An acid attack by four Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI) soldiers on a human rights activist highlights growing tensions as President Prabowo reinstates military influence in Indonesia’s civilian administration.  

Is Indonesia using state-sanctioned violence to crush critics of its administration of the world’s third-largest democracy? Since a revolution at the end of the last century, it claims to have thrown off a 32-year autocracy led by former general Soeharto. But the replacement government, now run by Soeharto’s former son-in-law, Prabowo Subianto, is a “flawed democracy” according to the London-based Economic Intelligence Unit.

Arousing most concern are laws to put the military (Tentara Nasional Indonesia, TNI) in control of systems and departments previously run by civilians. NGOs have been leading critics of this trend, with one prominent human rights advocate, Andrie Yunus, assaulted in  an acid attack on 12 March 2026 as he left his Central Jakarta office around 11 pm. Yunus is the Deputy Coordinator of the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (KontraS) and has been an outspoken critic of the return to a military-run state. He had been receiving phone threats but  had still been planning to release research into violence perpetrated by the security forces.

Amnesty International Indonesia collected 295 incidents of intimidation against human rights defenders and labelled 2025 as the Year of Living Dangerously for activists. (The title of the 1978 Christopher Koch book and Peter Weir’s 1982 film retains its relevance and potency.) Acid is often the weapon of choice. It doesn’t go bang and arouse security or upset body scanners; blokes carrying plastic drink bottles rarely arouse suspicion.

Yunus was critical of the TNI’s growing influence, largely through inserting officers into the leadership of government departments that had been handling civilian affairs for almost three decades, since the collapse of Soeharto’s New Order government. Prabowo is a former three-star........

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