Indonesia- Country Profile
Area: 1,919,440 sq km
Capital: Jakarta
Population: 231.3 million (July 2002 est.)
Language: Bahasa Indonesia, a modified form of Malay, is the official language. Other languages spoken include English, Dutch and many local dialects, the most widely spoken of which is Javanese.
Ethnic groups: Indonesia's population is made up of the Javanese 45%, Sundanese 14%, Madurese 7.5%, coastal Malays 7.5%, and other ethnic groups totalling 26%.
Religion: Muslim 88%, Protestant 5%, Roman Catholic 3%, Hindu 2%, Buddhist 1%, other 1%.
Resources: Petroleum, tin, natural gas, nickel, timber, bauxite, copper, fertile soils, coal, gold, silver.
Currency: Indonesian rupiah (Rp) = 100 sen
Life expectancy at birth: 67.96 years
Map
Brief History
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to come in significant numbers to the archipelago. They came to Indonesia to monopolize the spice trade of the eastern archipelago. Indonesian Muslim states wasted no time in trying to oust the intruders.
Given Portugal's small size, limited resources, and small labor pool, and its routinely brutal treatment of indigenous populations, its trading empire was short-lived, although remnants of it, like Portuguese Timor, survived into the late 20th century.
In the 16th century the Netherlands rose to become a major seafaring power, and a Dutch fleet entered Indonesian waters in 1596.
In 1602, Dutch trading concerns merged to form the United East India Company (VOC) under a charter issued by the Dutch parliament. The VOC had authority to build fortresses, wage war, enter into treaties with indigenous rulers, and administer justice to subject populations.
The key to Dutch commercial success in Indonesia was the security of its base of operations at Batavia (now Jakarta). But during the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dutch were caught up in Java's perennial political instability.
In 1811, the British occupied Java. In the 1840s, in response to an increasing British presence, the Dutch initiated policies of colonial expansion in the Outer Islands, which brought all the land area of modern Indonesia, with the exception of Portuguese Timor, under their control.
The 1824 Treaty of London defined a British sphere of influence on the Malay Peninsula and a Dutch sphere on Sumatra. One provision of the Treaty of London was the independence of the north Sumatran state of Aceh. But Aceh controlled a large portion of the pepper trade and alarmed the Dutch by actively seeking relations with other Western countries. A new Anglo-Dutch treaty, signed in 1871, gave the Dutch a free hand in Sumatra concerning Aceh. The Aceh War (1873-1903) was one of the longest and bloodiest in Dutch-Indonesian history.
Rapid economic development during the late 19th and early 20th centuries profoundly changed the lives of both European residents and indigenous peoples.
The Chinese minority in Indonesia had long played a major economic role in the archipelago as merchants, artisans, and indispensable middlemen in the collection of crops and taxes from native populations. They encountered considerable hostility from both Indonesians and Europeans, largely because of the economic threat they seemed to pose.
National consciousness emerged gradually in the archipelago during the first decades of the 20th century, developed rapidly during the contentious 1930s, and flourished, both ideologically and institutionally, during the tumultuous Japanese occupation in the early 1940s, which shattered Dutch colonial authority.
The late 1920s witnessed the rise of Sukarno to a position of prominence among political leaders. He became the country's first truly national figure.
The Japanese occupation during World War II was a watershed in Indonesian history. There was little resistance as Japanese forces fanned out through the islands to occupy former centers of Dutch power.
In March 1945, a committee on independence was organized and it chose Sukarno as president of a unitary state. When Japan surrendered in August 1945, Sukarno formally declared the nation's independence and a new constitution was promulgated.
Independence did not come without a fight. The Dutch sought to reclaim their territories and a series of conflicts ensued. Finally in 1950, a unitary Republic of Indonesia was established, and Jakarta was designated the capital.
Although Indonesia was finally independent, the society remained deeply divided by ethnic, regional, class and religious differences.
Given its central role in the national revolution, the military became deeply involved in politics. The military was not, however, a unified force, reflecting instead the fractures of the society as a whole and its own historical experiences.
Independent Indonesia's first general election took place on September 29, 1955. Sukarno's PNI party won a slim majority.
On March 14, 1957, the liberal phase of Indonesian history was brought to an end with Sukarno's proclamation of martial law. In an unstable and ultimately catastrophic coalition with the army and the Communist PKI party, he sought to rescue the fragile unity of the archipelago.
Two other features of his political strategy were an aggressive foreign policy, first against the Dutch over West New Guinea (Irian Barat, or later Irian Jaya Province) and then against the newly created state of Malaysia.
On September 23, 1963, Sukarno, who had proclaimed himself President-for-Life, declared that Indonesia must "gobble Malaysia raw." Military units infiltrated Malaysian territory but were intercepted before they could establish contact with local dissidents. This action, known as Confrontation, soon involved Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China.
By 1965 Indonesia had become a dangerous cockpit of social and political antagonisms. The PKI's rapid growth aroused the hostility of Islamic groups and the military.
On September 30, 1965 a coup d'état led by pro-communist military officers, calling themselves the September 30 Movement, attempted to seize power. Their failure however led to a violent anti-communist reaction. By December 1965, mobs were engaged in large-scale killings in which an estimated 300,000 people lost their lives.
This period of violent instability led to the eclipse of Sukarno and the rise of Suharto to a position of supreme power.
In the decades after 1966, Suharto's regime evolved into a steeply hierarchical affair, characterized by tight centralized control and long-term personal rule. At the top of the hierarchy was Suharto himself, making important policy decisions and carefully balancing competing interests in a society that was, despite strong centralized rule, still extremely diverse. Arrayed below him was a bureaucratic state in which the military played the central role.
Although opposition movements and popular unrest were not entirely eliminated, Suharto's regime was extraordinarily stable compared with its predecessor.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, Indonesia's pervasive corruption became a political issue which continues to be addressed today.
Meanwhile, separatist movements began to take hold, first in West New Guinea, and then in East Timor. The East Timorese independence movement, Fretilin, took root in 1974 following the departure of the Portuguese and became the dominant political force inside East Timor by mid-1975. Civil war ensued in the territory, ending in Indonesian military occupation. East Timor finally gained independence on 20th May 2002 following a UN supervised referendum.
Indonesia's current head of state is Megawati Sukarnoputri who was elected to the post on 26th July, 2001.
Development Issues
Indonesia's economic crisis that began in 1998 caused the unemployment rate to soar to more than 50% and urban poverty to increase by over 200%. Hundreds of thousands of people, especially in the capital Jakarta, were no longer able to afford the basic necessities. As a result, there was a significant increase in beggars on the streets, families were eating two meals a day instead of three, children dropped out of school, and the urban poor returned to traditional family villages which created overcrowding and social upheaval.
The Chairman of the Indonesian Food and Nutrition Institute recently noted that 9 million Indonesian children are undernourished and out of these, 2.2 million were severely malnourished. He blamed the country's prolonged economic crisis as significantly contributing to the malnutrition problem.
Despite persistent tension in Indonesia's conflict areas, large numbers of displaced people have returned to their homes since mid-2002 owing to relative stability in the country. The total number of IDPs is now 700,000, down from an estimated 1.3 million in summer 2002. The returnees are struggling to rebuild their lives, while many others displaced cannot return due to continued insecurity. Return is still problematic in Maluku province, Central Kalimantan and Aceh, where hopes raised by a December 2002 peace agreement between the government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) have receded. Other areas of displacement include West Timor, where some 120,000 East Timorese remain displaced.