Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.
The highlights this week: Protests turn ugly in Indonesia as pro-presidential thugs emerge, Thailand cracks down on badly-behaved foreigners, and an unhealthy haze engulfs the region.
Thugs come out as government popularity slips
Indonesia’s gangsters have a long history of acting as arms of the state in a crisis. Last week, we saw one of the most blatant examples of this since the country’s democratization in 1998.
The sequence of events was as follows. On Thursday, there was a protest in Jakarta focused on issues including corruption. While there were fears of a repeat of last year’s riots, the protest, which was held outside the parliament complex, proceeded peacefully at first.
However, tensions grew throughout the day. A group of disorganized protesters burned trash and tried to break into the parliament area. As dark fell, police moved to disperse protesters with tear gas and water cannons.
Rioting then extended into the neighborhood of Slipi in West Jakarta. There, trucks carrying hundreds of people wearing white headbands and armed with bamboo sticks appeared on the scene. Videos show them assaulting people in the area.
One person, Bambang Setiawan, a 60-year-old mirror vendor, died after being attacked by a group of people as he tried to close his shop.
Reports linked the violence on the streets to a group called Gerakan Rakyat Indonesia Bersatu Jaya (GRIB Jaya), or the United Indonesian People’s Movement. This organization straddles gangsterism and politics, with long-standing ties to Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.
The group’s leader—Rosario de Marcal, also known as Hercules—is an orphan from Timor-Leste. Recruited to serve in Indonesian militias during the occupation, he credited Prabowo with saving his life on one occasion. He has repeatedly emphasized his personal loyalty to the president. In March, he ostentatiously met the cabinet secretary—a close Prabowo aide—who called him an “old friend.”
GRIB Jaya representatives have admitted that the group was present in West Jakarta at the time. However, they said that GRIB Jaya was there to help maintain order and denied it was behind the assaults. They blamed protesters for all the violence, including the death of Bambang Setiawan.
The violence comes as the current government’s grip on power looks increasingly unsteady.
Prabowo’s approval rating is in freefall. It was at 37 percent in August compared to 75 percent last December, according to a recent poll by Tempo Data Science.
This downturn is widely attributed to dissatisfaction with high prices and limited job opportunities. Prabowo himself has been subject to mockery and personal attacks that often portray him as out of touch.
It’s also worth keeping an eye on the maneuvers of the enormously popular former president, Joko Widodo, nicknamed Jokowi. His implicit endorsement was the central factor behind Prabowo’s election victory in 2024, and the alliance was sealed with Jokowi’s son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, becoming vice president. After Prabowo came to power, though, he steadily sidelined Jokowi.
Jokowi kept quiet, partly due to a health condition, but he now seems to be maneuvering. Last week, he did an interview with Bocor Alus, a spiky and serious political podcast that has been very critical of Prabowo. In typical Jokowi style, he said little that was controversial but some analysts pointed to veiled criticism of Prabowo for sidelining his son.
Meanwhile, a video that circulated widely on social media showed Jokowi attending an event with Budi Arie Setiadi, who leads a pro-Jokowi volunteer group. Budi proceeded to make comments suggesting that elections might come sooner than the scheduled 2029. He compared the situation to 1998, when riots suddenly ended the 31-year rule of Prabowo’s father-in-law, President Suharto. Jokowi sat impassively without contradicting him. However, Budi did later apologize and downplayed the comments.
Meanwhile, Jokowi is not the only player in town. West Java Gov. Dedi Mulyadi now leads polls on who should be the next president.
Elected last year as part of Prabowo’s party, he has proved an incredibly effective self-promoter on social media, with a canny sense of public opinion that Prabowo lacks. While Prabowo was criticized as being slow to visit earthquake victims in eastern Indonesia, Dedi filmed himself flying in to join relief efforts.
Farang behaving badly. Thailand is fed up with farang (foreigners) who take advantage of its hospitality. On Friday, a new law to speed up the deportation of badly behaved foreigners came into force.
The new law speeds up the deportation of foreigners who disrupt public order, undermine morals, disrespect Thai culture, enter the country illegally, illegally work or operate a business in the country, forge documents, or commit crimes. People can also be blacklisted and banned from reentering Thailand.
The law comes against the backdrop of a wider tightening-up. Since 2025, the government has cracked down on visa runs—that is, quickly exiting and reentering the country on tourist visas. There’s also a major crackdown on “nominee” companies, which are companies that Thai citizens act as cut-outs to let foreigners circumvent rules on landownership or foreign ownership of businesses.
Thais being fed up with tourists acting like louts and even setting up businesses that compete with locals are some of the factors behind these moves. But more important is a growing fear of criminals taking advantage of Thailand’s laissez-faire attitude.
Two groups have come under particular criticism. First are the Chinese. The term “gray Chinese,” denoting people linked to criminal groups, has spread rapidly. Now, there’s also focus on “gray Israelis,” or sometimes “gray Jews,” with a protest held outside the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok.
Vietnam FM heads to Myanmar. Last Wednesday, Vietnamese Foreign Minister Le Hoai Trung visited Myanmar. It was the first official trip by a senior Vietnamese official to the country since the 2021 coup.
Trung met with Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing and formally invited him to visit Vietnam. The two also discussed how to boost bilateral trade to $1 billion. In 2025, Myanmar-Vietnam trade stood at $591 million, significantly below pre-COVID-19 pandemic and pre-coup peaks.
Since Myanmar’s sham elections, which wrapped up in January, Min Aung Hlaing has been on a successful diplomatic tear. After visits to Laos and Thailand, this meeting marks the third major engagement with a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), despite the junta officially remaining excluded from ASEAN events.
The meeting with Thailand has borne fruit. Chatchai Bangchuad, the secretary-general of Thailand’s National Security Council, met Ye Win Oo, commander in chief of Myamar’s Defense Services, in Naypyidaw on Thursday. Again, the agenda included suppressing the smuggling of arms, restricted chemicals, and other material across the border.
New welfare package. On Sunday, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim used his National Day address to announce measures aimed at reducing the cost of living. He declared these would be partly funded by funds seized from illegal activities, pitching it as a way to return money appropriated through corruption to the people.
The policies announced include an increase in quotas for subsidized fuel, funds for schools and small traders, and free access to a suite of artificial intelligence apps for Indonesians ages 18 to 30.
This comes as Anwar’s political position looks increasingly unstable. Despite extremely strong GDP growth at around 6 percent, support for the government has waned. Discontent over the cost of living and a sense that the government has failed to see through reforms to combat corruption are key factors here.
In two recent state elections, parties aligned with Anwar have performed poorly. Key coalition partners are increasingly acting as rival governments in waiting.
Speculation about an early election is in the air. However, reporting suggests that Anwar is looking to delay a vote until 2027, hoping his popularity will recover.
A dog sits in the middle of a road, which is shrouded in haze due to forest and land fires, in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, on Aug. 28.Reina/AFP via Getty Images
FP’s Most Read This Week
Alex Eala, the Filipina tennis phenomenon cheered on by her home country’s enormous diaspora, by Alberta Samaha in The New Yorker.
Fancy a career releasing mosquito swarms in apartment blocks? Singapore could use you in its anti-dengue campaign, by Siddharth Poddar in Nikkei Asia.
“The public often forgets the mental toll of maintaining three separate sets of accounting books while simultaneously attending ribbon-cutting ceremonies for bridges that only exist on paper.” An extremely funny send-up of Indonesia’s corrupt civil servants in Southeast Asia’s answer to The Onion, The Rambutan.
$70,000 Singaporean dollars. That’s how much Singapore’s government is offering in support to new parents. This includes big lump sums after birth and annual payments of $2,000 until the child turns 16.
The policy is aimed at boosting the country’s extremely low birth rate. In 2023, Singapore had the world’s seventh-lowest fertility rate according to Our World in Data.
In Focus: Southeast Asia Chokes
Fires in Indonesia are burning vast tracts of rainforest and peatlands in Borneo and Sumatra. In addition to devastating ecosystems, the fires are unleashing huge amounts of smoke, which marks the start of the region’s latest haze crisis.
As I flagged in previous newsletters, this year’s haze will likely be particularly severe due to El Niño and potentially also due to weaker government response in Indonesia.
In Indonesia, 14.5 million people have been affected already, and there is talk of declaring a national emergency.
Malaysia is affected, too, mainly by smoke drifting across the border. Sarawak, in Malaysian Borneo, is considering declaring an emergency. And on mainland Malaysia, the prime minister’s National Day address on Sunday was moved inside due to the haze.
These fires are tightly linked to the spread of plantation agriculture into rainforest areas. This was illustrated by this rather clever page by the newspaper Kompas.
Prabowo has ordered that any company found guilty of using fire to clear land will have its business permit revoked. Six have been sanctioned, and 42 are under investigation.
However, with the government promoting its own state-led plantations, a serious shift in policy seems unlikely.
Meanwhile, public attention has been caught by Prabowo suggesting that cassava flour could act as a fire extinguisher. The idea has been roundly mocked.
So, how bad is the situation? The U.S. Air Quality Index gives a scale: Fifty or below is perfectly healthy, anything over 150 is unhealthy for everyone, and it is advised to avoid all physical activity outdoors when it is above 300.
On Aug. 31, areas in Central Kalimantan, in Indonesian Borneo, recorded an air quality index of over 1,000. In parts of Kuching, a city of half a million in Malaysia Borneo, it’s above 500. Some parts of Sumatra have seen levels above 400 in recent days. Kuala Lumpur and its environs have recorded levels above 150, as well, which is entirely due to smoke floating across the sea from Sumatra.
