Just before midnight on 12 March, Indonesian human rights activist Andrie Yunus was riding his motorbike down a central Jakarta street when two men threw acid on him. Yunus screamed in shock and pain as he tried desperately to remove the acid from his body. Later, doctors at the Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital assessed that it had burned through 24 percent of his skin’s surface area. This brazen attack has sent shockwaves through the Indonesian left.
Yunus is the deputy coordinator of the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (KontraS), an NGO established in 1998 to advocate for victims of state-sanctioned torture, disappearances and other acts of extra-judicial repression. Given the nature of its work, KontraS is no stranger to violent incidents against its members. The most well-known was the assassination of its founder, Munir Said Thalib, by arsenic poisoning in 2004.
When mass protests forced the dictator Suharto out of power and won limited democracy in the early 2000s, it seemed to promise a democratic era without the kind of poisonings, acid attacks or right-wing pogroms that characterised Suharto’s dictatorship. But the attack on Yunus was just one indicator among many, illustrating that authoritarian methods of rule are once again becoming the norm for Indonesian capitalism.
Yunus has spent recent years very publicly advocating against militarism. In fact, just before the attack, he was recording a podcast about the dangers of remilitarisation. The attack was a well-planned operation, scheduled to take place in a public location with lots of CCTV coverage. It was designed to instil fear in anyone organising resistance to the creeping dictatorship by publicly targeting a prominent oppositionist.
The police and courts have played a similarly intimidatory role in the wake of last year’s explosive protests against inequality and police brutality. Thousands of activists were arrested in the months after the protests. While many had their charges dropped, the Youth Movement Against Criminalisation has found that 703 political detainees were still facing prosecution and 506 had already been convicted by mid-February. This police-driven “activist hunt” is intended to intimidate activists. The acquittal of four prominent activists, who were charged with incitement for social media posts critical of the government during the protests, was an important victory against this campaign of intimidation. But it’s not enough.
Explosive mass movements have periodically challenged the military-capitalist government in Indonesia, especially over the past six years. But every time these movements recede, the government and the organised far right go on renewed and better organised counter-offensives. This latest acid attack has caused fear among Indonesian leftists and human rights organisations, but their task remains as important as ever. Without more organisers who can give anti-capitalist leadership to the grievances of workers and the oppressed, explosive struggles will continue to rise and fall, eventually overpowered by the police, military and criminal thugs who serve Indonesia’s ruling class simply because they are better organised.
Solidarity to Aries Yunus in his recovery, and solidarity to all those continuing to fight for justice under increasingly dangerous conditions.
