Protests Escalate Against the Governing Elites in Indonesia
By Anna Toso | 1 October 2025
Summary
After the killing of a food delivery motorcycle driver by the police on August 28, mass protests escalated in Indonesia, exposing latent grievances about socioeconomic inequalities, corruption, and military encroachment in civil affairs.
The mass unrest complicates the government’s commitment to balance domestic law and order with a strong foreign policy of neutrality and diverse alliances.
It is unlikely that the recent protests will lead to meaningful changes to the Indonesian governing structures due to the presence of established political elites whose dominance predates the fall of the dictatorial regime in 1998.
On 28 August 2025, an armoured vehicle of the special forces unit of the Indonesian National Police Mobile Brigade Force (Brimob) fatally ran over the 21-year-old food delivery motorcycle driver, Affan Kurniawan, during a demonstration in Jakarta. This event quickly became a symbol of the contrast between corrupt political elites and the suffering lower classes. His death escalated the violence of mass unrest in Indonesia. Protests have been ongoing since 25 August, the result of months of latent but rising popular frustration. Beyond the capital, demonstrations took place in multiple cities across the country, such as Surabaya, Solo, Yogyakarta, Medan, and Bandung.
Some protesters set fire to government buildings, ransacked politicians’ houses, and destroyed traffic signs, causing IDR 900b (USD 54.8m) worth of damage according to governmental estimates. Meanwhile, other groups such as the Indonesian Women’s Alliance have been demonstrating peacefully and signing petitions to the Parliament, domestically and from abroad. In response, the military and police forces deployed tear gas and water cannons. President Prabowo Subianto encouraged the governmental forces to intensify the crackdown on the protests, among growing risks of police brutality. By mid-September, arrests had surpassed 1,200 civilians, and there had been at least 10 fatalities and 20 people missing.
Over the past few months, multiple factors have contributed to social distress. Firstly, there is inflation in living costs, with a 3.75% rise in the consumer price index for food, beverages, and tobacco in July 2025 compared to the same period the previous year. Secondly, economic inequalities are deepening. Indonesia holds the 6th largest national wealth inequality globally. Moreover, there is corruption and military involvement in civilians’ affairs. Frustrations peaked when a housing allowance was granted to the 580 members of the House of Representatives for an amount 10 times higher than the minimum wage in Jakarta. This follows a long history of protests within Indonesia. Earlier this year, in February 2025, student-led demonstrations took place in major cities, denouncing high youth unemployment and the erosion of the middle class. Although the government agreed on limited concessions, such as replacing five ministers, it failed to meet the 5 September deadline to implement the 17 short-term requests advanced by civil society in the 17+8 People’s Demands. Among other demands, the group includes ending the military’s involvement in civilian security and freezing the parliamentarians’ benefit increase. Slow legislative responses and institutional inertia follow the long-standing path of elite domination and corruption characterising Indonesian democratic politics since 1998.
Except for advising against travelling in protest-affected areas, foreign governments from the surrounding region refrained from making public statements regarding the recent developments in Indonesia. In contrast, international solidarity within civil society has been especially vocal through social media. Many supporters of the demonstrations have applied a pink-and-green filter to their profile pictures – the protest’s symbolic “Brave Pink and Hero Green” colours – and are sharing information to raise political awareness, addressing both local and English-speaking audiences. Indonesian diaspora and protest supporters in neighbouring countries have also shown their support by placing and donating food orders to local delivery men and demonstrators through the popular delivery app Grab. Our local sources emphasised that most of the Indonesian public opinion wants to avoid violence in the protests, in order to deny the government the opportunity to exploit anarchy as a justification for more violent oppression.
The domestic unrest has implications for Indonesian foreign policy. The recent escalation forced Prabowo to forego his participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit on August 31 and September 1. Nonetheless, Prabowo attended the military parade commemorating 80 years since the end of WWII in Beijing on 3 September amid pledges to improve bilateral China-Indonesia defence cooperation. The international context surrounding Indonesia’s diplomatic standing is becoming increasingly polarised. At the start of his presidency, Prabowo committed to maintaining the country’s tradition of friendly relations with both close and distant allies, ranging from China and Russia to the US. Weaponising the mediatic discourse about the recent protests, the Russian media outlet Sputnik alleged the involvement of an American philanthropic NGO in financing the protests, aiming to discredit the credibility of US-affiliated actors as reliable diplomatic and economic partners. Although fact-checkers deemed these claims unfounded, they highlight that the intersection of international power rivalry and Indonesian domestic dynamics poses a challenge to balancing internal pressures and foreign policy goals of neutrality.
Aleeyuhh/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Forecast
Short-term (Now - 3 months)
The full achievement of the 17+8 People’s Demands is a remote chance. Rather, Indonesian lawmakers are likely to implement symbolic changes to soothe the imminent social unrest, without committing to more structural reforms.
Medium-term (3-12 months)
Over the next year, the protests will likely become latent and future triggers, such as controversial legislation or instances of police brutality, will highly likely lead to a resurgence of violence.
Although in-person demonstrations will likely reach a standstill by the end of September 2025, the information sharing to raise political awareness, especially among the Indonesian youth and diaspora, and English-speaking audience, will highly likely continue on social media.
Long-term (>1 year)
The institutional settings of Indonesia are unlikely to change in the next electoral round due to long-standing oligarchic elites dominating the political contestation and the absence of strong opposition parties to challenge the establishment.
