Indonesia has been ravaged by its worst popular unrest since the downfall of the dictator Suharto in 1998. Large-scale street protests began last Aug. 25 in the capital Jakarta—the culmination of widespread economic frustration and anger at widespread corruption, democratic regression, gross inequalities, and the indifference and lack of empathy of Indonesia’s leaders, elite classes and oligarchy at the plight of the poor and vulnerable population. 

An immediate trigger for the protests was the Parliament’s House of Representatives (DPR) approval of a huge housing allowance hike of US$3,000 that was 10 times the mandated minimum wage of ordinary workers. This windfall was on top of existing large stipends, and luxurious lifestyles. Over the past months, there has been a rise in the cost of food and education, mass layoffs due to deindustrialization, and a hike in property taxes. The protests became more violent on Aug. 28 with the killing of a motorcycle taxi driver, Affan Kurniawan, who was run over by a police Mobile Brigade Corps (Brimob) armored tactical vehicle. What worsened the situation were insensitive and insulting statements made by some parliamentarians directed at the protesters.

The furious protesters turned to burning government and police buildings and looting some parliamentarians’ homes. Armed with Molotov cocktails, rocks, and firecrackers, they engaged in street clashes with the police, who responded heavy-handedly with a lethal form of tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets, and other anti-riot methods. Ten people have been killed, several injured, some missing, and thousands arrested.

The unrest and violent protests spread to over 100 cities, including Yogyakarta, Bandung, Surakarta, Jambi, Padang, Sidoarjo, Bogor, Malang, Mataram, Lombok, Pontianak, Tasik Malaya, Semarang, Banjarmasin, Manado, Blitar, Mamuju, Ngawi, Samarinda (East Kalimantan), Tarakan (North Kalimantan), Bandah Aceh, Ternate (North Maluku), Baubau (Southeast Kalimantan), Gunungsitoli (Sumatra), Ambon (Maluku), and Palopo (South Sulawesi).  

The protesters come from marginalized social classes and sectors: labor unions, factory workers, migrant workers, university students, youth organizations, academics and intellectuals, peasantry and rural poor, local villagers, indigenous groups, local communities, Islamist groups, women and mothers, fishers, artists, ride-hailing app drivers, urban poor, low-income families, small businesses, LGBTQI++ groups, and civil society organizations. But the movement has no centralized leadership, is generally spontaneous, and relies on social media to issue calls for gatherings. 

The protesters’ demands

There has been some confusion about the demands of the protesters. The so-called 17+8 short-term and long-term demands trended online which, while seemingly legitimate and mirror deeply felt grievances, may not necessarily reflect accurately and completely the organic connections with the mass base of protesters in the streets and the local communities enraged at inequalities and elite oligarchic rule.

The Sept. 1 statement of the Confederation of Indonesian People’s Movements (KPRI, Konfederasi Pergerakan Rakyat Indonesia) may be more reflective of the sentiments, aspirations, and needs from below. KPRI consists of federations and alliances of multisectoral unions and people’s organizations, such as workers, farmers, fishers, women, indigenous communities, urban poor, and youth. 

It calls for “national reflection and to foster a spirit of collective change” around these demands:

1. Fully support mass actions that struggle for political, economic, social, and cultural democracy, toward the realization of a civilized, just, equal, and prosperous Indonesia for all Indonesian people.

2. Stop the repression and provocation by state apparatus against the demonstrating masses. Return the TNI (Indonesian National Armed Forces) and Polri (Indonesian National Police) to their respective functions and duties. Polri is tasked with security, it does not require combat troops that target the people. TNI must return to the barracks according to its duty of national defense.

 3. Firmly sanction and impose disciplinary measures on legislative members, government or executive officials, and judiciary members who fail to perform their duties as proper representatives of the people.

4. Eradicate corruption, collusion, and nepotism (KKN); arrest, try, and imprison the perpetrators, impose social sanctions, and confiscate all their assets for development funds; and realize a clean, transparent, and fully accountable government.

5. Lower the prices of basic necessities and taxes for low-income people; establish a national standardization system for wages/salaries; set upper and lower limits for all people, both those working in government and nongovernment sectors.

6. Stop the politicization of social assistance (Bansos), realize transformative social protection, free health and education for all people, and ensure access to water, air, electricity, clean energy, and other basic services for all. Distribute state wealth in the form of a universal basic income guarantee (Jamesta, or Jaminan Pendapatan Dasar Semesta).

7. Realize genuine agrarian reform, redistribute land to all people, for housing, as well as for rice fields or farms. As a manifestation that Indonesia is independent, seize and take over excessive land ownership and control, which causes extreme inequality in land ownership and control.

8. Realize a strong and independent people-oriented industrialization, from upstream to downstream, with appropriate technology, and make cooperatives its main pillar. Sectors of business that control public necessities and public interests must be controlled by the state, not by a handful of people.

Barely 10 months in office, and already facing a serious governance crisis, President Prabowo Subianto issued public apologies and condolences for the killing of Kurniawan, met with the family and granted them a new house. He condemned the police’s “excessive actions,” promised a transparent investigation, but also directed the police to “take firm action” against the protesters. Prabowo’s responses, however, are seen as slow, indecisive, and totally clueless or unmindful of the root causes of the unrest. 

The House of Representatives, meanwhile, appeared to backtrack on its now-derided housing allowances, and suspended and demoted members who have issued statements derogatory of the protesters. Political party leaders urged the legislators “not to flaunt their wealth and be arrogant.”

Gap between rich and poor

Indonesian scholars have pinpointed widespread inequalities as the major root cause of the unrest. Dr. Dewi Fortuna Anwar, research professor at the National Research and Innovation Agency (Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional, BRIN), opined that “the root causes of unrest are economic; inequality and socioeconomic differences are real—the widening gap between the haves and have-nots.” 

Dr. Vedi Hadiz, professor of Asian Studies at Melbourne University, had this to say in an interview on Al Jazeera: “Oligarchic elites continue to take control of the state institutions, the authority they have and the resources for the purpose of their own private enrichment. This is why the gap between the rich and poor has been increasing. There is a great distance between those in power and the people who are ruled, and why there is great deal of animosity toward the rulers from the ruled.”

The data estimates lend credence to that argument. As of 2023, the poor and low-income earners in Indonesia with monthly incomes of US$200 and below comprise 24 million family households or 34% of all families, and 104 million persons or 37% of total population (see Table 1). Those in this category either live below the official monthly poverty line of $100 and struggle to afford basic needs, while those just above the poverty line are highly vulnerable to economic shocks. 

On the other hand, the rich and upper-income classes with monthly earnings of $1,600 to over $3,200 comprise only 5 million families or 17.6 million individuals (6% of total population). Taking the rich segment alone (above $3,200 monthly income), these are only 2% of families and 2% of total population. The rich class, therefore, earns 32 times those who live below the poverty line and 16 times those in the low-income categories. 

The middle class may look like a large sector with 42% of families and 147 million individuals, but it is fragmented and subdivided into lower middle, middle-middle, and upper middle sectors. The lower middle class is the largest segment at 30% of families and 27% of individuals, but they are merely aspiring consumers with a modest discretionary income. The “true” middle class is in the middle-middle category with 20% of families and 18% of individuals who are stable, educated, and can afford vehicles, housing and education. The upper middle class (10% of families and 9% of population) enjoys an affluent existence with a relatively high consumption lifestyle. 

In terms of shares of the national wealth by economic class, the inequalities are equally pronounced (see Table 2). The rich and upper-income classes, with only 6.5% of the population, own 55% of the national wealth, while the poor and low-income classes, with 39% of the population, control less than 3% of the national wealth. Straddling the poor and low-income classes and the middle-middle sector are the lower middle classes with 27% of the population but control only 8% of the national wealth. The affluent upper middle class with 9% of the population has a relatively large 20% share of the national wealth. 

Meanwhile, the World Bank estimates that 60% of the labor force are in the informal sector with no regular and stable income and no access to social protection. The middle class has been reportedly shrinking and falling into the lower-income or poor brackets. According to the Center of Economic and Law Studies, almost 10 million Indonesians experienced downward mobility in the past five years. Food prices have ballooned, and more than 42,000 workers have been laid off since early 2025. 

Max Lane, a longtime scholar of Indonesian society and famed for his translation of Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s epic 4-volume Buru Quartet, calls the unrest “an explosion of mass anger,” with the “current political elite caste totally and extremely out of touch with popular sentiment.” In an online chat with this writer, Lane laments, however, that “there is no organized leadership or coordination…and no liberal party opposition either.” 

Thus, Lane says, the current unrest “will subside as in the past, but this time to be followed by more regular protests.” Still, “there are no visible signs at this point of anybody capable of leading a movement for change,” unlike in 1998. Things could change, though, but the protesters need to overcome what Lane calls “an NGOist mentality, i.e., simply monitor power, not challenge it.”

Vedi Hadiz, on the other hand, warns of the “genuine and organic grievances of the people being taken advantage of by elites for their own purposes.” Already, “there has been intensification, at least behind the scenes, between different factions of the elite which now are vying to try to steer the unrest in a direction that might be useful for their purposes.”

The author wishes to thank Anwar Sastro Maruf (KPRI secretary general), Vedi Hadiz and Max Lane for their comments and suggested revisions on this essay’s first draft.