Data breaches have become a contentious issue worldwide after Facebook, which has 137 million users in Indonesia, admitted that British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had harvested data of 80 million users. The Jakarta Post’s Safrin La Batu explores challenges and how the government will help protect citizens’ privacy online. 

Since rabies was declared endemic to East Nusa Tenggara in 1997, there has been little progress in the provincial government’s efforts to eliminate the zoonotic  disease, as the virus remains a serious health issue today. Reporting from Maumere, The Jakarta Post contributing writer Djemi Amnifu explains how the local government’s neglect, combined with the locals’ appetite for dog meat, has contributed to the spread of the deadly disease. 

Followers of Sunda Wiwitan, one of the countless indigenous faiths in Indonesia, have survived colonial oppression and purges of non-official religions by the authoritarian New Order regime. The Jakarta Post writer Corry Elyda takes a look at how the small communities scattered across West Java and Banten provinces have stood the test of time.

Despite its reputation as a resource-rich country, Indonesia still bears the shame of a problem with stunting, globally having the fifth highest number of cases. The Jakarta Post journalist Moses Ompusunggu examines why Indonesia remains struggling with the issue and what it is doing to address it.

The recent Constitutional Court ruling that allows millions of adherents of indigenous faiths to state their beliefs on their ID card has raised expectations of an end to state-sponsored discrimination. The Jakarta Post writers Margareth S. Aritonang and Corry Elyda review the landmark ruling and its pitfalls. Our correspondents Bambang Muryanto in Yogyakarta and Apriadi Gunawan in Medan take a closer look at local native faiths.

The prevalence of China’s mobile payments is hard to overlook. Not only is everyone talking about the e-payment platforms, but also people are using them in their daily lives to the point where it seems they can’t live without them.

As a developing country with a burgeoning middle class population, Indonesia has become one of the world’s largest markets for electronics. According to the latest survey from the Indonesian Internet Providers Association (APJII), almost 133 million Indonesians had access to the internet last year through their smartphones and computers.

Anti-vaccine movements gaining ground on the back of rising religious conservatism and the thriving internet are threatening to foil Indonesia’s painstaking effort to achieve its goal of 100 percent immunization. This worrying trend has seen the comeback of preventable diseases like diphtheria.

The alarming examples of intolerance, which go along with growing religious conservatism and get a free ride in the burgeoning democracy by weak governments in the wake of the 1998 wave of political reform, have been sounding a death knell for the diversity of Indonesia.

In search of more empathetic police