Your Honorable Panel of Judges,
After everything that has happened regarding the act of violence I committed in the case of the burning of this police post, I have gained many things that I must take upon myself. About how the state —long before what I did— has carried out acts of violence on a far greater scale.
To be honest, after the defense I presented in the case of the August 2025 demonstration was rejected, everything feels pointless. My defense in the previous trial was already very long, explaining everything in great detail. Yet my suspicion that the verdict had been determined from the beginning only grew stronger when the decision was finally struck with the gavel. The state has sentenced me to two years in prison, and now the state demands again that I be given the same sentence. And for that, I only have very little room to defend the violence that I have committed.
It has become an open secret that all forms of violence and abuse of power by state apparatus —(read: the police)— have produced forms of human rights violations. One of the most severe and intolerable is the taking of human life. The Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (KontraS) recorded 602 incidents of violence involving members of the Indonesian National Police from July 2024 to June 2025. From the Kanjuruhan tragedy, Randi and Yusuf, Afif Maulana, Gamma, Affan Kurniawan, Arianto Tawakkal, to Eko Prasetyo—the most recent—killed by the police.
As someone who condemns all forms of brutality by the authorities and who has pursued, in both theory and practice —through trial and error— the method of direct action to strengthen each individual in reclaiming control over their own life and using that power to fulfill their own aims, I eventually carried out a direct action. An action carried out individually, separate from actions in demonstrations or protests involving many people. An action that is only symbolically carried out to hold the state apparatus accountable for the violence they have committed.
Therefore, I have come to realize that the state only understands language through violence. It is the only language they understand. And I carried out the violence I committed in a language that is poetic —one they do not understand.
In a world as described above, to remain silent and do nothing while the state apparatus continuously demonstrates acts of violence—this is the problem. The question is not whether violence itself can be justified or not, but rather how violence can be maximally made effective to annihilate those “brutal monsters.”
Lastly, I only wish to say this: quickly end all of this exhausting pretense. Deliver the duration of the sentence. And let me calmly live through the time you have taken from me in contemplation.
Adit