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April 2015

April 2015

Beautiful virgins: the hard road to becoming an Indonesian policewoman

Being pretty and having a good body are key recruitment attributes for policewomen in Indonesia, writes SHARYN GRAHAM DAVIES. Late in 2014, Al Jazeera ran a story entitled ‘Virginity tests on Indonesia police condemned: Rights group says female police required to strip and undergo “two-finger test” to prove virginity before recruitment.’ The story, based on

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The ‘shame’ of Indonesia’s widows and divorcees

Popular culture in Indonesia exposes divorced or widowed women to prejudice and stigmatisation, writes NICHOLAS HERRIMAN. One of the most popular and enduring images of femininity in Indonesia is the janda. The term refers to either a widow or a divorcee because, in the popular imagination, how she has become unmarried is not particularly relevant.

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Truth the first casualty in reporting on Japan’s whaling culture

The Japanese people are hearing only one side of the argument about their country’s ‘scientific’ whaling program, writes TETS KIMURA Since the International Whaling Commission (IWC) adopted a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1982, Australia and Japan have had ongoing altercations. This was exacerbated when Japan discovered a loophole to conduct ‘scientific’ whaling in the

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Lessons of Tambora ignored—200 years on from the world’s greatest modern eruption

Amidst commemorations of the Gallipoli landing, writes ANTHONY REID,the anniversary of another, perhaps more significant disaster for humanity, slipped by largely unnoticed. Australia is spending many millions commemorating in April 2015 the centenary of one disaster. The Gallipoli landing symbolises for Australians one of the greatest man-made catastrophes. We have almost completely ignored the bicentenary

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