Why streets burn in Indonesia but not in the Philippines

In Indonesia, outrage sparks protests; in the Philippines, outrage gets killed before it can speak.

On the last Thursday of August, a motorcycle taxi driver named Affan Kurniawan was killed by a police armored vehicle outside Indonesia’s House of Representatives. He was 21, still young enough to carry the traces of boyhood in his face, still old enough to know the weight of delivering food orders for strangers who would never remember his name. 

Affan wasn’t even a protester; he was completing a food delivery when the vehicle struck him. Within hours, his face was on every Indonesian screen, shared millions of times until the name “Affan” became both a chant and a curse.

To Indonesians, Affan was the symbol of what millions already knew: the poor work until they collapse, while the state treats their lives as disposable.

The Philippines has its own Affans. In 2017, Kian delos Santos, 17, was dragged into a Caloocan alley and executed by police during former president Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war. His last words “may exam pa po ako bukas” were recorded by witnesses. 

In 2022, Chad Booc, a Lumad teacher, was shot dead in Davao de Oro after years of being red-tagged. And in 2020, Frenchie Mae Cumpio, a 26-year-old community journalist, was jailed for “terror financing” on fabricated charges. All of them are ordinary Filipinos. All of them are crushed by a system that protects itself first.

Privilege amid poverty

The protests in Indonesia were not only about Affan’s death. They were also about parliamentary greed. Indonesians learned that their 580 lawmakers each receive a 50 million rupiah ($3,000) housing allowance every month — ten times Jakarta’s minimum wage. For workers already drowning in inflation, this revelation was gasoline on fire.

The Philippines faces its own grotesque version of this inequality. Here, corruption is stitched into silk jackets and paraded down Paris runways by nepo babies.

Claudine Co, daughter of Christopher Co, whose company Hi-Tone Construction cornered billions in flood control projects, attended Paris Fashion Week in a ₱170,000 designer jacket. She once boarded a private plane to La Union, while families in the provinces her father’s contracts were meant to protect climbed onto their rooftops to escape floods.

Her boyfriend, Lemuel Lubiano, the heir to another flood-control empire, posed with her in curated photoshoots and co-parented a Bichon worth ₱380,000 — a single dog costing more than an entire household’s annual income in a flooded barangay in the Philippines.

Jammy Cruz, daughter of another DPWH contractor with ₱3.5 billion in projects, once filmed herself showing off Chanel handbags worth ₱382,000 and a luxury car “gifted” by her father. She deleted her videos after the outrage, but not before the internet saw enough: every peso washed away in fake infrastructure resurfaces as a handbag, a boarding pass, a glass of champagne raised somewhere in Europe.

This is what corruption looks like in the Philippines: one class flaunting wealth that another class literally paid for with its drowning houses.

Red-tagging as ‘license to kill’

Affan’s death pushed Indonesians into the streets. In Jakarta, protesters hurled rocks at riot police and torched vehicles. In Makassar, the regional parliament building was set ablaze, killing three people. Demonstrations spread from Surabaya to Yogyakarta, even through torrential rain.

In the Philippines, anger rarely reaches this scale. Jeepney drivers hold transport strikes, but politicians dismiss them as traffic nuisances. Farmers march to demand land reform, but are ignored or worse, red-tagged. Students protest tuition hikes, only to be accused of destabilizing the government. 

Each grievance is treated as isolated, never as part of a broader system. Yet taken together, they are just as combustible as Indonesia’s. The only difference is that in the Philippines, protest is smothered before it can spark.

The reason is simple: red-tagging. In Indonesia, protesters risk batons and tear gas. In the Philippines, protesters risk death.

Red-tagging is the state practice of branding critics as “communists” or “terrorists.” The Supreme Court itself has admitted that it is a “direct threat to life, liberty, and security.” In practice, it operates like a death warrant.

The practice intensified in 2017 after peace talks between the government and the Communist Party of the Philippines collapsed. Duterte issued Executive Order 70, which created the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and institutionalized a “Whole-of-Nation” counterinsurgency campaign. What this meant in reality was the systematic harassment of human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, trade unionists, students, teachers, and even LGBTQ+ leaders.

The killings followed. In 2018, nine sugarcane farmers in Sagay, Negros Occidental, were massacred after being accused of having ties to the New People’s Army. In 2021, human rights lawyer Angelo Karlo “AK” Guillen was stabbed in the head with a screwdriver in Iloilo; his attackers stole nothing but his case files. He had just defended indigenous leaders accused of being NPA members.

By May 2025, election watchdogs had documented over 1,750 election-related violations, with red-tagging making up 80% of the cases. Whole progressive blocs like Makabayan were branded as communist fronts. Opposition figures like Neri Colmenares, and even non-political groups like teachers’ unions, were systematically targeted.

The machine runs on billions. In 2025, the administration of president President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. tripled the budget of the NTF-ELCAC, setting aside a staggering P7.8 billion for its barangay development program. 

On paper, the money is for roads and electrification. In reality, it is the same agency accused for years of running smear campaigns, plastering activists’ faces on tarpaulins, spreading disinformation, and running troll armies on Facebook and TikTok. What is sold to the public as “development” is, in practice, surveillance and silencing.

The Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 made the practice even deadlier: it allows the government to surveil anyone it brands a “terrorist,” freeze their assets, and detain them without charge for up to 24 days. By 2025, 227 individuals had already been charged under the law, many on flimsy or nonexistent evidence.

The issue has escalated beyond national borders, drawing the attention of the international community. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has repeatedly called for the practice to end, warning that the Philippines is in breach of its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). 

Amnesty International has described red-tagging as a “license to kill.” Yet under Marcos, the abuses continue. His first 100 days in office passed without any progress on addressing red-tagging, torture, or extrajudicial killings. The UN Human Rights Council’s failure to table a resolution in 2022 left thousands of victims in limbo, their families waiting for justice that never comes.

Silence as state policy

In Indonesia, outrage was enough to set parliament buildings ablaze. In the Philippines, outrage is strangled before it can even form. Every strike dismissed, every farmer’s march red-tagged, every journalist silenced, every student protest criminalized. What remains is a country where silence is not the absence of sound but the enforcement of fear.

Kurniawan’s death turned Jakarta’s streets into fire. Delos Santos’ and Booc’s death should have been a spark. Instead, the state smothered them, pouring water on the flame and calling it “peace and order.” 

Filipinos live grievances taller than their flooded streets, yet even mourning is treated as a crime. Speak against injustice and the state brands you a terrorist. Cry for fairness, and they call it destabilization. Our outrage is smothered before it even sparks, while the elite sip champagne in Paris, showing off handbags bought with money meant to keep our homes from drowning.

Protest is dangerous not for the bruises it leaves, but for the truths it reveals: a system built to crush its people. In Indonesia, to protest is to risk a broken bone. In the Philippines, the price of dissent is death.