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In an appearance on PRX <\/em>and BGH<\/em><\/a>‘s “The World<\/a>,”\u00a0<\/span>Jeremy Menchik<\/a>, Associate Professor of International Relations at Boston University\u2019s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, discusses Indonesia<\/a>‘s new criminal code, which bans sex outside of marriage, penalized individuals who insult the president and vice-president, and outlaws certain political views.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The long revamp of the criminal code was highly anticipated because it replaces colonial-era laws, but it also introduces repressive measures. While Indonesia is a democracy<\/a>, Menchik notes that these laws are not the first encroachment on human rights<\/a> in the country; he says that Indonesia is considered a low-level democracy – similar to Poland, Turkey, and the United States – where there are so many infringements on the rights of minorities and other electoral problems. He concludes by arguing that the passage of the new criminal code marks a bad moment for Indonesian democracy as civil society organizations are now forced on the defensive; however, these kinds of moments have played out in the past, and in those instances, civil society and human rights organizations mobilize and the moderates tend to win in the end.<\/p>\n The full segment can be listened to on “The World’s” website<\/a>.<\/p>\n Jeremy Menchik<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>is an Associate Professor in the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and a faculty affiliate in Political Science and Religious Studies. His first book,\u00a0<\/span>Islam and Democracy in Indonesia: Tolerance without Liberalism<\/em>\u00a0(Cambridge University Press, 2016) explains the meaning of tolerance to the world\u2019s largest Islamic organizations and was the co-winner of the 2017 International Studies Association award for the best book on religion and international relations. His work has appeared in the academic journals\u00a0Comparative Studies in Society and History<\/em>,\u00a0Comparative Politics<\/em>,\u00a0International Studies Review<\/em>,\u00a0Politics and Religion<\/em>,\u00a0Asian Studies Review<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0South East Asia Research<\/em>\u00a0as well as in\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>,\u00a0The New York Review of Books<\/em>,\u00a0The Washington Post<\/em>,\u00a0Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal<\/em>, and\u00a0USA Today<\/em>. His recent research focuses on social movements, the politics of modern religious authority, and the origins of the missionary impulse. Read more about Professor Menchik on his\u00a0<\/span>faculty profile<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Professor Menchik argues that the passage of the new criminal code marks a bad moment for Indonesian democracy; however, these kinds of moments have played out in the past, and in those instances, civil society and human rights organizations mobilize and the moderates tend to win in the end.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17823,"featured_media":21632,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8410],"tags":[11835,8362,11783,8960,8379,1165,8378,10259],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55050"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17823"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55050"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55064,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55050\/revisions\/55064"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}