A major literary festival in Bali, Indonesia, was forced to cancel events related to a 1960s anti-communist purge, the organizers said yesterday, after authorities threatened to revoke its operating permit.
Five programs, including several discussion panels, a book launch and film screening were scrapped from the annual Ubud Readers and Writers Festival, which is scheduled to open on Wednesday, said Hanna Nabila, one of the festival’s spokespeople.
“The authorities had refused to grant us permits to hold those programs without giving reasons. We are very disappointed but also worried that we might be forced to call off the entire festival if we proceed,” she added.
A statement on the festival Web site said the cancellations came “after increased scrutiny from local authorities” and that the organizers had been involved in “extensive negotiations.”
“The festival ... was advised that should certain sessions proceed, it would run the risk of the entire festival being canceled,” the statement said.
This month marks 50 years of one of the most violent mass killings of the 20th century.
At least 500,000 people died in the killings across the archipelago that started after then-general Suharto put down a coup on Oct. 1, 1965, which the authorities blamed on communists.
Security forces supported local groups in conducting the massacre over several months, with many suspected of even weak links to the Indonesian Communist Party killed and hundreds of thousand imprisoned, some for years.
Suharto became president in March 1967 after the failed coup and ruled Indonesia with an iron fist for 32 years. The necessity of the killings to rid the country of the communist threat became part of the official narrative and the perpetrators were left unpunished.
Amnesty International in a report it published last month urged Indonesia to do more to provide justice for victims and their families.
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
SHOW OF SUPPORT: The move showed that aggression toward Greenland is a question for Europe and Canada, and the consequences are global, not just Danish, experts said Canada and France, which adamantly oppose US President Donald Trump’s wish to control Greenland, were to open consulates in the Danish autonomous territory’s capital yesterday, in a strong show of support for the local government. Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has repeatedly insisted that Washington needs to control the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island for security reasons. Trump last month backed off his threats to seize Greenland after saying he had struck a “framework” deal with NATO chief Mark Rutte to ensure greater US influence. A US-Denmark-Greenland working group has been established to discuss ways to meet Washington’s security concerns
RSS