January 9, 2026
JAKARTA – Terror and intimidation have long been part of Indonesian politics, including during the relatively democratic period following the downfall of the New Order authoritarian regime.
Even during the early period of the Reform Era, when the atmosphere of freedom and openness was relatively more pervasive, terror and intimidation continued to be in practice with the arsenic poisoning of Munir Said Thalib being the most heinous act of violence committed against pro-democracy activists.
And it seems that the murder of Munir, which remains unsolved to this day, was a harbinger of darker days for political activism in the country.
Throughout the years, activists, government critics and journalists regularly became victims of bullying and intimidation, involving violence or otherwise.
In 2010, an activist with Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) was mowed down by a mob of assailants on the way home from work, shortly after announcing the findings of the anti-graft watchdog’s investigation into “fat” bank accounts of some police generals.
Intimidation became more brazen and at some point was even directed at a member of the law enforcement agency.
In 2017, Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) investigator Novel Baswedan suffered a serious burn injury after unidentified assailants threw acid on him. Novel had been known as one of the toughest KPK investigators who regularly handled high-profile corruption cases in the country.
In recent years, especially under the administration of president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, when public discourse moved online and on social media, terror and intimidation largely took place in the blogosphere.
Trolling, doxing and at times hacking were regularly directed at activists who expressed their opposition toward government policies on multiple online platforms.
In recent weeks, we are again reminded that the space was shrinking for government critics to express their opinion with a series of terror and intimidation against some social media personalities who expressed their outrage and dismay toward President Prabowo Subianto’s handling of the North Sumatra and Aceh flooding.
Some of these social media “influencers”, who are little known outside their circle of followers, claimed to have their social accounts hacked, received death threats and had dead animals sent to their homes.
The attacks should give everyone pause.
Everyone in civil society should also be alarmed with the fact that terror and intimidation is now directed at nonactivists.
The fact that basically anyone who dares criticize the government could be targeted by online and offline harassment should worry everyone who still cherishes civil liberty.
What if at some point, in an extreme scenario the authority decides to just turn off the faucet, shut off social media or the internet entirely rather than having to deal with inquisitive netizens?
President Prabowo himself said that he was not against criticism and welcomed criticism as a necessary part of governance. In fact, he has expressed gratitude to those who have criticized him.
We believe that the President, as a democrat, meant what he said, but such a guarantee about freedom of speech would mean nothing if he allows members of his ruling coalition to draft regulations that make it easy to silence government critics.
Terror and intimidation of activists persist simply because the authority has never been serious about investigating the crime. (It’s almost a year now since a pig’s head was shipped to a Tempo journalist and nothing was heard from the police again).
If these cases are left unresolved, many certainly have reason to believe that some people in the government want the practice to continue, those who certainly take pleasure from activists being harassed and intimidated.
But there’s also a real possibility that this is how the government deals with criticism and we should be really worried.