Kompas.com/ Tresno Setiadi
The role of violent groups in Indonesia’s political landscape has captured public attention following reports that the United Indonesian People’s Movement (Gerakan Rakyat Indonesia Bersatu Jaya, GRIB Jaya) was allegedly involved in the deadly riots during the mass protests demanding the immediate enactment of the contentious Asset Forfeiture Bill in Jakarta on 27 August 2026.
GRIB Jaya has strong ties to President Prabowo Subianto. Its leader, Hercules Rosario, has a longstanding relationship with Prabowo, dating back to the 1980s military operations in East Timor. He served as an operational auxiliary (Tenaga Bantuan Operasi, or TBO) under the 328th Airborne Infantry Battalion of the Army Strategic Reserves Command (Komando Cadangan Strategis Angkatan Darat, Kostrad), then led by Prabowo.
Hercules—along with other pro-integration youths from East Timor—became active in Jakarta’s underworld, providing security services and establishing patron-client relationships with business figures and politicians. In 2012, he founded GRIB Jaya to support Prabowo’s Gerindra Party, placing the former general as its Chief Patron.
After Prabowo’s election, the political standing of GRIB Jaya and Hercules has reportedly grown even stronger.
However, the relative impunity enjoyed by violent groups like GRIB Jaya is not merely due to their leaders’ proximity to a powerful figure, Prabowo—himself known for his alleged involvement in atrocities, human rights violations in East Timor, and the 1998 activist abductions.
Rather, their existence reflects Indonesia’s structural character under a ‘state of disorder‘ as a preman state (thug state). In this kind of system, the deployment and mobilisation of violence do not operate solely through official (legitimate) channels such as the police and military; non-state violent groups are also fully integral to the operational logic of political-economic power.
A history of the preman state
Since the colonial era, violent groups such as the jawara in Banten and the vrijman in Batavia (the origin of the Indonesian word preman, derived from the Dutch term for ‘freeman’) were mobilised to serve the Dutch East Indies government in collecting taxes and securing other colonial interests. During the Japanese occupation, religious and secular-nationalist civilian militias were organised into various paramilitary groups to prepare irregular troops against the Allied forces.
This pattern of mobilisation persisted after independence. A pivotal moment arose in 1959, when General A.H. Nasution established Pemuda Pancasila in Medan, North Sumatra, to suppress Pemuda Rakyat (a youth organisation comprising children of workers affiliated with the Indonesian Communist Party or PKI).
In 1965, civilian militias and violent groups organised along religious and nationalist lines were once again massively mobilised by the military for the mass killings of PKI members and sympathisers. This event paved the way for the consolidation of power under General Soeharto’s military regime.
The elements involved in this mobilisation included Pemuda Pancasila, Nahdlatul Ulama-affiliated Barisan Ansor Serbaguna (Banser), Komando Kesiapsiagaan Angkatan Muda Muhammadiyah (Kokam), and student organisations such as the Islamic Students’ Association (HMI) and the Catholic Student Association of the Republic of Indonesia (PMKRI).
From then on, Soeharto increasingly relied on underworld violence networks as an instrument of power consolidation, both directly and through his favoured general, Ali Moertopo.
Moertopo actively engaged liberal intellectuals—most notably through the creation of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank—while simultaneously embedding himself in the criminal underworld.
Moertopo mobilised unemployed urban youth and criminals to consolidate political dominance, intimidate citizens into voting for Golkar, and suppress potential opposition from student movements and political Islam. Among the primary violent groups that he organised were the Gali (Gabungan Anak-Anak Liar, or Gangs of Wild Kids).
Gali networks were allegedly mobilised to infiltrate student demonstrations on January 15, 1974, which escalated into the riots known as the Malari incident (Malapetaka 15 Januari). The Malari affair gave Moertopo a pretext to sideline his political rival, General Soemitro, the then head of the internal security agency (Kopkamtib), under the guise that Soemitro had failed to maintain social order. Moertopo continued to form various violent youth fronts to secure votes for Golkar, including the National Committee of Indonesian Youth (KNPI) and the Indonesian Youth Renewal Generation (AMPI).
This dynamic peaked when Moertopo again deployed Gali to incite violence at a Golkar campaign rally at Lapangan Banteng, Jakarta, following the 1982 elections. On that occasion, Gali members wore United Development Party (PPP) uniforms to discredit the Islamic party. However, this manoeuvre alarmed Soeharto, who came to view Moertopo’s capacity for mass mobilisation as a threat to his own rule.
To bring Moertopo under control, Soeharto ordered another loyalist general, Benny Moerdani—Moertopo’s chief competitor for influence over the military—to carry out extrajudicial killings. This operation, known as the ‘mysterious shootings‘ (penembakan misterius or Petrus), targeted thugs and tattooed youths suspected of links to Moertopo or the Gali networks. Their bodies were dumped in rivers and on roadside curbs as an act of public intimidation. Petrus remains one of the major unprosecuted human rights atrocities of the Soeharto era.
Although Moertopo’s influence waned following Petrus, the mobilisation of state-aligned violence did not cease. Soeharto reorganised these forces under his direct control by reactivating Pemuda Pancasila and appointing Yapto Soerjosoemarno as its chairman.
Pemuda Pancasila subsequently evolved into a national-level mass organisation tasked with safeguarding business interests and executing political mobilisations for the regime with violence and physical threats.
Democracy under the state of disorder
The post-Soeharto era of democratisation did not erode the influence of preman groups. Instead, these violent entities multiplied and decentralised down to the local level, mirroring the fragmentation of political and economic patronage across the provinces and sub-provinces.
Their spectrum widened, spanning religious-based organisations like the now-defunct Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) to ethnic and regional groups like the Betawi Rempug Forum (FBR). These organisations routinely operated above the law with virtual impunity.
This state of affairs stems neither from the state’s inability to maintain a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence nor simply from the fragmentation of state power allowing non-state groups to challenge that monopoly, as some observers argued. Rather, it reflects the principal nature of political-economic power under the ‘state of disorder’, where institutions of violence—both legal and illegal—form an integral part of the system.
Consequently, state tolerance of rioting, mob mobilisation, persecution against minorities and the absence of legal enforcement are not obstacles to dominant political and business interests. Indonesia’s ruling elites virtually do not require stable social, political, or legal order to protect their material interests. On the contrary, a controlled state of disorder serves as a profitable foundation for power struggles.
This demonstrates that since the inception of Indonesian democratisation, the rule of law has never been truly established. As a result, Indonesia has never enforced the law consistently. Human rights crimes from the Soeharto era were never brought to trial. State-backed violence under Megawati’s administration—which allegedly led to the assassination of human rights advocate Munir Said Thalib—was never legally prosecuted.
Similarly, the various Islamic vigilantes that freely persecuted minority groups during Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s tenure were not held accountable for human rights abuses. Under Joko Widodo, moderate Islamic militias such as Banser were mobilised to target Islamic minorities framed as associated with radical Islam without facing legal repercussions.
Finally, under Prabowo, GRIB Jaya and similar violent groups continue to become integral to the consolidation of power. They are used not only to suppress opposition from civil society but also to neutralise political opponents in an effort to further re-centralise power and restore authoritarian rule.
All of this remains possible because Indonesia still operates as a preman state within a perpetual state of disorder.
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