Indonesia’s protests over the economy turn to police brutality

Protests in Indonesia sparked by economic hardship have elicited a heavy-handed response from police, triggering concerns that the Southeast Asian nation could be returning to its authoritarian past.

As police trucks have been spray-painted with anti-law enforcement slogans, President Prabowo Subianto has denounced the demonstrations as “treason and terrorism” while seeking to assuage wide-ranging discontent.

Thousands have taken to the streets in major cities in the last week, joined at times by rioters setting fire to government buildings and looters ransacking the homes of politicians. At least 10 people have died and hundreds have been injured in the ensuing unrest.

On Wednesday, a coalition of student unions met with lawmakers and demanded an independent investigation into the police violence, portending further protests.

Frustrations in the world’s third-largest democracy have been building since Prabowo, a former military general and businessman, took power last year, implementing austerity measures that have cut billions from public services such as healthcare and education.

Many ordinary Indonesians criticize the government for primarily serving the interests of the wealthy elite even as youth unemployment soars and wages stagnate.

The initial wave of demonstrations began Aug. 25, with thousands gathering outside the country’s parliament to decry one stark example of such inequality: a $3,000 housing allowance for lawmakers that was nearly 10 times the minimum wage in Jakarta.

The discontent escalated into violence when a 21-year-old motorcycle taxi driver was fatally struck by an armored police vehicle speeding through the crowd.

Prabowo and his police chief have apologized for the incident, and one of the officers involved in the crash has been fired.

At a televised news conference, Prabowo stressed that the right to peaceful assembly should be protected but that “the state must step in to protect its citizens.”

Neither these measures, nor the president’s promise to scale back the lawmakers’ perks, have quelled the outpouring of public anger, which has been met with a police response that human rights groups have decried as excessive.

“Nobody should die while exercising their right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly,” said Montse Ferrer, Amnesty International’s regional research director for East and Southeast Asia.

On Monday, the United Nations called for an investigation into the “alleged use of unnecessary or disproportionate force by security forces.”

Since the demonstrations began, Indonesian police have used tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets against protesters, some of whom have lobbed back Molotov cocktails and rocks. Authorities have arrested over 3,000 people.

Two deaths have been attributed to the police crackdown: a pedicab driver in the city of Solo who died last week while being treated for tear gas exposure, and a college student who died Sunday after apparently being beaten by police.

Such incidents have resurfaced the Indonesian public’s festering distrust of the police force, said Jacqui Baker, a scholar of Indonesian security and policing at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia.

“Ordinary people have long repeated a saying ‘report a chicken, lose a buffalo,’ meaning if you engage the police in routine law enforcement … you are likely to suffer more material loss than the original theft,” she said.

In recent years, civic groups have accused police of dozens of extrajudicial killings and torture.

Many of the country’s policing problems stem from a three-decade-long period of authoritarian rule under then-President Suharto that ended in 1998.

With the police remaining wedded to political interests even after the country’s democratization, Baker said, the “historical sense of entitlement has generated a deeply corrupt, violent and predatory force that is widely hated by ordinary people.”

President Prabowo himself is accused of human rights abuses, such as the abduction of dissidents, under Suharto’s rule. Critics say he is now pulling the country back into authoritarianism by expanding the military’s involvement in civilian institutions. Prabowo denies these claims.