An Australian political analyst has warned of State-thugs complicity behind the disruption of a diaspora discussion in Kemang, South Jakarta on Saturday, September 28, 2024.
Ian Douglas Wilson, a political sociologist at Perth-based Murdoch University, said thugs have been used throughout modern Indonesian history by different intelligence and security agency as a second or third hand.
”So they get them [thugs] to disrupt, to intimidate events that the state institutions are wary of or they are paranoid of,” Wilson told Indonesia Business Post in an interview on Tuesday, October 1, 2024.
He was commenting on an act by a group of people, who attacked and vandalized the ballroom of Grand Kemang Hotel in South Jakarta where a political discussion was about to begin in the morning of September 28, 2024. Several prominent critics of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s government attended the discussion, including constitutional law expert Refly Harun, former Army’s Special Forces (Kopassus) commander Major General (ret) Soenarko and a number of activists.
The Jakarta Police have named five of the 30 perpetrators of the incident as suspects. A source from a group affiliated with attackers told Indonesia Business Post that an Indonesian intelligence personnel had ordered a group of eastern Indonesian youths to attack and the disperse the discussion.
Greg Upi Deo, lawyer of the group, however, dismissed the allegation, saying that the group carried out the raid based on their own initiative.
Wilson said that state institutions used these thugs because they do not want to involve directly in dispersing the event because it will make them look like a repressive authoritarian regime and therefore send people to do the attack as their proxies.
He said further that Indonesian intelligence agencies are very paranoid in the current moment of transition of power that they think that the group, who organized the discussion, has the capability to overthrow the president.
“It is absurd and it is ridiculous thing to think. But it just shows their paranoia at these kind of times,” he explained.
Wilson said it is difficult to predict that in the next government of Prabowo Subianto, the practice of using thugs to intimidate civil society groups will be rampant.
“When he [Prabowo] was in the military, he really developed the theory and the practice of how to mobilize these groups as a part of the military strategy,” he said.
“He now approaches politics, you know, in the same way when he worked in the military. I think he sees politics through a military mindset. So, it is possible (that Prabowo will use these groups),” he added.
Wilson was of the opinion, however, that Prabowo would presumably be careful in his calculations as he otherwise will get a backlash in the form of massive protest by civil society group.
”You can see big protests a couple weeks ago over the constitutional court ruling on age restriction at regional election,” he said.
