Death of mirror seller: Investigation puts state on trial

The death of Bambang Setiawan, a 60-year-old mirror seller from Pejompongan in Central Jakarta, should have been a straightforward homicide case. He left his house at 10 p.m. to switch off the lights in his shop 500 meters away, during unrest following the Aug. 27 demonstrations near the Senayan Legislative Complex in Central Jakarta. He was found unconscious, removed by police and pronounced dead at Mintohardjo Hospital. Ten days later, the case has become a mirror for everything wrong with how Indonesia polices protest.

The Jakarta Police investigation is curiously hollow. Police say they are analyzing amateur social media videos, have questioned 14 witnesses, and released facial sketches of two men aged 30–40. Yet for a death in a dense urban area, under heavy police deployment, on a night when hundreds were arrested, there is still no named perpetrator, no timeline, no forensic anchor.

The family, traumatized by the body's condition, refused an autopsy. Police accepted the refusal, understandable on humanitarian grounds, but it left the state without the one piece of evidence that could establish cause of death.

The investigation now rests entirely on chaotic witness testimony and videos police themselves admit are partly AI-manipulated. As of Sept. 2, 49 people remain suspects, but charged with damaging public property and assaulting other victims, not with Bambang's death. Many arrested, none accountable for the death that matters.

Into that vacuum enters the Jakarta chapter of the United Indonesian People’s Movement (GRIB). Secretary-general Zulfikar confirmed GRIB members were present that night as civilian security volunteers assisting police (Pam Swakarsa) insisting: "It was not GRIB that beat him. It was the protesters."

That defense creates a bigger problem. If GRIB was there as Pam Swakarsa, who requested it? Police deny any formal request, no operational order, no written request, no coordination record. But GRIB's own narrative depends on being invited. Either GRIB self-mobilized into a security operation illegally, or it was invited by someone who now denies it. Either way, the state has outsourced its monopoly on violence.

Using militias to help police manage protests is an open secret in Jakarta. 

From the late New Order onward, militias like Pemuda Pancasila, the FBR and now GRIB have served as counter-demonstrators and intimidators, uniformed police beating students looks bad on camera; civilian thugs beating civilians looks like a "clash between community groups."

Advocacy monitors have documented mobs in white headbands arriving by truck on Aug. 27 carrying wooden weapons, with concrete bricks "prepared beforehand." This was logistics, not spontaneous anger.

Pam Swakarsa originated in 1998 as military-armed civilian militias, never having been given a solid legal footing since. Neither the 2002 Police Law nor the 2025 Indonesian Military (TNI) Law authorizes civil organizations to perform crowd control, that remains a police function requiring trained, accountable personnel.

As Amnesty Indonesia's executive director Usman Hamid warned, involving mass organizations risks letting crowds usurp police authority under the guise of "assisting." If GRIB was deployed as Pam Swakarsa without legal basis, every act of violence it committed or allowed implicates the officials who permitted it.

GRIB does not move for free. Mobilizing members, transportation and equipment takes money and command. If police deny making the request, did the TNI, or someone in the political elite? GRIB has expanded rapidly believing itself a "gatekeeper” to President Prabowo Subianto’s regime, an organization that close to power does not need a written order; a nod suffices.

GRIB's founder, Hercules (Rosario de Marçal), credits Prabowo with saving his life during his Kopassus years. GRIB was founded in 2011 with an explicit mission of bringing Prabowo to power, mobilizing 25,000 members for his 2024 inauguration.

Prabowo's 2022 resignation from GRIB's advisory board was legal insulation, not a political divorce. Hercules and GRIB's lawyer affirmed after the unrest they would "continue to guard Prabowo." GRIB is not formally part of the state; it is more useful, a plausibly deniable instrument.

This is why suspicion flourishes. Indonesia has seen this script before: peaceful protests followed by unidentified groups causing chaos, diverting public anger from the original grievance toward "anarchy", and justifying crackdowns.

Bambang's death may not be a bug in that strategy but a feature, except this time the victim was a beloved local resident, not a demonstrator, and the strategy could not hide its fingerprints.

Police arrested 387 people yet cannot name the killers of the one death everyone witnessed. They deny using GRIB, while the group itself admits deployment as Pam Swakarsa. Until the police answer who called up GRIB that night, and under what authority, the investigation will read not as an investigation, but as a cover-up.