Published in The Sunday Jakarta Post. See here.

Laksmi Pamuntjak can tell you exactly where she was on April 22, 2006.

As she tells it, on the day after founding feminist Kartini’s birthday, a 6,000-strong carnivale of cultures from Aceh, Bali, Java and other islands, of Batak, Betawi, Dayak and Minahasa, met at Monas to face an anti-pornography bill that they felt was trying to hijack the very essence of Indonesia’s Pancasila, of its tolerance of difference.

It “smelt like a gas”, aimed at women, she says.