Indonesia’s Army Is on the March Against Democratic Rights
An acid attack on the Indonesian human rights activist Andrie Yunus fits into a wider pattern of creeping authoritarianism under President Prabowo Subianto. Democratic gains since the fall of the Suharto dictatorship are being systematically eroded.
Indonesia’s president, Prabowo, has increasingly framed critics as threats to national unity. His rhetoric echoes the ideological framework of Suharto’s New Order, in which human rights activism was treated as a form of political sabotage. (Timur Matahari / AFP via Getty Images)
The acid attack on Indonesian human rights activist Andrie Yunus in March 2026 was a message written in chemical burns and delivered in the language of fear: dissent will be punished. For those familiar with Indonesia’s political history, the attack feels less like a shocking rupture than another grim echo of President Suharto’s New Order dictatorship.
Andrie’s assault also recalls the 2004 assassination of Munir Said Thalib, Indonesia’s most prominent human rights defender. The parallels reveal a continuity of violence, impunity, and state-linked intimidation that suggests Indonesia’s twenty-eight years of democratic gains are being systematically eroded.
Terror in Plain Sight
On March 12, 2026, two men on a motorcycle attacked Yunus, the deputy coordinator of the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (KontraS). As he was riding his motorcycle home in Jakarta, they threw acid at him and fled the scene.
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