When the protesters congregate — and they often do in Indonesia’s rollicking young democracy — the street-food vendor knows to wheel his bicycle to the action. Protesters need to eat. And what better fuel for dissent than plump fish dumplings?
For more than a week now, as thousands of Indonesians have called for the nation’s lawmakers to reduce lavish spending at a time of economic hardship, Wiyono has strapped a wooden box filled with dumplings to the back of his bicycle and has pedaled more than an hour from a northern slum to a central protest area in Jakarta.
The sprawling capital of a sprawling nation, Jakarta is sinking into the Java Sea, its groundwater sucked dry and rivers overrun by its millions of residents. The income divide is yawning wider between the elite, who travel in air-conditioned SUVs to luxury malls, and other residents, who from motorcycles inhale exhaust while stuck in the city’s traffic jams. The middle class of Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation, is shrinking. Youth unemployment has exceeded 16 percent in a country that should be enjoying a demographic dividend, with a swell of university graduates trying to find jobs.
Such concerns are driving the current round of protests. A generation ago, Indonesians rallied in the capital to topple a longtime dictator. Since then, they have pushed, sometimes violently, for elected presidents to address their disparate demands. They have been met with violence, too, as the nation’s security forces rely on old tactics to dissuade the demonstrations.
Last week, Mr. Wiyono, who like many Indonesians goes by a single name, was caught in the fracas as the police cracked down near Parliament. One moment he was selling plates of fish dumplings and vegetables with peanut sauce; the next he was choking on tear gas. He abandoned his bike and ran.
“Everything was so sudden,” he said. “The most important thing was to save my life.”
Mr. Wiyono sold about $6 worth of food before the protest at Parliament was broken up — enough, he said, to have justified the risky decision to work in a potential combat zone with a canister of gas strapped to his bike. When he went back the next morning, his pots and plates were scattered, the dumplings spoiled. The gas canister on the bike, thankfully, had not detonated.
Three days later, on Aug. 28, a motorcycle ride-share driver in the protest area was killed when a police vehicle ran him over. The man’s death prompted fresh rallies across the nation, and in the ensuing bedlam, four others died in the city of Makassar. On Sunday, President Prabowo Subianto, a former general who was once the son-in-law of Suharto, the deposed dictator, acknowledged the protesters’ unhappiness and announced that some legislators’ perks were being reviewed, like overseas trips and housing allowances.
By Monday, though, the protesters were back, albeit in smaller numbers. Mr. Wiyono also returned.
“I was worried to come, but at least I know I will be selling something,” he said. “Most days I can’t cover my expenses. I agree with what the protesters are voicing.”
Adisti Mega, a law student, said she had joined the protests because she wanted to hold to account lawmakers who, by virtue of family wealth or parliamentary privilege, have been insulated from the economic concerns of ordinary Indonesians.
“These Parliament members, they have no empathy toward the people,” she said. “None of them ever come to meet us in person, listen to what we are demanding.”
In Jakarta’s rambling cityscape, the usual protest sites are only a block or two away from warrens of residences, narrow alleyways coursing like capillaries through the center of the city. The Dutch, who built up the capital when it was part of their East Indies colony, tried to discourage dissent with their urban planning.
As the rallies grew over the past week, protesters became practiced at evading the clouds of tear gas by escaping into these neighborhoods. Near Parliament, residents of one kampung, or village settlement, as these low-rise communities in the heart of Jakarta are known, followed a familiar drill.
“When the air starts to feel spicy and you hear the bang, bang, bang, we immediately close the stall,” said Sulasih, who owns a small eatery with her husband.
Children and old people, she said, know to seek shelter inside.
On Aug. 25, the pandemonium after the police crackdown sent waves of people into the kampung. Protesters stumbled in from various alleyways, aided by locals who offered the use of their water pumps to rinse eyes stinging from the tear gas. Panicked office workers caught in the confusion sought refuge, too. The kampung’s residents don’t usually get involved, but they formed a human barricade to keep the security forces out. Women jabbed the authorities with brooms to chase them away. Still, the volleys of tear gas came closer. Ms. Sulasih’s husband vomited from the fumes.
In recent days, anger in Jakarta has frothed out of control, as protesters and looters — sometimes they are the same, but often they are not — have attacked the houses of politicians seen to have acted callously amid the nationwide economic suffering. On Sunday, a house owned by Sri Mulyani, the finance minister, was looted outside the capital. A handful of legislators’ homes have been targeted, with rioters carting out luxury handbags, fitness equipment and even a bathtub.
The sight of burning buildings lighting up the tropical night reminded older city residents of the chaotic edge of the Reformasi movement that toppled Mr. Suharto’s 32-year dictatorship. In those anarchic days in 1998, bands of young men roamed Jakarta and other cities, looking for wealthy families they associated, correctly or not, with Mr. Suharto’s kleptocratic rule, including hundreds of Indonesians of Chinese heritage who died in the riots or were raped. That frenzy of violence echoed an even greater bloodletting in the mid-1960s, when some half a million Indonesians, including a disproportionate number of ethnic Chinese, were killed by roving death squads.
The killings came from all sides. Before Mr. Suharto’s eventual downfall, security forces tried to prop up the regime with their weapons. As the then commander of Indonesia’s special forces, Mr. Prabowo, the current president, was tied to the disappearances of student activists. For years, he was barred from the United States for his role in human rights violations.
So far, the security forces have not acted with mass lethal outcomes. On Monday in Jakarta, the streets were eerily quiet as many workers heeded a municipal government call to work from home. But by Tuesday, traffic had returned to normal, which is to say hopelessly snarled. Street vendors sold sweet jelly and iced tea near Parliament, but there were no protesters, only the occasional plainclothes security officer.
No one doubts, though, that the protesters will be back. And the threat that a security crackdown will incite mob violence hangs over the capital of the world’s fourth most populous nation.
“I agree with the protesters’ demands,” said Nurohmah, a chicken seller at a market near Parliament. “They’re expressing our concerns, too. But be orderly, don’t riot.”
One day last week, in the turmoil, the glass on the second floor of her house shattered, the perpetrator unknown. She was temporarily blinded by the tear gas. Now with everything near the market closed, she has few customers for her chicken.
Muktita Suhartono reports on Thailand and Indonesia. She is based in Bangkok.
Hannah Beech is a Times reporter based in Bangkok who has been covering Asia for more than 25 years. She focuses on in-depth and investigative stories.
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