2) Absent – The 3D essentials: Discipline, direction and determination
3) In Prabowo’s Indonesia, the military is quietly creeping back into civilian life
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https://www.indoleft.org/news/2025-08-27/12-arrested-after-protest-against-transfer-of-papuan-political-prisoners-ends-in-riot.html
1) 12 arrested after protest against transfer of Papuan political prisoners ends in riot
Source Jubi Papua – August 27, 2025
Gamaliel Kaliele, Sorong – At least 12 residents of Sorong City, Southwest Papua province, were arrested following a protest against the transfer of four Federal Republic of West Papua (NFRPB) political prisoners (tapol) to Makassar, South Sulawesi, to stand trial on treason charges.
Legal representatives described the actions of Sorong City Municipal Police (Polresta) officers as a form of discrimination against Papuans.
"Today, 12 of our younger sisters and brothers are being detained at the Sorong City Polresta. We ask the Kapolri [national police chief], President Prabowo Subianto, the Southwest Papua Kapolresta [municipal police chief] and the Sorong City Kapolresta to uphold the law in accordance with procedures. Don't just arrest them", said Simon Sore SH, the attorney representing the victims of wrongful arrest during an interview at the Sorong City Municipal Police Headquarters on Wednesday August 27.
He is asking the authorities to uphold the principal of presumption of innocence. "We're giving them 24 hours to release them. Otherwise, we will take legal action and form an advocacy team", Sore said.
Sore emphasised that Papuans are consistently discriminated against when expressing their opinions in their own country. Meanwhile, in Indonesia, corruptors can receive amnesty.
"Why are Papuans always treated differently? Arrested, and their trials moved to other regions? This is a violation of the law. We must not allow our younger sisters and brothers to be used as scapegoats to cover up the weaknesses of the authorities", he said.
The legal counsel requested that the central and regional governments immediately take concrete steps so that the conflict does not drag on.
Meanwhile, Southwest Papua House of Representatives (DPR, more usually abbreviated as DPRD) member George Yulius Wanma from the Papua Special Autonomy faction visited the Sorong Municipal Police Headquarters after reviewing the chaos on Jalan Baru.
"We're here because of our people, and we care about protecting the ordinary people. If this issue isn't resolved, we will hold a hearing tomorrow and invite the Kapolda [Regional Police Chief] to sit down with the DPR", he said.
Wanma believes that the incident in Sorong City today was triggered by spontaneous public anger over the transfer of the political prisoners.
"Papuans, when something happens, always come in large numbers, to watch, and join in reacting. Be careful, because what we've seen has gotten serious, with people throwing rocks and even Molotov cocktails. But people still come and watch because they want to know. So, don't accuse everyone of being the perpetrators. The authorities must be fair", he explained.
He emphasised that the Southwest Papua DPR supports the legal process and does not interfere with police work. However, he hopes there will be no victims of wrongful arrest today. "We, as the DPR, feel compelled to address the suffering of our people. There must be no scapegoats in this case", he said.
The incident began when the public received news that four West Papuan political prisoners from the NFRPB, Abraham Goram Gaman, Maksi Sangkek, Piter Robaha and Nixon Maay, who were being held at the Sorong City Municipal Police Headquarters, would be transferred to Makassar today.
A group of demonstrators then held a protest action in front of the Sorong City Municipal Police Headquarters from Tuesday (August 26) until Wednesday morning.
Dozens of officers from the Sorong City Municipal Police and the Southwest Papua Regional Police paramilitary Mobile Brigade (Brimob) providing tight security to four NFRPB members as they headed to DEO Sorong Airport at around 6.59 am on Wednesday.
They also escorted the four prisoners using a Barracuda armoured vehicle, a tactical vehicle (Rantis) and the Sorong District Attorney's car. The officers were seen wearing all black uniforms and carrying weapons.
The protesters then moved to the courtyard of the Sorong mayor's office. The situation heated up when they marched to the Southwest Papua governor's office to demand accountability for the Regional Leadership Communication Forum (Forkopimda) giving its approval to move the trial of the four political prisoners to Makassar.
At around 9.10 am a riot erupted resulting in the destruction of government facilities. Several office windows were smashed on the first and second floors and the main door to the governor's office was even damaged by rocks thrown by protesters.
The demonstrators then erected a blockade and stones were thrown at several points in front of the Yohan complex on Jalan Baru in protest against the legal process.
Police responded by firing tear gas and bullets in an attempt to disperse the crowd, which continued to grow in size throughout the afternoon. The exact number of casualties today remains unknown.
Notes
The four Papuan political prisoners from the NFRPB were arrested on April 28 and subsequently charged with makar (treason, subversion, rebellion) and violations of the Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law for distributing letters to several government agencies in Southwest Papua asking for dialogue on resolving the conflict in Papua.
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "12 Warga Sorong Ditangkap Pasca Aksi Tolak Pemindahan Tapol".]
Source: https://jubi.id/domberai/2025/12-warga-sorong-ditangkap-pasca-aksi-tolak-pemindahan-tapol/
Why did the Jakarta student riots of 1998 succeed in ousting President Soeharto while this week’s public displays of outrage seem doomed to fail?
Soeharto has been in his grave since 2008, but his former son-in-law, Prabowo Subianto (74 this October), is still firmly in charge as the eighth president, digging deeper by boosting military involvement in domestic affairs.
The army remains his source of strength, despite being cashiered in 1998 for disobeying orders. That year he was also divorced and hasn’t remarried.
He has also been allegedly implicated in human rights abuses during tours of duty in East Timor and West Papua, though never charged.
On Monday, tens of thousands of mainly young men were flinging rocks and burning tyres in blocked streets outside Jakarta’s parliamentary buildings. Some waved pirate-themed flags lifted from the Japanese manga cartoon One Piece, supposedly symbolising rebellion. But spectacles are not results.
The show has been big in the Indonesian media, but light internationally, where other events are making headlines.
For street riots to make a difference in the world’s fourth-most populous nation, as in most autocracies where the elite few rules and the downtrodden majority mumble, several factors need to be present.
The first is regime fatigue, with ministers idle or corrupt or both, and showing contempt for the electorate.
Prabowo’s seven-party coalition, informally backed by five others under the banner of the Great Indonesia Awakening, has yet to reach that point, though it’s heading downhill with the alleged corruption of the Deputy Manpower Minister Immanuel Ebenezer.
He’s a member of Prabowo’s party Gerindra, which leads the renamed Advance Indonesia Coalition aka Red and White, that’s been in power for less than a year – not long enough for resentment to be embedded. When Soeharto was uprooted, he’d been running the republic for 32 years.
The unkempt kids on the streets this week looked furious, but their mood fell short of the righteous rage of 27 years ago; they were dashing about with no outstanding leader to articulate their anger and focus the protest.
That position is essential – and dangerous. It’s not just the mobs that need a front man or woman – so does the government.
Then they can seize that individual and twist them into a threat to national unity misleading the people, nurturing a secret agenda. They’d be smeared as a paid foreign agent planning to steal the motherland’s resources.
This patriotic twaddle has been flapping around for some months now, spotted regularly by Prabowo, though by few others. Naturally there’s no name or origin.
That one bogeybird can spook many in a nation of 285 million is fanciful, but strong enough where superstition and black magic still grip millions, particularly in rural areas.
Indonesia is regularly tagged as having the world’s largest number of Muslims — 88% — but Islam and Christianity were latecomers to the archipelago and haven’t smothered the traditional beliefs that have survived for millennia.
The hero of the 1998 protests was a university heavyweight, Dr Amien Rais, an US-educated intellectual strong on religion. He brought discipline, direction and determination to the hate.
He’s now 81 and still involved in public affairs, mainly through Muhammadiyah, an organisation that represents the more modern and conservative branch of Islam.
Although no longer potent, he had the status and authority last century to confront Soeharto and his gangsters trying to hang onto power, while leading their opponents. Many were tertiary students who’d brought reasoning to their dissent..
At that time (May 1998), the police were controlled by the army. Lines of authority and separation of powers were blurred, the military often handling domestic strife.
They’re the ones who used live rounds, killing four and injuring many youngsters from the nation’s largest private tertiary educator, the prestigious Trisakti University.
This was more than a human tragedy, but a tactical mistake because the students were children of the business oligarchs who run the Indonesian economy.
This time the 1300 “security personnel” used tear gas. So far there have been no reports of killings and few of injuries.
The crowds had been inflamed by a series of missteps — including big tax hikes — by Prabowo, who is proving to be a poor politician but good at shouting to the choir. As reported earlier in Pearls and Irritations, he’s militarising the civilian elected MPs by organising parades and boot camps.
Dressing up in fatigues and wearing boots was first seen as selfie fun, to be tolerated because there were tangible benefits for accepting Prabowo’s fantasies. The most pleasing to the 580 politicians has been a monthly housing allowance of A$5500 atop a salary double that sum in a country where most incomes are in the hundreds.
Before this month’s riots, the House Speaker, Puan Maharani, 51, tried to explain the bonuses. She’s the daughter of Megawati Soekarnoputri, 78, the nation’s sixth president and leader of the Democratic Party of Struggle.
The centre-left secular-nationalist party claims to be the de facto opposition, but Puan’s comments make that contestable.
She told journalists that the politicians’ remuneration had been “thoroughly considered and adjusted to current prices in Jakarta". Her statement didn’t endorse her credentials as a leader of the poor who must now think they’re even more unloved, so what to lose by stoning cops?
Everything, because punch-ups add to Prabowo’s scares of violence and therefore the need for tough guys to be in charge. Excluded from that cohort (there are only five women in the 48-strong ministry) is the civilian Vice-President Gibran Rakabuming Raka, 38 this year.
In Indonesia, nepotism is as entrenched as corruption.
As the eldest son of the former president Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo, Gibran’s place as the youth-bait on last year’s election ticket is widely considered the reason for Prabowo’s clear win, 58% in the three-way contest.
But the young man is now seldom seen in public; when he does appear, his smile is forced.
Similar features could be seen in the mobs rioting outside the former businessman’s new office in the Parliament. If he’s going to be dislodged, it’s more likely to be by retired generals who have been petitioning Parliament — so far unsuccessfully — than teen gangs.
Indonesian politics are forever volatile; that keeps them dangerous. The 1998 riots that followed Soeharto’s resignation led to firebombings, an estimated 1000 killings and 400 rapes of ethnic Chinese women.
A repeat of that unresolved tragedy is the fear of all who watch the present protests.
The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations
Duncan Graham
Duncan Graham has been a journalist for more than 40 years in print, radio and TV. He is the author of People Next Door (UWA Press). He is now writing for the English language media in Indonesia from within Indonesia. Duncan Graham has an MPhil degree, a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print journalism in Australia. He lives in East Java.
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3) In Prabowo’s Indonesia, the military is quietly creeping back into civilian life
Kate Lamb and Ben Doherty
Wed 27 Aug 2025 20.23 EDT
The retired general who is now president has established 100 new army battalions and plans more – and critics say the move has echoes of the country’s authoritarian past
“A big nation like us,” Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto told the rank and file before him, “needs a strong military. No nation can be independent without having a strong military.”
In a speech before inaugurating military troops in West Java this month, Prabowo – the former special forces commandant – proclaimed that Indonesia must strengthen its defences to protect the nation’s sovereignty and resources.
Prabowo kicked off his presidency with a militaristic boot camp for his cabinet and now, just shy of a year in the job, the retired general is beefing up boots on the ground. One hundred new battalions have been established – with plans for 500 over the next five years – with new units also for the special forces and marines.
The 100 new battalions have been established to assist in agriculture, animal husbandry and food security, and will not receive combat training. A spokesperson for the Indonesian defence ministry said he could not release information about the size of the new battalions.
In the world’s third-largest democracy, the military’s expansion and its creep into civilian domains has drawn criticism from observers who say the move carries echoes of the country’s authoritarian past.
Indonesia threw off the shackles of authoritarian rule in 1998, when Suharto, the country’s dictator and Prabowo’s former father-in-law, was forced to step down after 32 years in power.
As part of the reform era that followed, the doctrine of dwifungsi, meaning dual function and which refers to the role of the military in security and civilian affairs, was dismantled.
But bit by bit, it appears to be making a comeback.
In March the Prabowo government passed a controversial law allowing armed forces personnel to hold more civilian posts. In addition to the 100 newly formed battalions, created as part of the army’s territorial deployment system, this July it was announced that the military will begin manufacturing medicines for public distribution, while within the attorney general’s office, a special taskforce that includes military officers has also been established to reclaim land from expired palm plantations.
The deepening omnipresence of the military in Indonesian life signals a worrying democratic backslide, says Made Supriatma, a visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak research institute.
“Even without the formal dual function – dwifungsi – policy, you will see the military everywhere, having influence or control in politics, in policy, in government. They will be doing things that they are not supposed to do, where they have no expertise,” he said.
The Indonesian government strongly rejects the claim the military expansion signals democratic regression.
“The Indonesian military cannot interfere in civilian affairs. They don’t even have the right to vote in elections. So these accusations are completely exaggerated,” presidential spokesperson Hasan Nasbi told the Guardian.
“Indonesia is increasing its military capacity to safeguard its vast territory. Indonesia is not just a vast landmass and seas, but also comprises 17,000 islands separated by sea. Therefore, it requires a strong army, navy, and air force,” he said, saying the new battalions were needed to protect the country’s sovereignty.
But analysts note that Indonesia’s authoritarian turn began under former president Joko Widodo, and that his predecessor has continued the trend.
“Basically this is somebody who is governing in 2025 using a mindset dated from the 1980s,” said Yohanes Sulaiman, associate professor at Universitas Jenderal Achmad Yani, “All of these are initiatives that were done in the ’80s to improve agricultural output, to improve livelihood … basically, the military has to be involved in helping the development of the state.
“So this is a few steps backward in terms of professionalisation of the military.”
Putting farms in the hands of military units was inefficient and had, historically, proven counter-productive, he said.
“If you look at the role of the military, to be frank, they are not competent in doing this … If you want to be a farmer, then you have to live as a farmer. I mean, you have to be professional.
“This is … a huge military interference in civil affairs.”
The government says the military’s manufacturing of pharmaceuticals will make medicines cheaper, while the health minister has noted the new battalions could be utilised in natural disasters.
“This programme is part of a policy to continue developing the nation’s defence posture to optimise its efforts to safeguard national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national security,” said defence ministry spokesperson Frega Wenas Inkiriwang.
“Historically, the unity of the Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI) with the people is an inseparable part of the Indonesian national identity, especially since the total people’s defence and security system is mandated by the constitution.”
But political risk analyst Kevin O’Rourke of Reformasi Weekly said the addition of 100 new battalions wouldn’t add to military capacity and was “really perverse”.
“It dissipates the military’s strength, deploying personnel who are relatively small in number for a country of its size, and deploying them in every region down to the subdistrict level. So if they were needed to congregate at a particular point it would take them weeks to assemble.”
O’Rourke said the increase represented a further enmeshing of the military in civilian roles.
But, he told the Guardian, “the extension of the special forces units marks a genuine increase in military capabilities and on the budget too, when there have been a lot of cuts.”
Cabinet ministers have backed Prabowo’s plan, with finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati saying the country was committed to funding the new battalions, flagging a proposed defence budget of 335tn rupiah ($22bn) next year – about 37% higher than the 2025 forecast.
The approval comes as Prabowo’s austerity drive has precipitated violent protests in several areas across the country.
The new special forces unit will also be stationed at Timika, in Indonesia’s restive Papua, where Indonesian forces are accused of oppressing indigenous Papuans who have for decades fought for independence.
The location, said O’Rourke, “signals a possible heavy-handed approach to the situation there”.
The growing prominence of the military in Indonesia, said Supriatma, was indicative of Prabowo’s top-down rule.
“Prabowo has a high distrust for the civilian bureaucracy,” said Supriatma, “This feels like something he can do to have more control, to build up the military to influence people, or to scare people.”
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