Indonesia, the world\u2019s fourth-most populous nation, lives with a digital paradox. Millions of smartphone-native youngsters are piling into meme tokens in search of a quick score, even as the government touts ambitious plans for artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
Recent mass protests in Jakarta, sparked by lavish perks for officials, only underscored the gulf between national aspirations and an archaic reality. How this vast country\u2014whose principal asset is its youth\u2014navigates the divide is the subject of a new ForkLog piece on the Global South.<\/p>\n
To grasp contemporary Indonesia, start with its recent past. The country declared independence from the Netherlands in 1945. Its first president was Sukarno, a leader of the anti-colonial movement.<\/p>\n
In the early 1960s the region endured acute social, political and economic turmoil, culminating in a series of coups led by General Suharto. Attempts to seize power were accompanied by mass killings<\/a> of people suspected of loyalty to President Sukarno.<\/p>\n The victims of the \u201cpoliticide\u201d, as modern researchers describe<\/a> the repression, numbered between 500,000 and 3m by various estimates. The dictator Suharto was toppled only in 1998 amid the Asian financial crisis. The military junta left a legacy of corruption, bureaucracy and inequality that the country is still struggling to overcome. In 2013 the documentary \u201cThe Act of Killing\u201d was released; its creators claim that many organisers of the mass killings in Indonesia retained senior posts even after Suharto\u2019s fall.<\/p>\n