Civil society groups have denounced the acid attack against human rights defender Andrie Yunus as a brutal (biadab) and cowardly act aimed at silencing government critics, saying they will not bow down to any intimidation threatening their work.
Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) deputy coordinator Yunus was attacked by two unidentified individuals on a motorbike with acid just before midnight on Thursday March 12, when he was riding his motorcycle along Jalan Salemba I in Central Jakarta. He sustained serious burns to his right eye, face, hands and chest.
"The intimidation faced by Andrie will never deter or stop Kontras' work that was first built 28 years ago," Kontras coordinator Dimas Bagus Arya said in a press briefing hours after the incident. "This brutal attack is a cowardly act against an activist, who is a civilian."
The 27-year-old Yunus has been vocal in opposing increasing military involvement in civilian affairs in Indonesia and had just finished recording a podcast on the topic when he was attacked.
Amnesty International Indonesia Executive Director Usman Hamid cited numerous past cases in which Kontras was targeted, including the unresolved 2004 assassination of its cofounder Munir Said Thalib, which allegedly involved personnel from the State Intelligence Agency (BIN).
"But don't think that we'll back down even an inch because of the attack [against Yunus]. It won't deter us at all from fighting for justice", said Hamid, a former Kontras coordinator. "This cowardly act must not be dismissed as ordinary street crime."
A similar acid attack occurred in 2017 against former Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) investigator Novel Baswedan, who believed the assault was related to his work handling high-profile graft cases at that time.
Three years later, two low-ranking police officers were found guilty of attacking him, though critics lamented that the authorities did not dig deeper into the case given that both officers were unlikely to be acting alone.
National Police Chief General Listyo Sigit Prabowo said Sunday that President Prabowo Subianto had ordered him to investigate the case "thoroughly" and "transparently", calling the incident a "serious concern for the president", although Prabowo himself has yet to personally comment on the case.
At a cabinet meeting only hours after the attack, Prabowo accused unnamed observers of being "unpatriotic" and having ill intention in criticising his administration, the latest in a string of similar remarks attacking government critics.
"I think some observers simply don't want their own government to succeed due to various motivations. I'd say they are narrow-minded, not patriotic", Prabowo said, pledging to take action against these critics and claiming to have been informed about who was funding them.
Hamid called such statements a "serious threat" to critical voices coming from the general public, students or activists. He said that the current administration has increasingly mimicked the Suharto-era New Order regime for trying "to either silence or co-opt" government critics.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said on Friday that he was deeply concerned by the acid attack and called for those responsible to be held accountable for the "cowardly act".
[Abridged from a Jakarta Post article titled Indonesian activists defiant following acid attack on rights defender.]