The United States government had intimate knowledge of the Indonesian army's bloody anti-communist purge in the 1960s, describing the mass killings as a "widespread slaughter", newly declassified documents have revealed.The 39 recently declassified US Embassy documents cover the period from 1964-1968, at the peak of the Cold War, and uncover new details about one of the most tumultuous periods in modern Indonesian history.Historians say up to 500,000 alleged Indonesian Communis

Pope Francis will push for peace during his visit to Myanmar, a church official said Thursday, a trip that plunges the pontiff into the centre of a simmering religious conflict which has sparked an exodus of Muslim Rohingya.Myanmar's western Rakhine state has been torn apart by communal violence, sending more than 520,000 Rohingya racing over to neighbouring Bangladesh since late August.The leader of the world's Catholics will visit both nations on a highly charged trip in late Nove

Freedom of religious practise is a constitutionalised law that has been established in all 10 ASEAN countries. However therein lies the difference between establishing a law and enforcing it. Certain nations experienced severe backlash due to infringement on their religious practises caused by discrimination.

Malaysia's nine state sultans have issued a rare statement expressing concern about "divisive actions" in the name of Islam, as fears grow of rising intolerance in the multi-ethnic country.Referring to a controversy last month over laundrettes in two states which banned non-Muslim customers, the revered sultans urged people to follow principles set out in the country's constitution which say respect must be accorded to everyone regardless of their faith or ethnicity."

Rohingya militants on Wednesday denied the Myanmar army's allegations that they had massacred scores of Hindu villagers, whose bodies soldiers displayed to the press after exhuming them from mass graves in northern Rakhine state.Major clashes between the army and the Muslim insurgents erupted last month, triggering a dire refugee crisis with nearly half a million Rohingya fleeing across the border to Bangladesh.An information war has followed, as Myanmar's government pushes back aga

A year ago today, Jakarta’s incumbent governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, also known as Ahok, gave a speech when he made his rounds educating the citizens on their voting rights in the Thousand Islands region of North Jakarta. Ahok, the first Christian of Chinese descent to govern the nation’s capital city since Henk Ngantung in 1965, referenced a verse from the Islamic holy book, Al-Maidah 51.