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View all search resultsAnalysis: Prabowo’s nationalist image in question amid rampant hate crimes
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Presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto. (Antara/Sigid Kurniawan)
W
hen a mob rampaged through Maria Veronica Nina’s villa in Sukabumi, West Java, she would have had every right to feel vengeful for the hate crime committed against her property.
On June 27, a demonstration turned into a riot inside Maria’s villa, which at the time was rented by a group of Christian students for a religious retreat. Videos that circulated from the event showed perpetrators taking down a wooden cross from the wall, destroying doors and windows as they shouted obscene remarks because the villa was used as a place of worship by a minority group.
Seven suspects have since been arrested by law enforcement, and the ensuing reactions saw widespread condemnation from government officials and civil society groups alike.
As compensation, Maria was given Rp 100 million (US$6,164) by West Java Governor Dedi Mulyadi to repair her property, a controversial move as many perceived the act to be performative and failed to address the systematic issue at hand. However, in a mark of good faith, she chose to donate the money and return it to the community for the construction of new mosques in the area.
Although the case presented a “happy ending”, hate crime remains a rampant and pressing issue across the country.
A study by Amnesty International Indonesia cited 82 cases of religion-based violence and intimidation from 2022 to 2024. These incidents range from the prohibition of worship, destruction of prayer sites, and objections to the construction of new religious buildings. Similarly, another study made by Setara Institute corroborated Amnesty’s findings, reporting a sharp increase in religious hate from 2023 to 2024. The Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) also found 23 cases of religion-based crimes in 2025 alone. Both Setara and Kontras found that most incidents occurred in West Java.
Cases of religion-based hate crimes paint a larger picture of the polarizing reality of modern Indonesia. One commonality among these incidents across all other cases of hate crime is that they befall minority groups, the most vulnerable in society.
