🇮🇩 Indonesia shakes as protests turn to police violence and death

There's no coming back from this one

Hello friends!

With apologies to Thailand, whose international headline-making news will have to wait until Monday, today is an Indonesia special.

You’d be hard-pressed to have missed the news of protests across Indonesia. A smaller one Monday featured day-light tear gas from police (that used to be rare, I swear) and portended what was to come later in the week as labour groups and student unions came together to protest lawmakers stuffing their pockets.

This is not an exhaustive account of what is happening. It is still very much in flux and an update surely to come. But these are answers to questions I’ve been asked in the last few days by people who do not have a load of Indonesia experience.

I really hope this helps readers understand why this is such a big deal. Privately, a lot of people who know way more than I do have agreed with me: this seems like it’s the big one. It’s important to know why.

I don’t want to get into much granular details, but if there’s something I’ve missed please tell me and I’ll make sure to mention in the next one.

Thanks for reading and hati2,

Erin Cook

The death.

‘Affan Kurniawan murdered by police’ has become the slogan of the week

Affan Kurniawan was 21-year-old when he was mowed down by a Brimob (Mobile Brigade Corps) vehicle on Thursday night in Central Jakarta. He worked as Gojek driver, making him one of the army of ojol (ojek online, or ride-share motorbike driver) across the country.

Affan is not the first young man to die in Indonesia’s protests, but he is the first in the new era of President Prabowo Subianto. What makes his death so different is that it was filmed — everyone in the country saw him trip while running, before the enormous Brimob truck strikes him. The video went so viral that it’s immediately recognisable from the first frame.

Affan was born in July 2004, which is a really important time in Indonesian history. His mother would’ve voted in the first direct presidential elections in the last weeks of carrying him. He was killed 21 years later, as the future of those electoral freedoms and democratic safeguards is truly at risk from planned ‘reforms.’ Expect further demonstrations when those deliberations begin.

In line with Islamic tradition, Affan’s funeral was held yesterday. That too was beamed into devices across the country. Everyone saw Affan’s mother screaming in grief while men from various institutions came to give condolences, hoping that the heat would stay off them.

An important thing to get across here is to understand what role the ojol plays in Indonesia. Every Western media’s foreign editor op-ed, you know the one where they send someone over to Jakarta once a decade, and they go ‘whoa! It’s big! Does anyone know about this?’, begins with the sharp observation that, in their green (and sometimes orange or yellow) jackets, the drivers are ubiquitous and many.

But these are not the Uber drivers of the West. Indonesia's ojol, as a group, runs the country, delivering people and packages across the archipelago. A secondary function of theirs is less discussed but, in my view, quietly more influential: they are eyes and ears in every single community in the entire country. With posts to rest at (and recharge phones) and enormous group chats, the intel gathered and capacity to organise is unlike any other labour group I've ever seen.

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A common refrain is that the country's ojol has done way more for the people than parliamentarians. Affan is closer to the average Indonesian than a lawmaker is and in a rare moment of social/class solidarity, I think a lot of people are beginning to notice that.

This combination of fantastic organisational ability from the ojol and extreme disgust among the wider community has led to further protests this weekend, which appear to be widely supported.

What’s the go with Prabowo Subianto?

A lot of people REALLY love Prabowo, they're the 44% of voters who picked him over his predecessor, Jokowi, in 2014 and 2019. That's his real core base, and that's a really big segment of the population. In last year's election, his vote grew to 58% of voters. There are two big factors here that obscure his real support. Firstly, he was supported by Jokowi, and his son ran as VP on the same ticket. I've met plenty of people who voted for Prabowo because of this, assuming Gibran Rakabuming Raka would be a conduit for Jokowi. The second factor is the other two candidates, but that's more than you probably need for now.

There was a huge generational split in voting patterns — the younger a voter was, the more likely they were to vote for Prabowo. This was explained in a few ways, the biggest being that younger people were less likely to have a real memory of who Prabowo was last century and the bullshit he got up to. Another factor is the campaign message. Prabowo was sold as a reformed ‘cuddly granddad.’ That seemed to land, and many young voters said they picked him because it was his ‘turn’, he'd waited long enough.

Prabowo’s history is no secret. A former military general, he was deeply involved in Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor and the disappearances of student activists in the 1998 uprising against Suharto. Oh! And he was once the son-in-law of Suharto. Activists, academics and haters of all shades had tried to sound the alarm bell but were ignored. “Prabowo's appointment sends a worrying signal that our leaders have forgotten the darkest days and the worst violations committed in the Suharto era,” Amnesty International's Indonesia director Usman Hamid told the BBC back in 2019 when he became defence minister under Jokowi.

Protests now aren’t only young people, but they are the largest cohort. Of course, we have no idea who voted for what. Who knows if we’re seeing a shift away from Prabowo among some voters.

At this stage, that doesn’t matter. This is not yet about Prabowo. Some of the more politically astute have pointed out the clear links between the hyper-securitisation of the country since 2019, as well as Prabowo’s wider legislative agenda. But, largely, and for the time being, this movement has been directed at the parliamentarians and the police.

Why the parliamentarians?

Show me someone who loves a member of parliament and I’ll show you a weirdo. Indonesia’s a huge country, so its parliament, the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR), is huge with 580 members. They gave themself some treats recently, most egregiously a housing allowance of 50 million rupiah a month — that’s just over USD$3,000. Elisabeth Kramer broke it down over at Indonesia at Melbourne yesterday, perusing the real estate sites for suburbs around the parliamentary complex and noted you’d have to be particularly bad at budgeting to need that much. Hey, hang on!

Like just about everywhere, Indonesians are being squeezed and squeezed on cost-of-living pressures and housing, specifically, is a large part of that. This is only going to get worse as the US tariffs hit major industries and have a domino effect across the entire economy. So for parliamentarians to give themselves this lovely little line item on spending it’s simply way too far.

And the police?

Even before the killing of Affan Kurniawan, the relationship between the police and much of the community was already broken. The Indonesia Gelap (Dark Indonesia) movement earlier this year saw plenty of clashes between protestors and police, but it goes way deeper and way longer than just that. A scrap between the police and Central Javanese punk band Sukatani helps explain that tension — a terminal case of institutional glass jaw.

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It’s always been bad, but it’s getting worse. The use of tear gas is, to me, especially scary. Back in 2022, 125 people at the Kanjuruhan stadium in Malang, East Java, were killed in a crush after police fired tear gas indiscriminately into the crowd. A few officers eventually were jailed, but the belief that justice was never truly served for the people of Malang persists. Signs and slogans in protests across the country often reference Kanjuruhan and it’s become a shorthand for police impunity.

What’s next?

The political arm of the country has quickly and definitively distanced itself from the national police. Comments from Prabowo Subianto and other prominent lawmakers convey their sympathies to Affan Kurniawan’s family and promise investigations and the like. As protests continue and tensions heighten, I’m not sure how long that will hold.

Regional legislative assemblies have become targets and reporting from Makassar, South Sulawesi, is very troubling. Three people have reportedly been killed after the parliament was set alight, with local media reporting they were staff who were unable to leave in time. It is a shocking case and may split public sentiment.