Election Protests Enter a Second Day as Indonesia Reels From Late Night Riots

Indonesian authorities rushed on Wednesday to prevent a second night of violence after riots broke out late last night in Central Jakarta that left six dead and hundreds injured. The government shut down access to social media at several locations in the Indonesian capital on Wednesday and top officers held press conferences trying to counter an online narrative that blamed them for last night's bloodshed.

The National Police found themselves in the middle of what they are calling a well-organized plot to turn the public against them. Fake stories began to circulate online early Wednesday morning that, when taken together, appear to be a concentrated effort to smear the police. Some were absurd, like claims that the police themselves were actually Chinese soldiers in disguise, a hoax that forced one police official to remind people that plenty of Indonesians had narrow eyes as well. Insp. Gen. M Iqbal, the spokesman for the National Police, pointed to his own face as evidence, saying "If you look at me, my eyes are narrow too."

Others fake stories were more concerning. One popular post falsely claimed that cops were rampaging through mosques in Tanah Abang, shooting protestors who were hiding inside. At least two people were fatally shot during the riots, but police officials say their officers weren't armed with live ammunition. The shootings were the work of someone else who was trying to use the deaths to turn the public against the police, claimed National Police Chief Gen. Tito Karnavian in a televised press conference Wednesday afternoon.

The police chief held up several guns seized last night and in the days leading up to the riots, including an assault rifle he claimed was outfitted with a silencer and a scope.

"A few days ago, and over the course of the week, police have arrested a number of armed individuals with the intent of inciting riots on May 22nd," Tito said. "Six people have been arrested… They admitted they were going to use it (the guns) on May 22nd. It’s not only the police they wanted to shoot, but also the protestors. They wanted people to be mad and blame the government when they heard the news about it."

Much of last night's events remain a mystery. A sizable crowd of protestors had gathered outside the headquarters of the Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) by Tuesday afternoon in support of failed presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto. The General Elections Commission (KPU) officially called the election in favor of his rival, incumbent President Joko Widodo, this week and Bawaslu had also rejected a claim by the Prabowo camp that his rivals had paid civil servants to vote in their favor.

Prabowo, who has maintained that he actually won the election despite official counts showing he fell 17 million votes short of Jokowi's lead, now plans to challenge the KPU results in the Constitutional Court.

“We reject the final presidential vote tally by the KPU," Prabowo said at his home in South Jakarta according to a report by the Jakarta Post. "And we’ll take all available legal avenues supported by the constitution."

He did the same thing after losing the last presidential race in 2014 only to have the court reject his challenge while police doused his supporters with water cannons during a chaotic protest outside. On Wednesday, the date his supporters initially planned to protest the KPU (it announced the results earlier than expected, setting off yesterday's hastily planned demonstration), crowds began to show up outside the Bawaslu building in Central Jakarta by 11am, with close to 100 people there when VICE reporters visited the site.

By Wednesday's evening prayers more than 1,000 people were gathered outside the Bawaslu headquarters to take part in a mass prayer together. It's still unknown if the protests will turn violent again tonight, but, for the police, fatigue was already starting to set in.

"I haven’t gone home in two days—I’m so tired," Rio, an officer with the National Police Mobile Brigade (Brimob), told VICE.

Authorities claim that the riots weren't the work of actual Prabowo supporters or even local residents of Central Jakarta. Local police told the press that there were actually two waves of people who hit the streets last night, a group of orderly protestors who disbursed around 9pm, shortly after breaking their Ramadan fast together, and a second wave who showed up around 11pm and began to riot.

"After 9 o’clock it was no longer a protest," the National Police Chief Tito explained. "In more accurate terms, they were rioters with criminal intent, attacking officers and committing arson. This is different. We don’t want the public to think that peaceful protests were disbanded and that there was a repressive response from the police."

In Slipi, West Jakarta, where rioters set fire to a police dormitory, many of those arrested were drunk and from towns outside city limits, the police said.

It's a common claim that protests—and riots—are often filled with thugs bussed in from West Java and Banten provinces, which both border the city. The National Police echoed the allegations on Wednesday, with spokesman M. Iqbal telling the press that officers had found envelopes stuffed with cash on several of the rioters.

"Our preliminary finding is that the majority of them were from outside Jakarta," he told Kumparan. "They were from West Java, Banten, and there were some from Central Java, too. We have evidence."

VICE reporters interviewed residents of Tanah Abang and Slipi on Wednesday to find that most locals were saying the same thing. One man, a resident of Tanah Abang, told VICE that he didn't recognize any of the rioters.

"The residents here were not involved in the riots at all," Darmawan told VICE. "The people were gathered here since last night and they burned everything they saw, including trash cans. We were so scared, so none of us left the house. If any of them died, it wasn’t our doing."

In Slipi, locals had stripped and badly beaten a man they accused of rioting the night before. VICE's reporters found him bloodied and sitting on the curb near a crowd of men. They told us he was suspected of being a "provocateur."

Later, outside Tarakan Hospital, in Central Jakarta, VICE's reporters met a man who was on the streets during last night's riot. Husein was standing outside the ER in a blood-stained long-sleeve denim shirt. He traveled to Jakarta from his home in Jambi, on the island of Sumatra, to protest Bawaslu and the KPU, two organizations he accused of covering up cheating by the Jokowi camp.

"I deliberately came to Jakarta to join the movement," he told VICE. "We joined because we saw the KPU’s fraud. That’s why we’re mobilizing. Last night we hosted a joint prayer from 8pm to 9:30pm. We then went to the mosque in Al Barokah. When we entered the mosque, we heard shots from outside. We were under attack from midnight until 2 in the morning. We panicked because we were surrounded, so we had to defend ourselves, throwing rocks and sticks."

Husein told VICE that he was shot in the chest with a rubber bullet. He said that he planned to move the protest to the KPU headquarters if the Bawaslu demonstrations failed to make an impact. But what about the Constitutional Court challenge, our reporter asked. Isn't that enough?

"We don’t trust the Constitutional Court because they all have been controlled by Jokowi’s regime," Husein claimed. "They conspire against us. Holding peaceful protest was the least we could do to oppose them. We want the world to know about this. We want them to know what’s going on in Indonesia right now."

—VICE's Adi Renaldi and Arzia Tivany Wargadiredja contributed to this report