A violent clash broke out Monday in the Indonesian metropolis of Surabaya between police and demonstrators protesting against the country’s newly passed military law.
Around 1,000 students and activists dressed in black participated in the protest in front of an East Java government building.
Holding posters that said “Reject the Military Law”, and “The Military Should Return to the Barracks”, protesters hurled rocks, sticks, and Molotov cocktails towards the police guarding the demonstration.
The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defence in a country long influenced by its powerful armed forces especially under the brutal military dictatorship of Suharto called the “New Order” who were avowedly anti-communist and anti-anarchist. Large-scale killings and civil unrest primarily targeting members and supposed sympathizers of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) were carried out in Indonesia from 1965 to 1966. Other affected groups included alleged communist sympathisers, Gerwani women, trade unionists, ethnic Javanese Abangan, ethnic Chinese, atheists, so-called “unbelievers”, and alleged leftists in general. The dictatorship eventually fell in the May 1998 Indonesia riots triggered by corruption, economic problems, including food shortages, mass unemployment, increasing repression, genocide in East Timor and following the 1997 Asian financial crisis.