Urakan Magazine is a publication of art and criticism based in Yogyakarta. We are a small organisation that does most of its work through other people: contributors, guest writers, artists, translators, editors, and collaborators who come and go across projects.

This document sets out what we expect of everyone involved in that work, and what we will not accept. It was written proactively, at a point when nothing had gone wrong. It is standing governance, not a reaction to any incident.

We wrote it for two reasons. The first is protective: people who write for us, work with us, or appear in our pages should know what standard they can hold us to. The second is structural: an organisation that works this collaboratively needs a legitimate place for concerns to go, held by people other than whoever happens to be in charge.

This is not a legal instrument and Urakan is not a court. We cannot compel anyone, and we do not pretend to powers we lack. What we can do is decide who we work with, how we work with them, and how we respond when someone is hurt in the course of that work.

2. Who this covers

This Code applies to:

• The director and organisers of Urakan
• Editors
• Contributors, writers, translators, illustrators, photographers, and anyone commissioned or invited to make work with us
• Collaborators and partner organisations working with us on a specific project
• Participants in events, workshops, and programmes we run
• Subjects and sources, in their dealings with us and ours with them

It applies to conduct in the course of Urakan’s work: editorial and commissioning processes, interviews, events and workshops, collaborative projects, and the channels and correspondence we run.

What falls outside this Code. Conduct with no connection to Urakan’s work is not within our scope, and we do not adjudicate it. We are a magazine, not a community tribunal, and taking on that role would be both beyond our capacity and beyond our standing.

There is one limit to this. Where conduct outside our work creates a specific, ongoing risk to the safety of someone within Urakan’s work — for example, where two people must work on the same project — we may make practical arrangements to keep people safe, such as changing who works with whom. We do this to manage our own spaces. It is not a finding about the underlying conduct, and we will not present it as one.

Where we work inside someone else’s institution, that institution may have its own obligations covering the same events. We settle that in the agreement for each partnership, not here.

3. Our values

Care. We pay attention to the effect of our work on people: contributors, colleagues, and the people and communities we write about. Care is a practice, not a temperament. It looks like clear communication, honouring commitments, giving people time, and noticing when someone is struggling with a process we control.

Freedom of thought. Urakan exists to make criticism possible. We protect the freedom to think, argue, and publish judgements that others will not welcome. We do not require writers to be agreeable, balanced in a false way, or protective of reputations — including ours. Editorial disagreement is normal and welcome.

Consent. People decide how their work, words, images, and identities are used. This applies to writers, to artists, and to interview subjects. It applies with particular force to identity: nobody’s sexuality, gender history, health, immigration status, legal situation, or personal circumstances are ours to disclose.

Integrity. We deal honestly. We credit properly, we do not misrepresent, we do not use our position to extract favours or labour, and we hold our own conduct to the standard we apply in our criticism.

4. Expected behaviour

We expect everyone working with Urakan to:

• Treat colleagues and contributors as people whose time, labour, and thinking have value
• Be clear and honest about commitments, deadlines, payment, and scope, and communicate early when something changes
• Credit work accurately and attribute honestly
• Handle other people’s material, unpublished work, and personal information with discretion
• Ask before disclosing anything about another person’s identity or circumstances
• Give and receive editorial criticism directly, specifically, and without contempt
• Raise concerns rather than let them accumulate, and receive them without retaliation
• Respect the boundaries people set about their work, their time, and their bodies

5. Criticism and harm are not the same thing

This section matters more than any other, because a magazine of criticism that blurs this line ends up either censoring itself or excusing cruelty.

Criticism is directed at work and at ideas. It can be severe. It can be dismissive of an artwork, an exhibition, a curatorial premise, an institution, or an argument. It can be unfair in the ordinary sense that all judgement is contestable. None of this is a breach of this Code, and none of it is something Urakan will apologise for. A writer is not required to be kind to a body of work, and an editor is not required to soften a judgement because someone will be unhappy.

Harm is directed at persons. Harassment, humiliation, threats, targeting, sexual pressure, contempt for someone’s existence rather than their work — these are not sharper versions of criticism. They are a different activity, and no editorial purpose is served by them.

The test we apply: is this aimed at what someone made, or at what someone is?

Two clarifications, since this is where disputes actually happen.

Robust editorial disagreement — a rejected pitch, a heavy edit, a piece that argues against another writer’s position, a decision not to publish — is not harm, even when it is disappointing or feels personal. Being edited hard is part of the work.

And criticism of a person’s conduct in a public or professional capacity, where that conduct is genuinely the subject, remains criticism. Writing about an institution’s treatment of its workers, or a figure’s use of their power, is legitimate journalism. What makes it criticism rather than harm is that it addresses what was done, is held to a standard of accuracy, and does not extend into someone’s private identity or personal life.

6. Unacceptable behaviour

The following are breaches of this Code:

• Harassment. Persistent unwanted contact, intimidation, stalking, or conduct that continues after someone has asked it to stop.
• Psychological harm. Conduct meant to demean, humiliate, frighten, or make someone feel unsafe: exclusion, ignoring someone’s work or presence as a way of punishing them, spreading rumours, mocking names, public humiliation, intimidation, and threats used to extract something from someone.
• Bullying. Any of the above, or physical intimidation, done repeatedly where there is an imbalance of power between the people involved. Repetition and the imbalance of power are what make it bullying rather than a single bad exchange.
• Discrimination. Adverse treatment or hostility on the basis of gender, gender identity, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, disability, class, age, language, or nationality.
• Sexual misconduct. Unwanted sexual attention or contact; sexualised comments about someone’s body or person; sexual images, messages, or jokes sent to someone who did not ask for them; taking, keeping, or sharing sexual images of someone without their consent; pressure, persistence after refusal, or the use of professional position to seek sexual or romantic access.
• Outing. Disclosing anyone’s sexuality, gender identity or history, HIV or health status, or other protected personal circumstance without their explicit consent. This includes disclosure within Urakan, and disclosure to people who “already know.”
• Abuse of position. Using editorial or organisational power to extract unpaid labour, sexual or personal favours, silence, or loyalty; retaliating against someone for a professional disagreement; threatening someone’s access to publication or opportunity.
• Retaliation. Any adverse action against someone for raising a concern in good faith, participating in a process, or supporting someone who has.
• Deliberate dishonesty in the work. Fabrication, plagiarism, undisclosed conflicts of interest, or misrepresenting what a source said.
• Breach of confidentiality. Disclosing material from an accountability process, or an interview subject’s private information, outside what has been agreed.

This list is not exhaustive. Conduct that clearly contradicts the values in Section 3 may be addressed under this Code even if it is not itemised above.

7. Power and position

Urakan has a director, editors, and contributors, and these are not equal positions. The director assigns work, editors shape and accept it, and contributors depend on both for publication, payment, and standing.

That asymmetry means:

• Consent given to someone who controls your access to work is not straightforward consent. Anyone in an editorial or organisational role at Urakan should treat a romantic or sexual approach to a contributor as inappropriate while a working relationship is live, and should not be the one making that judgement in the moment.
• Going along with something does not count as consent where the person was threatened, pressured, or faced with someone abusing their position; where they were under the influence of alcohol or drugs; where they were asleep, unconscious, ill, or unable to respond; where they were in a physically or psychologically vulnerable state; where they froze and could not move or speak; or where they were in shock. This list is not exhaustive.
• People in senior roles are held to the Code more strictly, not less. Position is context, not mitigation.
• Anyone in a senior role who becomes aware of conduct covered by this Code has a responsibility to act on it, not to wait for a formal complaint.
• Nobody handles a concern in which they have a personal stake. This is not a matter of discretion; it is built into the process.

8. Consent, privacy, and identity

Urakan works within queer and arts communities in a context where being publicly identified can carry real consequences — professional, familial, legal, and physical. We treat this as a design constraint on everything we do, not as a sensitivity to be accommodated.

In practice:

• We do not out anyone, ever, for any reason. Not in the magazine, not in promotion, not in conversation, not to other members of the team.
• Bylines and pseudonyms. Contributors may publish under a pseudonym or without a byline. We hold the connection between a pseudonym and a person as confidential, and we do not confirm it to anyone.
• Subjects and sources are told how their words and images will be used, and are not surprised by the result. Where a subject would be put at risk by identification, we discuss that with them before publication, not after.
• Images. Photographs from Urakan events are taken and published only with the agreement of the people in them. Anyone can ask for an image of themselves to be removed, and we will remove it without requiring a reason.
• Personal information shared in the course of work — health, family, legal, financial, or immigration circumstances — stays with the person it was shared with.
• Withdrawal. Someone may ask us to remove their name or their work from our site because their circumstances have changed. We will accommodate this wherever we reasonably can.

9. Access

No part of this Code, or of the process behind it, should be harder to use because of disability, illness, language, or the shape of someone’s life.

We will provide these documents in a form that works for the person reading them. Anyone raising a concern may do so in whatever way is easiest for them: in writing, by speaking, in Indonesian or English, or through someone they trust. Anyone involved in a process may bring an interpreter or a support person. Where someone needs more time, a different format, a different setting, or breaks, we arrange it. Nobody has to explain a disability to get these adjustments.

10. If something goes wrong

Concerns are handled under Urakan’s Accountability Process, which sets out who receives a concern, what happens at each stage, and how the process changes when a concern involves a member of the core team.

In short: concerns go to the Urakan editors on duty, always two of them. Concerns involving a core team member — including the director — are handled by an independent party from outside Urakan, and the person concerned takes no part in handling it. We ask what you want before we decide what to do. We respond in proportion. We do not retaliate, and we do not permit retaliation.

You can raise something informally first. A conversation is not a complaint.

11. What this is based on

No law in Indonesia requires a magazine of our size to have a code of conduct or an accountability process. No regulator supervises us. No funder asked us for this. We are not a school, not a university, and not an employer with permanent staff, and the regulations governing those institutions do not reach us.

We wrote it anyway. We would rather say plainly that we chose this standard ourselves than claim an authority we do not have.

In writing it, we drew on:

• Law No. 12 of 2022 on Sexual Violence Crimes (UU TPKS)
• Law No. 27 of 2022 on Personal Data Protection (UU PDP), which does apply to us whenever we hold information about an identifiable person
• Regulation of the Minister of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology No. 55 of 2024 on the Prevention and Handling of Violence in Higher Education
• Rector’s Regulation of Universitas Gadjah Mada No. 1 of 2020, as an example of how an institution in Yogyakarta has put this into practice

We took their definitions, principles, and guarantees of fairness. We did not take their apparatus. Task forces, ethics committees, safe houses, and budget lines belong to institutions with staff and money, and copying their shape without their capacity would only look convincing until someone actually needed it.

We also depart from these instruments in places. We do not require anyone to attend alone or without support. We do not treat a concern as lapsed because someone could not come forward three times. We do not assign support people by sex, because the person raising a concern chooses their own.

We are an independent magazine. This is our own document, and we answer for it ourselves.

12. Review

This Code is reviewed once a year by the core team, and after any process that reveals a gap in it. Contributors are welcome to propose changes at any time.

Contact: urakanmagazine@gmail.com Version 1.0, 6 August 2026. Next review: 5 August 2027.