Jakarta, July 11 -- Deputy Head of the Legislative Body of the House of Representatives (DPR), Ahmad Iman Syukri, reaffirmed that the Indigenous Peoples Bill will be prioritized in the legislative agenda to protect indigenous communities from marginalization, discrimination, and criminalization.

"As the party that proposed the bill, we have consistently included the Indigenous Peoples Bill as part of the priority legislative agenda," he stated at the Parliamentary Complex in Jakarta on Friday.

According to Syukri, several important reasons underlie the drafting of the bill. First, the 1945 Constitution-specifically Article 18B paragraph (2) and Article 28I paragraph (3)-explicitly recognizes the existence of indigenous peoples and their...