Here’s a link to the summary of a paper written by the International Crisis Group regarding the standing conflict in Central Sulawesi. I’m living a good plane ride from the area but the current events are riveting.
Another article in today’s NYT talks about Barack Obama’s childhood experience in Indonesia. There was a brief write up in The Jakarta Post as well with a quotation or two from his old teachers in the public school in Menteng, Jakarta. The Jakarta Post also published a class photo which includes Obama. The photo clearly shows the uniforms of a public school and not an “Islamic religious school” as the attempted mudslinging purports. This also makes me ask the question, “So what if he did go to an Islamic religious school when he was six years old?” (I’ll dig up the article tomorrow when I go to work. The Jakarta Post doesn’t archive its online newspaper.)
Update: The article in The Jakarta Post was from a wire service. Anyhow, it does bring to the fray that pretty much anything in this country (even a bank account) requires one to tick a box denoting your religious affiliation. Since Indonesia only recognizes certain religions, and Obama’s step-father was Muslim, it would have been normal for whoever filled out his school registration forms to assign him the same religion as his step-father.