Democracy, free speech and basic rights are under assault in Indonesia — home to the world’s largest Muslim majority population — as its rulers pander to rising religious conservatism, extremism and identity politics.
This is all a far cry from the picture that the country likes to present to the outside world of a tolerant and friendly nation, and a hotspot for international tourists, with some 300,000 Britons alone visiting places such as Bali last year.
It’s time we paid a little less attention to the pristine beaches of Bali and focused instead on the rising prejudice against minorities from increasingly bold Islamic religious conservatives: [The Times (£)] Read more
