Harsh new laws that would ban sex outside of marriage grabbed most of the headlines. But anti-defamation rules, making it harder to criticize parts of the state, were equally worrying. Those plans were eventually put on hold but earlier this month they worked their way through Indonesia's parliament. The draft legislation is still to be signed by the president, Joko Widodo.
The country has been slinging missiles skyward at an alarming pace, and with ever-greater technological advancement. We ask why things are heating up, and how the West might at last cool them down. Reforms to Indonesia’s criminal code that sparked mass protests in 2019 are back; restrictions including an extramarital-sex ban look set to pass. And Wales’s booming leech-and-maggot business.
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