Cyber Terror, the Academic Anti-corruption Movement and Indonesian Democratic Regression

This article examines a series of cyber terror attacks in 2019 on academics who protested the bill revising Law No. 30/2002, also known as the Corruption Eradication Commission (Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi, or KPK) Law. Recent research has highlighted a shrinking civic space as one prominent sign of Indonesia's democratic regression. However, how and to what extent this shrinking has occurred in the digital public sphere is still not well understood. Based on interviews with 16 academics who were members of the movement and who were subjected to cyber attacks, this article suggests that this amounts to "cyber terrorism". These attacks caused significant psychological distress to the academics involved and damaged the communications and coordination capacities of the movement, ultimately weakening it. This study argues that corrupt oligarchic elites were behind this "cyber terror" campaign, given the sophisticated nature of the cyber attacks and the intended goal of suppressing the academic anti-corruption movement. These elites would benefit from a weakened KPK as it would no longer be able to effectively investigate corruption allegations involving some of its members. These findings reinforce the latest studies on Indonesia's democratic regression.