Investigate and Fully Prosecute the Perpetrators of the Acid Attack Against Andrie Yunus!

International Joint Statement
Investigate and Fully Prosecute the Perpetrators of the Acid Attack Against Andrie Yunus!

We, civil society across the globe, strongly condemn and denounce the acid attack against the Deputy Coordinator of the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (KontraS), Andrie Yunus, on Thursday, 12 March 2026 in the Salemba area of Central Jakarta, Indonesia.

The attack was carried out by two unidentified individuals on a motorcycle by throwing a dangerous chemical liquid directly at him before fleeing. This caused Andrie Yunus to suffer severe burns to 20 percent of his body, including his face, eyes, chest, and both hands. The assault occurred shortly after Andrie Yunus had recorded a podcast on remilitarization and the judicial review of the recently revised Military Law at the office of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI).

This attack strongly indicates a planned and coordinated act. The perpetrators deliberately doused Yunus with a hazardous chemical into vital organs, including on his face and respiratory tract, indicating that the attack was intended to take the victim’s life. Therefore, we believe that this incident must be treated as attempted murder and must be investigated thoroughly and transparently by law enforcement authorities.

This attack cannot be separated from the context of the victim’s work as a human rights defender who has consistently exposed abuses of power, human rights violations, and the shrinking civic space in Indonesia. In the days leading up to the incident, the victim had also continuously received various forms of intimidation, including suspicious calls from unknown numbers. This practice indicates systematic efforts to spread fear among those actively engaged in advocacy and the defence of human rights.

Furthermore, Andrie Yunus is one of the members of the Fact-Finding Commission (KPF) who, over the past five months, has conducted an independent investigation into the Indonesian Nationwide protests and unrest in August 2025.

Through extensive investigations, the KPF report found that the security forces had used force disproportionately, conducted mass arrests, committed alleged torture, and the large-scale criminalization against activists and civilians. The events of August 2025 also resulted in about 13 deaths, marking one of the largest waves of repression against civil society since the Indonesian Reformation era in 1998.

Andrie Yunus has protested against the considered non-transparent process of discussing revisions to the Indonesian Military Law. On 15 March 2025, together with other members of the civil society coalition, he forced his way into the parliamentary meeting at the Fairmont Hotel in Jakarta to interrupt the closed-door discussion of revisions to the military law between the government and the House of Representatives of the Republic of Indonesia. This action was carried out in protest against the untransparent nature of the deliberation process, which excluded public participation and risked reviving the military’s dual-function doctrine of the pre-1998 dictatorship.

This assault must be seen as part of a pattern of intimidation against human rights defenders and a systematic effort to silence those who dare to reveal the truth, challenge impunity, criticize those in power, and fight for justice. If a human rights defender can be brutally assaulted in a public space in the nation’s capital, this demonstrates how fragile state protection is for citizens who fight for justice and how narrow the safe space for human rights advocacy has become in Indonesia.

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