Words from the Archipelago of Fire

Keiji & Archipelago of Fire

This photograph from August 2025 appeared on the website of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It was taken in Jakarta. Young women were an important part of the uprising in Indonesia.

RS: Keiji was involved in political and social activism in Indonesia in the 1990s and the 2010s. This is an edited email, in which she discusses the 2025 Indonesian uprising and the texts she has supplied from the Indonesian revolutionaries calling themselves 'the Archipelago of Fire'

Keiji: In answer to your question: the uprising did not begin with the death of Affan Kurniawan. By the time a speeding armoured car smashed into his motorcycle taxi protesters had already taken over much of downtown Jakarta. They had gathered after hearing that members of parliament were once again enriching themselves. This time they were voting to increase their housing subsidies. 

There were other reasons young people were inflamed. [President Prabowo] Subianto's open nostalgia for the dictatorship of his former father-in-law Suharto and his militarisation of the police had made them afraid that democracy itself as imperilled. His indifference to the situation of millions of educated but unemployed young people in Jakarta and the nation's other cities was continually obvious. But for the protest movement the killing of Affan Kurniawan was amphetamine. The police and the state had made their contempt for the law obvious, and now the protesters felt not only a right but an obligation to dispense with legal niceties. 

It was on the so-called outer islands that the insurrection became most intense: on Sulawesi police stations and government offices were raided, looted, and torched. In Bali young people struck at the five-star resorts whose Western patrons taunt them with their wealth and dissipation. In Medan, in the north of Sumatra, the ruling party's offices were systematically destroyed. The protesters focused on the destruction of property, not people. They killed no one. It was the police who turned the riots bloody. 

Yes, the protests were led by young people—the so-called 'Generation Z' who also rioted last year in Nepal, Madagascar, Bangladesh, Timor-Leste, Mozambique... The pirate flag from [the anime TV series] One Piece became the banner of the revolutionaries, displacing the red of the socialists and the green of the Islamic movement. In Java and in southern Sulawesi, anarchist groups were highly visible on the frontlines of the street fighting. They organised the combatants and provided food and water to people massed in the streets for days and issued communiques. 

But do not interpret the ideology of these anarchists using templates made in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe. Many reject the old labels and slogans of the movement. These are not anarcho-syndicalists, these are not anarcho-communists, and least of all are these anarcho-capitalists! As you noted in your first e mail, some of the intellectuals amongst the Indonesia anarchists look not to revolutionary Catalonia or to Chomsky but to the history of the so-called 'outer islands', the islands that were in different measures neglected and oppressed by both the Dutch and the Javanese elite that has run the Indonesian state. 

Bami [an anarchist historian who was in jail when the rioting began] has published about the 'stateless society' that existed in parts of the Maluku archipelago for centuries, before it was crushed by Dutch arms. In the Aru islands, in the far south and east of the Malukus, Javanese capitalists - many of them related by blood to the vampiric Suharto family - have tried to set up huge mining and agricultural projects. These projects that would have devastated local ecosystems. The protest movement against these plans began on Aru but reached Java, through the mediation of Western NGO workers (yes, sometimes they are useful!) and environmental activists. The plans were defeated after mass protests on both Aru and Java, and the plight of the 'outer' islands became more familiar to the radicalised young in Jakarta and other Javan cities. The revolutionaries on Sulawesi can point to societies on their own island as alternatives to the state and capitalism. The Bugis people for eg have traditions of egalitarianism and hostility to Dutch and Javanese hegemony. Even today many communities in the remoter parts of Sulawesi live largely outside the state and the cash economy.

And as you may intuit this is what makes the situation of the revolutionaries in Indonesia fundamentally different to that of anyone who calls themselves a revolutionary in Europe or the United States. Frederic Jameson said that it was easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. He was referring to the many dystopian movies and television series on our screens. To the paucity of utopias, as well (when was the last Hollywood movie that showed us a utopia?). But in Indonesia, where capitalism was introduced relatively late and still has not subsumed all traditional societies, it is not so hard to imagine a different order - a different way of life. The connection to the past has not been broken. Or, at least, not completely. 

You were startled by the way that one statement of the revolutionaries called for the dissolution of Indonesia. It was against the very concept of Indonesia. But you must remember that Indonesia is the ghost of the Dutch East Indies. It is a nation state born of an empire. Indonesia's existence was never accepted by many of the islands over which the Javanese elite claim control. Maluku fought a war for independence. Sulawesi fought wars of independence. Europeans are aware of the massive crimes committed by Indonesia's army in Timor and in Papua. They are not aware that the army honed its techniques of mass detention, torture, forced conscription, and ethnic cleansing in a series of campaigns in the 1950s and '60s - on Ambon, on Ceram, on Sulawesi, and on Sumatra too. Even Java the citadel of the Indonesian elite had a war of resistance. Islamists fought Sukarno there in the 1960s. I believe that for a while they controlled whole districts in the far west of the island. So there is nothing unique about the situation of West Papua today or Timor in the 1990s. They are part of a pattern.

The rejection of the Indonesia state is therefore not a new feature of the discourse of resistance. And the anarchist antipathy to the state, required of course by their ideology, rhymes with a much more widespread hatred of rule from Jakarta. Remember that might seem perverse in Europe or Japan or New Zealand seems like common sense to many people on the 'outer islands' alienated by centuries of Dutch-Javanese rule. 

The texts I have sent were composed by revolutionaries engaged in revolution. They are not attempts at academic analysis. They were not written from the comfort and safety of a desk. With the passage of nine months, and the temporary ebbing of protest on most islands, they can be read dispassionately—but they were composed with passion. I have a low tolerance for 'experts' who try to dissect and criticise the words of women and men charging through clouds of tear gas at police lines. I do not believe that you or I or anyone who was not on the barricades has the right to quibble with words that were forged in fire. Let us read them with admiration and charity. More writing from the uprising can be read at sites like the Anarchist Library and Lib Com.

Statements from the Archipelago of Fire

AUGUST 25, 2025

“Jakarta no longer belongs to the rotten elites. Thousands from every corner of the land stormed the capital. This is not just a protest, it’s a collective eruption of rage against rising housing taxes, endless corruption, and the military-police dogs of the state.

“From dawn till midnight, the streets turn into a battlefield of defiance. Screams, fire, and stones become the people’s language of fury.

“This is not some puppet show of the elites; this is raw anger, untamed, leaderless, and impossible to control.”

AUGUST 29, 2025

“Angry youth are rising up, triggered by rising taxes and a repressive military. There’s no organization; the insurrection is being spearheaded by young anarchists, nihilists, and uncontrollables. Many young anarchists from high school student associations are being arrested. The high schoolers are the energy. Around 400 of them were arrested on August 25, according to reports. Most of the actions are coordinated live on social media.

“Usually, some liberal union or opposition party controls the narratives, but not this time. Even mainstream media acknowledge that social media is the source of the documentation. Politicians cannot control the narratives any longer. It’s been a tradition for decades that executive student bodies normally are stewards for these kinds of demos, but each year, these brokers are getting outed. By the students themselves. That’s why NGOs, unions, ‘civil anarchists,’ and student associations of the left and right hate the anti-organizational faction.

“Fuck them all. We provoke the youngsters to act for themselves.

“Individuals are no longer spooked by ideological duty, norms, and all those external values.

“Last night (August 28, 2025), police murdered someone. Nationwide riots ensued against the tax rise. In several cities, the riot was organic and self-organized. The police’s public image continues to crumble, as the people support the rioters. Cells coordinated other things, and most nihilist-insurrectionary announcements are dominating the narrative.

“Anonymous social media accounts with thousands of followers are calling for anti-political insurgency. Every day, they make good calls and explanations.

“The union brokers announced they would be on the streets and ‘there will be no riot,’ but the youngsters and rioters mock them right away on social media. We give it up to the youngsters. We can only stimulate them to be more uncontrollable. At night, the internet went to shit. While “civil anarchists” call for people’s councils, we call for fuck everything. Only providing networking coordination and street action technical facts. We never really organize people.

“As of Friday, August 29, anarchists basically control the narrative. People are responding nationwide to a call to attack police stations and the police themselves. The mass media lost control of the information and news.

“Our network keeps calling for revenge since the police murder last night, and it’s getting hotter. The cells are in the streets.

“You can see the uprising on various news outlets, though all the good videos are only on social media.”

—Archipelago of Fire

The One Piece banner was ubiquitous at protests in Indonesia. It was also used last year during massive protests in Nepal, Bangladesh and Timor-Leste.

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