September 27, 2025 | 10:30 am
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Indonesia’s Minister for Law, Human Rights, Immigration, and Penitentiary Affairs, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, has defended the mass arrests that followed a wave of protests across the country in late August.
He insisted that demonstrators taken into custody were not targeted simply for protesting but for committing criminal acts.
“If people were demonstrating and then detained, it is because they were involved in criminal offenses,” Yusril told reporters at a press conference on Friday, September 26, 2025.
According to the minister, those arrested were charged with crimes committed during or after the protests. “These include violence, looting, sedition, resisting officers, and other violations,” he said.
Nearly 1,000 Declared Suspects
The Head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Indonesian National Police (Bareskrim), Commissioner General Syahardiantono, previously announced that almost 1,000 people have been declared suspects in connection with the unrest.
“In total, there are 959 suspects, consisting of 664 adults and 295 children,” Syahardiantono said at a press briefing on Wednesday, September 24, 2025.
Regional police units are handling hundreds of these cases: 232 suspects under the Jakarta Metro Police, 111 in West Java, 136 in Central Java, and 58 in South Sulawesi.
Syahardiantono stressed that those named suspects were not peaceful demonstrators. “All suspects were directly involved in the riots,” he said.
Earlier, police reported that 583 people from the 5,444 protesters arrested nationwide during the late August unrest remain under investigation. They are spread across major cities including Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Surabaya, Makassar, and Medan.
Deputy Chief of the Indonesian National Police, Commissioner General Dedi Prasetyo, explained that investigators are differentiating the roles of those involved.
“We separate who the intellectual actors are, who funded the actions, who were the field operators, and who merely followed along,” Dedi said on September 8, 2025.
Jihan Ristiyanti contributed to the writing of this article.
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