Chasing Foreign Phantoms In Prabowo's Embattled Indonesia
That blame game asks nothing of those in charge. Who really owns our listed companies? Who wins contracts through political connections? Who burns the peatland? It is easier to to point to an enemy abroad, or to brand critics antek asing,“foreign agents.”
Investors do not hate Indonesia. They want rules they can verify. So is the world against us, or has fear of foreigners become a shield for powerful insiders?
Reflex xenophobiaUnder President Prabowo Subianto, the list of supposed foreign enemies keeps growing. When students marched under the banner Indonesia Gelap (Dark Indonesia) in February 2025, Prabowo asked whether they had been paid, pointing without evidence to the US aid agency USAID.
In June, he claimed that foreign powers fund NGOs to divide Indonesians. During the August 2025 riots, he labeled protesters antek asing, while his staff described the unrest as a foreign-planned“color revolution.” In February 2026, he said critics were controlled from abroad.
The Jakarta Post reported that pro-Russia and pro-China accounts helped spread the antek asing narrative. Researchers warn that crying wolf this often may let a genuine foreign campaign slip by unnoticed.
Some of the claims border on farce. In September, Ulta Levenia, a deputy government communications minister, wondered aloud whether a US research project called HAARP made six volcanoes erupt the day after Prabowo met Russian President Vladimir Putin. She conceded she had no proof.
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