Does Jakarta School Bombing Herald a New Wave of Terror in Indonesia?
Last week, Indonesia experienced an unprecedented act of violence when explosive devices detonated at a school complex in the capital Jakarta during Friday prayers.
Over 90 students were taken to hospital, some with burns and others with injuries from flying shrapnel and shattered glass, although there were no reported deaths.
The suspected perpetrator, a 17-year-old student at a neighboring school who has not been named, was also taken to hospital, where he reportedly underwent surgery after he was similarly injured in the blasts.
He had apparently prepared seven crude explosive devices at home, three of which failed to detonate, having learned bomb making on the “dark web.” Some of the devices had been placed inside soft drink cans, Indonesian police said on Tuesday.
Also found at the scene were two toy guns covered in scrawling handwriting, which featured the names of perpetrators of shootings such as Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the Christchurch mosque attacker who killed 51 people in New Zealand in 2019, and Anton Lund Pettersson, who stabbed a teacher and student to death at a school in Sweden in 2015.
One of the guns also bore the words “For Agartha,” referencing the hollow earth conspiracy theory that an advanced kingdom populated by superhuman cadres lies inside the core of the Earth.
According to Jakarta police chief Asep Edi Suheri, the perpetrator was inspired by attacks previously carried out by white supremacist figures and neo-Nazi groups, although he did not appear to belong to any specific hardline group or network.
The alleged motive, Suheri said, was revenge for perceived bullying and loneliness. The student may also have been inspired by other school shootings, such as the Columbine High School massacre, in which 12 students and one teacher were killed in 1999.
The references by the alleged perpetrator demonstrate that school attacks and other acts of violence by those espousing far right and white supremacist ideology are sadly nothing new. However, this is the first time that such an attack, particularly involving such a young individual, has taken place in Indonesia.
This is not to say Indonesia has not experienced violence.
The country has been no stranger to radical ideology that has led to attacks, including the 2002 Bali bombing, which killed 202 people and injured over 200 more, and the 2003 attack on the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, which left 12 people dead.
These attacks and others, including a twin attack on the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in 2009, were all carried out by members affiliated with the Islamic hardline group Jemaah Islamiyah. This group, which has been loosely linked to al-Qaida, officially disbanded in 2024.
More recently, Indonesia has seen attacks by members of the hardline Muslim group Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) – said to be inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) – whose members attacked three churches and a police station in the Indonesian city of Surabaya in 2018, killing 15 in a series of suicide bombings.
JAD members also attacked a church in Makassar in 2021, injuring 14.
However, school attacks in Indonesia are rare, as is violence that directly references right-wing ideology or far right figures from Europe, Oceania, or North America.
In other parts of Southeast Asia, however, there have been some warning signs that online far right and white supremacist ideology, not linked to any specific group, has started to spread.
Much of this ideology is a motley crew of mismatched ideas, inspirations, and conspiracy theories rather than the more coherent and consistent messaging found within specific radical groups. Yet it demonstrates a continued trend of lonely, disillusioned, angry, and usually male youth turning to the internet and dark web with deadly consequences.
In 2012, a 13-year-old student was killed with an axe by a 16-year-old student at River Valley High School in Singapore, in a premeditated and highly orchestrated attack in a school bathroom. The attacker was tried and sentenced to 16 years in prison on grounds of diminished responsibility.
He had reportedly also asked to be shot dead by police at the scene, mirroring a number of murder-suicide attacks in schools in the United States and Europe.
In September this year, a 14-year-old student was issued a restriction order under the umbrella of the Internal Security Acts in Singapore when it was found that he had been influenced by a “salad bar” of extremist ideologies, including being inspired by ISIL and far right extremism. He also reportedly identified as an “incel”: shorthand for “involuntary celibate,” which is mostly used to describe men who are unable to find romantic or sexual partners.
Back to the case of the attack in Jakarta, the Indonesian police have so far been careful not to describe it as a “terrorist” incident or a religiously motivated act of violence, despite the fact that it took place during Muslim Friday prayers.
It is also not clear to what extent the attacker seriously subscribed to any kind of radical ideology, or whether he had simply been drawn to a web of online conspiracy theories and far right figures. However, the fact that he was willing to follow through with his plans to attack the school raises the question of whether it matters if he seriously understood or endorsed the references scrawled on the guns found at the scene or not.
In days gone by, extremism in Indonesia often meant joining a physical group where “members” knew each other in person and met frequently at social or community gatherings. These groups usually had strict hierarchies, codes of conduct and regulations – with members awarded titles, roles and positions that sometimes translated to highly orchestrated acts of terror.
The rise of the internet, however, has meant that this is no longer the case.
In a world where disillusioned individuals can now fall into online rabbit holes that bolster violent views – however nonsensical – does the Jakarta attack herald a potential and deadly new form of radicalism in Southeast Asia?
Comments