The report found that the police had used the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext to suppress civil liberties and employ repressive measures, including while dispersing demonstrators. The findings were based on the group's monitoring and advocacy data from June 2020 to May of this year.

"They used the pandemic as a pretext mainly applied to demonstration disbandment and arbitrary arrests. It is worsening Indonesian democracy,” Kontras researcher Rozy Brilian Sodik said during a press conference on Wednesday. "The most arrests were during the demonstrations [against the Job Creation Law] in October 2020.”

The Kontras report found at least 651 cases of violence perpetrated by the police against civilians nationwide, including the use of firearms in violation of procedure and arbitrary arrests.

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“At the regional and police precinct level, the most common forms of violence are shootings. This has resulted in 13 deaths and 98 people injured," Rozy said.

He suspected that the high number of victims was a consequence of the excessive use of force by the police and arbitrary action amid a lack of proper evaluation of police firearm use.

“Even though the police have a preventive instrument, namely the National Police chief regulation on human rights, it has never been used as a reference by the police to take action," Rozy said.

The police also tended to discriminate against certain groups in the enforcement of COVID-19 health rules, the report found. For example, officers arrested protesters in Semarang, Central Java, for forming crowds while protesting the government's plan to extend special autonomy for Papua and West Papua, but when the government, local officials and celebrities created crowds, the police tended either to take no action or send only a warning.

Kontras head of impunity watch Tioria Pretty Stephanie noted that the police attempted to stigmatize protestors with the labels of “anarchists” or “commotion-makers” and called the Papuan protests “separatist movements”.

“This stigma, which [seeks to] delegitimize opinions, can be seen as an attempt to silence [dissent] and also create fear of having those opinions,” Tioria said.

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Repressive police measures have also penetrated into the digital realm, resulting in less space for open civic discourse, the Kontras report found. It identified three "problematic" internal police regulations issued from June 2020 to May of this year. They instructed officers to patrol the internet and to propagate negative sentiment about strikes in opposition to the Job Creation Law; outlined the handling of online defamation cases; and shared methods of curbing news coverage of police violence. The last of the three was revoked a day after it was issued, following a wave of protests on social media.

Kontras called for a comprehensive evaluation of the police and internal reforms to reduce the levels of violence and discrimination.

"In the future, the police must maximize the monitoring mechanism with a transparent and accountable process," Kontras deputy coordinator Arif Nur Fikri said.

The police were not immediately available for comment.

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In a speech during a Bhayangkara Day event at the Presidential Palace, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo reminded the police that they should exercise their authority according to procedures, saying, "Arrests, detentions, searches, confiscations and so on must be done wisely and responsibly."

The event was attended in-person by National Police chief Gen. Listyo Sigit Prabowo, who took office in January, and was joined virtually by other members of the police.

"Remember that our country adheres to the state ideology of Pancasila and is a democratic country, a country that upholds human rights," Jokowi said.