim. Too much hate, too little harmony. That’s bad news for all. Continue reading »
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Sex, drugs and confusion: Sharia law in Bali?
Bali tourism is slowly picking up as Covid apparently retreats. The new threats are laws on drugs, religion and sex. Continue reading »
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Kanjuruhan tragedy: Malang seethes with fury at police
The most widespread slogan stencilled on the Indonesian city’s walls, scrawled on posters, splashed on bedsheets in red and draped from powerlines and bridges is Usut Tuntas. Continue reading »
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Bali Bombings: The blasts that blew neighbours apart
The Bali bombings of two decades ago, remembered with anger and sadness, did much more than kill 202 partygoers, wound 209 and scar families for years. The blasts also ripped apart an Indonesia-Australia relationship that has now slumped into indifference. Continue reading »
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Indonesia suppresses data on critically endangered Orangutan habitat threats
Outsiders doing business in Indonesia are urged to be polite and follow cultural norms. That also goes for academics, and the ones in this story have been exemplars of courtesy. But that hasn’t stopped their findings from getting rubbished and motives trashed. Continue reading »
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China is muscling Indonesia but not with war threats
Unlike Australians, Indonesians don’t fear war with China. Their concerns are more prosaic – debt, work and the virus of atheism. Continue reading »
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Getting away with mid-air murder
Studying in Europe was to be a highlight of Munir Said Thalib’s career. The voice of the Indonesian activist and forceful critic of the army’s human rights record was being heard internationally. His opponents hoped a spell abroad might silence the censure. Instead, it was amplified. Now it’ll be turned off as time for action Continue reading »
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Suffer the little children
The plains are polluted. On a windless day – and they’re common – there’s no need for a sniff-o-meter to count the particles – just stand in a high place and scan the smogscape below. Continue reading »
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Sex, lies – but no videotape
Governments love distractions and there’s a doozy gripping the people next door: A lurid tabloid tale running for five weeks and counting is keeping electors focussed on spice rather than the erosion of democracy and corruption controls. Continue reading »
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Indonesia’s unfinished business
Acknowledgements of Aboriginal land as preludes to formal events are now rarely contested, a belated acceptance that Australia has a bloody history that needs to be publicly discussed as a move towards reconciliation. Indonesia also has a grim past, but still shies from recognition – and healing. Continue reading »
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A hodge-podge is not an international service
As Opposition Leader touring overseas, Anthony Albanese probably clicked on ABC Australia TV to kill time. If so his claim that ‘it’s a matter of national security that the ABC makes more content that projects Australian values and interests to the Indo-Pacific region’ sounds like despair driving action. Continue reading »
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Hush – loose lips on foot and mouth scare biz
Legini and Gimah have foot and mouth. They’ve just been vaccinated privately for Rp 100,000 ($10) each. Had an Indonesian government vet wielded the syringe the cost would have been Rp 40,000, but Ibu Bambang fears officials might seize her precious charges and give no compensation. Continue reading »
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The Wong position on ASEAN
What are Southeast Asians‘attitudes towards Australia? Distrust, bewilderment, admiration, contempt, indifference – pick your prejudice. How about disbelief? The best and latest indicator came with reaction to Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s introducing the new Australian government to the people next door – in Indonesian. Continue reading »
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Asylum seekers in Indonesia-alive, but not living
In one of its nastier theological fabrications seemingly driven by schadenfreude, the Catholic Church invented purgatory – heaven’s waiting room where sins were cleansed oftentimes by fire. The medieval idea has been largely smothered by modern church teachings more in line with Christ’s compassion, but the worldly equivalent thrives next door through Australian indifference. Continue reading »
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Tolerance of intolerance threatens Indonesia’s image
The LGBTIQA+ community in Australia is cautiously expecting an acceleration of acceptance now the Albanese government has the steering wheel. But in the nation next door which boasts it runs with moderation, human rights is going in reverse. Continue reading »
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‘Mutual respect and genuine partnership’: how a Labor government could revamp our relationship with Indonesia
Dear Albo: Get to know the people next door. On ABC TV’s The Insiders, the then opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said he planned to visit Indonesia ‘as soon as possible’ – a statement rapidly drowned in the mainstream media’s trite election coverage. In 1994 when the then PM Paul Keating said ‘no country is more Continue reading »
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Voting season sees clichés bloom
Elections are spring rains bursting dormant seeds into carpets of weeds. Common varieties include sun-intolerant promises and herbicide-resistant lies. The most tenacious is Diurnarius proverbium, commonly known as journalistic clichés. Continue reading »
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Giving Indonesian diplomacy a kick along
Australians aren’t tops for geography, often promoting Bali to nationhood. Likewise, Indonesians shifting Perth to the East Coast. But they can locate Manchester, the gritty industrial centre in northwest England. Curiously that could enliven the equatorial archipelago’s yawning (both meanings) relations with its neighbour, as proved in the latest Lowy survey. Continue reading »
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In Indonesia the past is another country
Nationalism in the world’s fourth largest nation is rising – but so far unthreatening. Indonesian passions are being driven not by demagoguery but through discovery of the country’s pre-colonial, pre-Islam heritage with added ghosts. Continue reading »
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Keep calm and carry on with President Widodo
There’ll be few Valentine’s Day greetings and faux flower mall displays in Indonesia two years hence. That’s not because Muslim scholars will again warn followers not to celebrate ‘values that are considered to be against the Islamic Sharia.’ Continue reading »
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Measuring the decibels of piety in Indonesia
Visitors to Indonesia beware: Sound off about visual pollution from billboards or trash in rivers or the CO2 assaults on lungs and listeners will nod. Continue reading »
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How the Netherlands is confronting past war crimes in Indonesia
The Dutch are squaring up to the wrongs of their nation’s colonial past, pushed by the conscience of young Hollanders shamed by revelations of villainy by their forebears. Continue reading »
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Lost in mistranslation: Australian soft power goes missing in Indonesia
We should spruce up the relationship now rather than wait until it collapses into misunderstandings and ill will. The second of a two-part essay. Continue reading »
