On the night of 8 May 2026, a screening of the documentary film Pesta Babi: Kolonialisme di Zaman Kita (Pig Feast: Colonialism in Our Time) directed by Dandhy Dwi Laksono and Cypri Paju Dale, at the Pendopo Benteng Oranje Ternate in North Maluku was disrupted. The event was organised by the Society of Indonesian Environmental Journalists (SIEJ) and Aliansi Jurnalis Indonesia (AJI) Kota Ternate. Disruptions of public events including seminars and film screenings are not unusual in Indonesia.
What was different this time, was that instead of being initiated by religious groups or community organisations, the disruption in Ternate was led by the local District Military Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jani Setiadi. This was not the first nor would it be the last disruption of a screening of the now banned documentary.
At the time of writing, since its Indonesian premiere in April 2026, at least 50 incidents involving intimidation during or before screenings have been reported. The 95-minute film documents the experiences of the Marind, Yei, Awyu and Muyu people in southern Papua since the late 2024 when the central government launched a massive agricultural project on their land.
Why was this documentary banned? Why is the military interested in regulating film screenings? The answer lies far beyond the scope of the cinema, specifically in a village called Wanam.
Red cross at Wanam
On 15 December 2025, the elders of the Malind Maklew clan planted a red cross on their customary land in Wanam Village, Ilwayab District, Merauke Regency. This red cross symbolises rejection of the national project and is one of 1800 installed in the South Papua region over the past few years.
The Merauke National Strategic Project (Proyek Strategis Nasional, PSN) aims to clear 2.29 million hectares of forest and wetlands for bioethanol sugarcane plantations and national rice reserves in 19 of the 22 districts of Merauke Regency. It is led by a consortium headed by Andi Syamsuddin Arsyad (Haji Isam) from Jhonlin Group, working with Global Papua Abadi and PT Agrinas, a state-owned company created by President Prabowo Subianto in March 2025. Haji Isam, cousin to the Minister of Agriculture, Amran Sulaiman, made headlines in 2024 by ordering 2000 excavators from China in a single transaction, marking the largest such order globally.
On 2 October 2024, the Commander of the Indonesian Armed Forces (Tentara Nasional Indonesia, TNI) inaugurated a new battalion in Papua, the Infantry Battalion Supporting Vulnerable Areas(Batalyon Infanteri Penyangga Daerah Rawan, Yonif PDR). This unit was given an unusual mandate: support food security programs. When questioned about its origin, the Army Chief of Staff, Maruli Simanjuntak, firmly stated, ‘this is the idea of the Minister of Defence, and it's extraordinary’. The Minister of Defence in question was Prabowo Subianto, who had just been elected president.
Two thousand soldiers were deployed to Merauke alongside the heavy machinery. By 10 November 2024, 11 military posts were established along the project corridor. A letter from the National Commission on Human Rights (KOMNAS HAM) counted 300 units of heavy equipment in one district, each directly guarded by military personnel. KOMNAS HAM also requested clarification from the Ministry of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning/National Land Agency (ATR/BPN), the Ministry of Forestry, the Government of South Papua Province, the Government of Merauke Regency, and the TNI Commander regarding this matter.
The new face of dwifungsi
The disruption of the Pesta Babi screening and the deployment of the battalion to Papua reveal deeper systemic mechanisms at play. Rather than isolated institutional missteps, these actions reflect a system functioning precisely as designed: an architecture that is fundamentally sanctioned by law.
Between 2021 and 2025, the government built a legal framework for what is now happening. Government Regulation No. 23/2021 on Forest Areas made it easier to release forest areas for PSNs. The revised Job Creation Law of 2023 also introduced an ‘accelerated and simplified’ framework that narrows consultation opportunities. The 2025 National Development Plan reaffirms Merauke and Rempang as PSNs, and Presidential Decree No. 15/2024 designates Wanam as a food production center. During this period, the TNI Commander also established five new Daerah Rawan battalions, all of them stationed in Papua.
A critical milestone was reached on 20 March 2025, when the House of Representatives (DPR) ratified a revision of the Military Law, Law No. 3/2025. This legislation expands non-war military operations and increases the number of civilian ministries where active-duty officers can be staffed, from ten to 14. The most consequential shift lies in a crucial procedural distinction: article 7, paragraph 4, eliminates the requirement that troop deployment for non-war operations be mandated by a ‘state political decision’. By institutionalising what was previously deemed a constitutional deviation, the new law normalises military intervention in civic space. Consequently, one of the foundational pillars of reformasi, namely dismantling the military’s dual functionality (dwifungsi), has effectively been brought to an end.
To understand this evolving dwifungsi, we can look to Paul Chambers and Napisa Waitoolkiat’s framework of ‘khaki capital’, which explains how the military leverages state budget, resources and lucrative positions for economic gain, backed by violence if necessary. The practice itself is not new. Harold Crouch showed that military business and administration has been intertwined since the founding of Indonesia’s military institutions. What is new is its combination with ongoing electoral democracy. Marcus Mietzner has noted these continuous challenges since the reform era, including military control over territorial command structures and extensive informal business interests.
In 1998, the symbols of the New Order were exposed: military factions in parliament, automatic appointment of active soldiers to civil positions and formal immunity. However, the military’s core framework remained untouched: the territorial command structure still spans from Military Regional Command (Komando Daerah Militer) to Military Resort Command (Komando Resor Militer), Military District Command (Komando Distrik Militer), Military Subdistrict Command (Komando Rayon Militer), and Village Supervisory Non-Commissioned Officer (Bintara Pembina Desa) at the village level. As long as this structure exists, and soldiers at each level have access to local resources through unit foundations, project security and the placement of retired officers, the TNI will never be entirely dependent on the state budget. This ‘fiscal autonomy’ remains a root cause of why the state cannot fully control the TNI.
When food becomes a matter of security
The evolving dwifungsi of TNI warrants close examination. Under the New Order, deploying soldiers into communities was justified through a national security lens aimed at crushing ‘the enemy of the state’: communism, separatism and instability. After 1998, these lost their ideological potency. Communism lacks a living opponent. Separatism can only be proclaimed in Papua, with diplomatic costs.
Since 2020, a new discursive shift emerged: the language of food security. This framework has a flexible rhetorical structure. It allows the government and military to legitimise large-scale projects without needing a specific enemy. It only needs generic threats: disruptions to the global supply chain, climate volatility, and the need for independence. None of these are easily disputed. Once an initiative is securitised under the banner of food security, three mechanisms occur simultaneously: criticism is delegitimised as unpatriotic; military involvement is normalised as national service and local community resistance is framed as an obstacle to the public interest.
A systemic pattern
The recurring pattern of military and state intervention under the banner of national projects is not confined to Papua. Similar structures of motivation and action are seen in several cases in other regions across Indonesia.
In September 2023, on Rempang Island, Riau Islands, a thousand combined police and military personnel fired tear gas at 16 villages, populated by Malay people, Orang Darat dan Orang Laut inhabitants. The land will be cleared for a glass factory and industrial area supported by the Chinese company Xinyi. The project was reinstated as a PSN in 2025.
In Central Kalimantan’s peatlands, on the land where the Million-Hectare Peatland Project failed during the Suharto era in the 1990s, the government launched a new food estate in 2020, under Prabowo Subianto’s leadership as the Minister of Defense. Five years later, Pantau Gambut found that only one per cent of the new planting area was suitable for food crops.
Since 2018, in West Java, the TNI has run an environmental program along the upper Citarum River. A study by the Agrarian Resource Centre Bandung shows that the soldiers are concentrated in the long-disputed upstream area; farmers are prohibited from planting vegetables based on conservation efforts; large plantations are allowed to continue, and the military is pressuring residents to plant coffee while also controlling the marketing. This economic takeover, disguised as ecological initiatives, affects the substance of local livelihoods.
The Agrarian Resources Center also highlights a parallel case in Urutsewu, Kebumen. In 1998, based on unverified colonial-era maps, the TNI began mapping the coastal land in Urutsewu, covering around 1.150 ha. Based on this map, the Army formally registered it as a state asset under its control in 2010. In 2008, prior to any legal authorisation, the military signed an agreement with an iron sand mining company to operate on the disputed land. The commissioner was a retired major-general, and the director was Gautama Hartarto, the child of Hartarto, a former Suharto cabinet minister and the brother of Airlangga Hartarto, the current Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs. In Urutsewu, the soldiers do not merely protect external capital; they are autonomous actors in capital accumulation, claiming the land, transacting and holding assets. Although the mining partnership ended in 2011, the military retained control, securing land use certificates from the National Land Agency (Badan Pertanahan Nasional, BPN) in 2020 and 2021.
What happened in Merauke is not unprecedented. Rather, it is a much larger version of an established pattern. The justification for military involvement has shifted from national defence to food security. The underlying structure of collaboration between the military and business interests remains the same.
An old ghost in a new uniform
The 1998 reformasi (reformation) succeeded in overthrowing the Suharto regime, but it failed to dismantle the structural architecture that supported it. Between 2014 and 2024, that architecture was rebuilt under a different guise. What was once dwifungsi has been rebranded as military support for food security. What was once territorial development has materialised as the Infantry Battalion Supporting Vulnerable Areas (Yonif PDR). What used to be the looming threat of communism or separatism, has shifted to the spectre of a food crisis.
On the day the new TNI Law was enacted on 20 March 2025, the Minister of Defence Sjafrie Samsoeddin declared dwifungsi a thing of the past and that ‘its ghost no longer remains’. His statement reads like a premature epitaph for an era that, in fact, is well and truly alive.
In Wanam, the red cross still stands. Behind it, the bulldozer keeps working, shielded by 11 military posts guarding the project corridor. The questions the people of Wanam ask, ‘Why send soldiers? What did we do wrong?’ was also asked long before the bulldozers arrived in Merauke. It was asked in Rempang. It was asked upstream of the Citarum. It was asked on the Urutsewu coast. No government has answered honestly.
The coordinated disruption of Pesta Babi screenings across multiple venues, represents the answer to that question: preemptive censorship. What is silenced is not merely the film. What is also being shuttered is a rare window through which citizens outside Wanam can witness how this architecture operates.
But the red crosses remain standing. And despite relentless state interference, the documentary continues to be watched by thousands of viewers both offline and online, including many Indonesians who continue to resist.
Yudi Bachrioktora (yudibachri@gmail.com) teaches in the Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, at the University of Indonesia, and is a researcher at the Agrarian Resource Center (ARC)-Bandung.
Inside Indonesia 164: Apr-Jun 2026
A humanitarian air service has been accused of transporting Indonesian military personnel and ammunition for an armed operation in the West Papua territory.
Evidence has been presented suggesting Associated Medical Aviation, an Indonesian privately-run organisation acting on behalf of the Catholic Church, has violated its non-political, humanitarian charter to provide aviation transport for essential goods to remote communities inaccessible by road.
The allegations have been made by the West Papua National Liberation Army, who have also issued a formal warning of repercussions for the alleged actions of the Indonesians.
Associated Medical Aviation has denied the allegations, however its spokesperson has admitted to primarily financing its air service through Indonesian government subsidies.
An operations spokesperson said the organisation "regretted the allegation" while adding it has never received a formal warning from the armed group which is fighting for Papuan independence and a proposed separatist state.
The denials also come after the shock death of Nicholas Gosselin, a 29-year-old American pilot who flew for the aviation operators.
He was shot and killed on July 2 after landing an aircraft on a remote airstrip among Indonesia's Papua highlands.
Communication with the aircraft, which had also been carrying seven passengers, was lost shortly after landing, the operators confirmed.
The West Papua National Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the incident, adding its fighters shot the pilot and later burned the plane.
The passengers reportedly survived, according to Indonesian authorities.
An Associated Medical Aviation spokesperson said the aircraft is only used to deliver food supplies, transport critically-ill patients from isolated villages to urban hospitals in West Papua, and to provide other essential humanitarian services.
The spokesperson issued the remarks from the Bhayangkara Hospital in Jayapura — the largest city in West Papua — on Friday while awaiting the completion of the forensic, post-mortem examination of Mr Gosselin's body.
The organisation confirmed the deceased body was first given a farewell mass before the examination.
However, access to the examination room in the hospital was said to be restricted, according to reports.
Mr Gosselin's body was flown to Jakarta where the US Embassy in the Indonesian capital were overseeing arrangements for the body's repatriation.
West Papua National Liberation Army activist, Sebby Sambom, said the fighters from the army's Yahukimo Regional Command's Bakusip Company were responsible for the shooting and for later setting the aircraft on fire.
The attack took place in Balinggama, a village located in the Yahukimo Regency of the Papua Highlands province.
"We burned the aircraft because the pilot had violated the West Papua National Liberation Army ultimatum," Sambom said in an online statement.
Mr Sambom confirmed the aircraft was targeted as it had allegedly been utilised to transport armed personnel and had ignored an earlier West Papua National Liberation Army's warning.
The resistance group believes the civilian aircraft has routinely been used to transport Indonesian troops and military logistics into West Papua's interior to support its armed operations, which it alleged has resulted in a number of civilian casualties among West Papua's Indigenous population.
"We have issued an ultimatum banning all civilian aircraft from entering the operational area of West Papua National Liberation Army Kodap XVI Yahukimo," Mr Sambom added.
