Indonesia has sent hundreds of garbage-filled shipping containers back to their countries of origin, according to the customs agency, as the Southeast Asian nation pushes back against becoming a dumping ground for foreign trash.About 250 containers seized across the archipelago in recent months have already been returned and authorities are inspecting more than 1,000 others, a customs official said.Among them, 49 containers of waste seized on Batam Island near Singapore have been shipped back

Four Australians were deported from Indonesia’s Papua region on Monday, the immigration department said, after they allegedly took part in demonstrations demanding independence for the restive province.Impoverished Papua, where a low-level insurgency against Indonesian control has simmered for decades, has seen two weeks of mass protests and deadly riots sparked by anger over racism and fresh calls for self-rule.The four foreigners entered the island region on a yacht through the port of Soro

Dozens have been arrested over rioting in the capital of Indonesia's Papua region, police said Sunday, following nearly two weeks of mass protests in the easternmost territory of the Southeast Asian archipelago.The announcement came as Indonesia said it would deploy some 2,500 more police and troops to Papua, adding to about 1,200 personnel it had already sent after unrest sparked by anger over racism and calls for independence.On Thursday, more than a thousand demonstrators hurled stone

During the recent Jakarta Car Free Day on 28 July, Indonesia’s Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources, Ignasius Jonan, led a campaign called the National Movement of A Million Solar Roofs (Gerakan Nasional Sejuta Solar Atap) to promote the country’s solar rooftop utilisation.The campaign is an effort to bolster solar installation as listed in Indonesia’s National Energy Plan (RUEN), which targets solar photovoltaic (PV) installation of 6.5 gigawatt (GW) by 2025 and 45 GW by 2050.

Papua has plunged into chaos with deadly riots and mass demonstrations breaking out across Indonesia's easternmost territory, fanned by racial tensions and fresh calls for independence.Here are five things to know about the unrest:What started the riots?The riots appear to have been sparked by the arrest this month of dozens of Papuan students in Indonesia's second-biggest city Surabaya.Police in riot gear stormed a dormitory to force out students accused of destroying an Indonesian

Abandoning Jakarta for a new capital in Borneo won't save the fast-sinking Indonesian megacity from disaster and could even spark a fresh environmental crisis in a region home to rainforests and endangered orangutans, critics have warned.President Joko Widodo announced this week that the Southeast Asian nation's political heart would be moved nearly 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) east to a yet-to-be-built model city as a way of easing pressure on densely populated Java.Sprawling Jak

East Timor on Friday marks 20 years since a UN-backed vote ended a bloody, decades-long occupation by Indonesian forces and paved the way for it to become an independent nation.On 30 August 1999, nearly 80 percent of East Timorese voted to split from neighbouring Indonesia, which invaded the former Portuguese colony in 1975, starting a brutal 24-year military occupation.But joy over independence quickly turned to terror as Indonesian security forces and proxy militias went on a scorched-earth

Indonesia's Papua plunged into chaos again Thursday as angry protesters torched buildings in its capital after nearly two weeks of riots and demonstrations in the easternmost province of the archipelago.More than a thousand demonstrators marched around Jayapura hurling stones and setting fire to shops and an assembly building following a deadly clash in another part of the jungle-clad province, which shares the island with independent Papua New Guinea.Carrying placards bearing the image

Indonesia will move its capital to the eastern edge of jungle-clad Borneo island, President Joko Widodo said Monday, as the country shifts its political heart away from congested and sinking megalopolis Jakarta.The proposed location – near the regional cities of Balikpapan and Samarinda – is an area at "minimal" risk of natural disasters, where the government already owns some 180,000 hectares (445,000 acres) of land, he added."The location is very strategic – it's in the

With 7.7 billion humans inhabiting our crowded planet, forests have mostly disappeared, animal species have gone extinct and the Earth’s atmosphere keeps getting dangerously warmer by the day. The number of humans is expected to grow to nine billion people by 2050 and reach 11 billion by 2100, according to the United Nation’s (UN) 2019 World Population Prospect report.