Amnesty says the military smears critics as 'foreign agents'

A new report by Amnesty International accuses Indonesian authorities, including the military, of running organised online campaigns to smear their critics as "foreign agents." As The Japan Times reports, citing the Amnesty study, the campaigns have targeted activists, journalists, and academics over the roughly 18 months since President Prabowo Subianto took office in October 2024.

The report describes how hundreds of coordinated social media accounts, some pretending to be military units, post the same messages at the same time to make a person look like an enemy of the nation. Tempo, one of Indonesia's most respected news outlets, was targeted after critical reporting. Amnesty's secretary general, Agnès Callamard, called the practice "a political weapon, deployed to consolidate the government's power," and criticised platforms like Meta, TikTok, X, and YouTube for leaving the content up.

The report ties this online abuse to real-world violence. In March 2026, Andrie Yunus, a leader at the rights group KontraS, was attacked with acid after months of being branded a "foreign agent" for helping lead protests against changes to the military law. Four military officers were later arrested, and their trial began in late April. Reporting on the study framed it against a bigger worry: that Indonesia, often called the world's third-largest democracy, is sliding back toward a stronger military role under Prabowo, a former special-forces commander.

Why it matters

For journalists, activists, and researchers, this shows how criticism can trigger a coordinated campaign to paint you as a traitor, sometimes followed by real threats. It also puts pressure on social media companies to act on organised abuse rather than let it spread. Watch whether platforms and Indonesian institutions respond, or whether the "foreign agent" label keeps being used to silence people.