October 22, 2025
JAKARTA – Civil society organizations have warned that President Prabowo Subianto ’s first year in office has been marked by a deepening disregard for human rights, fueled by what they call “misguided populist policies” and mounting restrictions on freedom of expression.
Several groups, led by Amnesty International Indonesia, gathered on Monday in Central Jakarta to evaluate President Prabowo and Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka’s performance since they took office on Oct. 20 last year.
While the President has touted short-term economic achievements, Amnesty said the administration has caused a “massive erosion of human rights” through populist policies that exclude public participation.
“This erosion happened because Prabowo’s policies are paradoxical; they appear populist, but in practice, they benefit only a small circle of elites,” Amnesty International Indonesia executive director Usman Hamid said.
Among such policies, Usman pointed to the growing presence of the Indonesian Military (TNI) in civilian life through the appointment of active or retired security officers to senior bureaucratic positions and the creation of the Army’s new regional military commands across the country.
Prabowo previously noted the need to bolster national defense amid global instability, but his penchant for the military has prompted concerns about the revival of the New Order’s dwifungsi (dual function) doctrine that once enabled widespread human rights violations.
Usman also pointed to the President’s flagship free nutritious meal program, which aims to reach around 82 million children and pregnant women by the end of the year and has been allocated around Rp 71 trillion (US$4.34 billion) in the 2025 state budget.
The program has prompted sweeping austerity measures across both local and central governments, while also raising safety concerns after reports of foodborne illnesses affecting more than 11,000 students nationwide, according to the Network for Education Watch Indonesia (JPPI).
At the same time, critics warn that the program’s ballooning budget has come at the expense of other critical sectors, including institutions protecting women and victims of violence such as the Witness and Victim Protection Agency (LPSK), the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) and the Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry.
“This massive cost-cutting shows that women’s issues remain marginalized and are not a priority for the Prabowo-Gibran administration,” said Uli Arta Pangaribuan, director of the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation of the Indonesian Women’s Association for Justice (LBH APIK).
She noted that the LPSK’s annual budget was slashed from over Rp 229 billion (US$13.8 million) to just Rp85 billion this year, a reduction of about 60 percent. “We could barely provide adequate legal assistance for victims with last year’s budget, let alone with the current one.”
Worst decline since Reform era
Usman of Amnesty described the situation as “the worst erosion of human rights since the Reform Era began,” noting increased repression of dissent compared to former president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration.
In the past year alone, Amnesty recorded more than 4,000 arrests of protesters demonstrating against controversial legislation, including the March revision of the TNI Law.
At least 12 activists remain detained, and two others are missing following nationwide protests in late August against lawmakers’ lavish perks and police brutality, the latter sparked by the death of 23-year-old ojol (online motorcycle transportation) driver Affan Kurniawan, who was fatally run over by a police tactical vehicle.
“Instead of evaluating his policies and ensuring police accountability, the President labeled protesters as ‘anarchists’, ‘traitors’, ‘foreign agents’ and even ‘terrorists’, when in fact they were students, activists and ordinary citizens,” Usman said in a separate statement on Monday.
Media Wahyudi Askar, director of public policy at the Center for Economic and Law Studies (Celios), said institutions tasked with holding the government accountable have been “massively weakened” under Prabowo.
The House of Representatives is supposed to function as an auditing and oversight body, yet it has effectively fused with the executive branch, Media argued, referring to Prabowo’s broad ruling coalition that controls over 80 percent of the legislature and leaves little room for opposition.
He added that “political rationality has trumped economic rationality” under Prabowo, resulting in an oversized cabinet–the largest in decades–and the continuation of expensive populist projects such as the free nutritious meal program.
“If this trend continues,” Usman warned, “Indonesia risks falling into a new form of authoritarianism” where power and populism outweigh the protection of human rights.
State Secretary Prasetyo Hadi and his deputy Juri Ardiantoro did not immediately respond to The Jakarta Post’s requests for comment.