#KaburAjaDulu and the urge to resist, in whatever form, from whatever place

“When you see the problems, you run to the problems, you face the problems, you overcome the problems.”

These are the platitudes President Prabowo Subianto offered the editors-in-chief of the nation’s leading news publications in response to the #KaburAjaDulu (#JustRunAwayFirst) hashtag that has gone viral across the country in recent weeks.

The hashtag has been used to express the desire to leave Indonesia, in response to the socio-political turmoil now engulfing the country. According to big data consulting company Drone Emprit, the hashtag had been used on X as early as September 2023, but only started to really pick up steam towards the end of January 2025, particularly after the Prabowo administration implemented its massive spending cuts. Researchers from Monash University Indonesia’s Data & Democracy Research Hub consider it part of a wider trend of public discontent with the country’s conditions that culminated in the widespread Indonesia Gelap (Dark Indonesia) protests in February 2025.

Denial and cynicism on social media 

Prabowo’s vapid “words of wisdom” are typical of most of his government’s reactions to the phenomenon. Agrarian and Spatial Planning Minister Nusron Wahid asked if those espousing the hashtag were even truly citizens. Deputy Workforce Minister Immanuel Ebenezer Gerungan said that those who leave shouldn’t bother coming back.

Meanwhile, everyone’s favourite “special presidential envoy for youth and arts workers”, Raffi Ahmad, seemed to miss the point entirely by trying to reframe the hashtag as a call for more people to become migrant workers abroad and serve the country by bringing in foreign currency.

This is in keeping with the lack of nuance this topic brings on social media. In one corner are fiercely patriotic Prabowo sympathizers, authentic or otherwise (bots and buzzers), with their cries of “Good riddance” and “Other countries have it worse” and “You’ll never make it out there anyway.” In the other corner are the jaded cynics, saying that anywhere is better than the dumpster fire that is Indonesia.

With every new scandal that each week seems to bring, it is easier to see the merits of the latter argument. The recent revelation that we may all have been duped by state-owned oil company Pertamina into paying more for worse-quality gasoline, for example, is enough to dismay even the most ardent flag-wavers.

The perennial longing of the Indonesian diaspora 

But what strikes me as most interesting about the hashtag and the associated movement is that it has both a hint of desperation and a sort of built-in self-deprecation. It’s not #KaburAja (#JustRunAway) or #KaburSekarang (#RunAwayNow) or #AyoKabur (#LetsRunAway). The inclusion of the word “dulu” (first) seems to acknowledge that leaving the country is not a comprehensive solution, but perhaps the only available option given that other solutions do not seem to be forthcoming. “Just escape first and think about what to do later,” the hashtag seems to imply.

When I first watched Lola Amaria’s documentary Eksil (Exile), about Indonesians who had been stranded abroad due to the 1965 communist purge, one of the things that stayed with me was how one of the exiles, living in the Netherlands, described the difference between Indonesian exiles and other political exiles living in the country. Exiles from other places eventually assimilate completely, he said, and see themselves as Dutch. He pointed to how some Palestinian exiles have even become members of parliament.

But the Indonesian exiles, he said, live a sort of half-life; physically in their new countries, but with their minds always on Indonesia.

Student movements — from Melbourne to New York

It is a sentiment that seems to ring true for many members of the Indonesian diaspora around the world, now more than ever. Last year, in the wake of the Peringatan Darurat (Emergency Warning) protests, a group of Indonesians in Melbourne started the Melbourne Bergerak (Get moving) Alliance, framing itself as a resistance movement.

Following the recent Indonesia Gelap protests, Indonesians in New York have done something similar by starting Jong Columbia (Young Columbia),  a callback to the nationalist youth organizations that sprung up in resistance to Dutch colonialism and used the term jong. This group has now brought Jakarta’s weekly human rights vigil, Aksi Kamisan (Thursday Action), which takes place outside the presidential palace, to the Big Apple.

The cynical response to this is that a bunch of idealistic students and academics gathering in the relative safety of a first-world country are not going to do anything to change the situation in Indonesia. And that very well might be true.

But what, then, is the alternative, given corruption, incompetence, the possible reincarnation of an authoritarian regime, and a political “opposition” with paper-thin convictions? Running to the problems, as the President suggests, seems preposterous and naive, given that the buck eventually stops at the desk of an alleged human rights violator and war criminal. Yet rolling over and doing nothing seems equally impossible.

Disrupting the status quo

I would argue that it is this inner conflict that animates #KaburAjaDulu. A compromise between pretending the problems don’t exist and a legitimate fear of confronting them head on.

It is driven by a desire to do something, anything, to disrupt the status quo – to make the powers that be realize that we know that things are not alright, and we won’t be lulled into a stupor. It feels like a natural extension of referring to former president Jokowi by his birth name ‘Mulyono’ as a form of passive criticism of his policies.  And I can only imagine that, as this “new” administration goes on, more such small movements of defiance will continue to pop up.

In a time when authoritarianism is on the rise globally, it is perhaps understandable to wish for bigger, louder, more forceful forms of resistance. But the truth is, in a country still in the hands of oligarchic elites, and lacking any potent, organised opposition, even the most massive demonstrations can only achieve, at best, temporary wins.

Take the Reformasi Dikorupsi (Reformation Corrupted) protests in September 2019, the largest student protests in Indonesia since the fall of Soeharto in 1998. The protests succeeded in getting the House of Representatives (the Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat or DPR)  to cancel its plans to pass the problematic new Criminal Code. And yet just two years later, in December 2022, the Code was passed with few, if any, of the concerns raised by protesters being addressed.

The much smaller Peringatan Darurat protests in August 2024 could also be considered a success, as they resulted in the DPR halting the passage of a revision of the 2017 Regional Elections law that would have allowed then-president Jokowi’s younger son, Kaesang Pangarep, to run for governor in Central Java. But what’s to stop the House deciding to pass the exact same revisions tomorrow, or next month, or any other time before the next elections (assuming we still have elections)?

Given this, gestures like #KaburAjaDulu perhaps should not be judged on whether they produce concrete “results”, but rather viewed as a way to keep the fires of dissent burning, no matter how small the flame.

On a long enough time horizon, perhaps even the most impressive uprising against the powers that be may ultimately end up failing. But in the same vein, even the smallest protest may have the potential to become the catalyst for something larger.