Part 1

• Exploring the Resistance of the Coastal Farmer Union (PPLP) in the Context of the Sand Iron Mining Plan Conflict in Kulon Progo, Indonesia Eka Zuni Lusi Astuti University of Limerick

  This research focuses on the Coastal Farmer Union’s (PPLP) resistance to land grabbing policy in Kulon Progo, Special Region of Yogyakarta (DIY), Indonesia. The resistance aims to protect coastal land from the sand-iron mining plan and the government policy to certify the land as the property of the Yogyakarta Sultanate. Established in 2006, the PPLP aims to unify coastal farmers and facilitate their resistance to refuse the mining plan and challenge the Sultanate’s domination over land politics in the DIY. The DIY government and the Sultanate use the mining policy to pursue industrialisation and to legalise coastal land as Sultanate property. They utilise the Yogyakarta Specialness Law (UUK) No. 13/2012 to legitimise the Sultanate’s domination in governance, land management, spatial planning, and culture. The PPLP emerged as a subculture group operating within the politics of the people (subaltern politics), employing a range of resistance strategies. The forms of resistance range from overt, direct, and organised to covert, everyday resistance. Each strategy has a different meaning and is operated in a certain time frame. Therefore, this research examines the forms of PPLP resistance strategy using different theories: the anti-power theory by James Holloway, the overt resistance theory in the sense of ‘war of movement’ by Gramsci, and the everyday resistance theory by James Scott. Each theory is used to explain different forms of PPLP resistance strategies. In general, PPLP resistance is a form of anti-power because it is not aimed at seizing state power. The overt, direct, and organised resistance strategy is examined in the sense of the ‘war of movement’ theory. Moreover, the resistance strategies that operate daily or have been institutionalised in coastal farmers’ everyday lives are examined using everyday resistance theory. By employing different strategies, the PPLP has sustained its resistance from 2006 to the present.

• Lawfare against the Fearless: Indonesia’s Civil Society in Peril? Rafiqa Qurrata Ayun Universitas Indonesia

  Since 2019, Indonesia has witnessed a surge in large-scale protests against the government’s growing authoritarianism. While some research views this as a sign of civil society resilience, the extent of this resilience, particularly in maintaining effective diagonal accountability, remains largely underexplored. This study examines four major protest waves—the 2019 ‘Reform Corrupted’ movement, the 2020 anti-Omnibus Law protests, the 2024 ‘Dark Indonesia’ movement, and the 2025 ‘Indonesia Reset’ movement—highlighting a concerning trend of state repression. This often involves ‘lawfare’ tactics targeting protest organisers and social media amplifiers. By analysing court decisions, media reports, social media activity, and conducting interviews with law enforcement and activists, as well as participatory observation of the pro-democracy movements, the study finds that increasing lawfare has increasingly dragged civil society into legal battles, diverting focus from their fundamental demands and weakening their capacity to organise. While resentment among civil society remains high, widespread arrests and criminal charges against protesters have effectively reduced public confidence in expressing dissent. Subsequently, this ongoing repression further narrows the space for civil society to reorganise the pro-democracy movements and mount effective opposition.

• Resisting Neoliberal Education Reforms in Southeast Asia: The Role of Unions and Social Movements Carl Marc Ramota University of the Philippines, Manila

  Neoliberal reforms in education, characterized by corporatization, market-driven policies, and performance-based regimes, have had a profound impact on academic freedom and autonomy in the Philippines and throughout Southeast Asia. These policies have transformed education from a public good into a private commodity, introducing corporate management practices, efficiency-driven evaluations, and the prioritization of marketable courses and research.
  Consequently, state schools now face reduced public funding, pressure to generate private income, and increasing dependence on corporate partnerships and donations. This shift has led to the marginalization of collegial governance, the proliferation of audit culture, and the erosion of academic freedom as faculty are increasingly burdened by performance metrics and administrative compliance.
  This paper examines the role of unions in the education sector in safeguarding academic freedom and labor rights. It focuses on the praxis of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) in the Philippines and its affiliate organizations, highlighting how the struggle against neoliberal reforms in higher education is intertwined with the fight for academic freedom, labor rights, and social justice. The paper emphasizes the importance of sustained union action, regional solidarity, and global collaborations with other unions in the education sector in reclaiming education as a public good and resisting the corporatization of knowledge and learning. These collaborations involve coalition building and international solidarity work through Southeast Asian and international networks, including Education International (EI) and the newly formed Southeast Asia Coalition for Academic Freedom (SEACAD), among others. These coalitions contribute to coalition building, solidarity, capacity building, and provide regional platforms for unionists across the region to stand in solidarity with each other amidst political repression and the evolving education landscape.

• From Popular Culture to Affective Dissent: The One Piece Pirate Flag in Youth-Led Protests in Indonesia and the Philippines Abdullah Faqih Faqih The University of Sydney

  This paper examines how symbols from Japanese popular culture—specifically the One Piece pirate flag (the Jolly Roger)—have been repurposed as tools of political dissent in youth-led protest movements in Indonesia and the Philippines. Focusing on Indonesia’s 2025 Independence Day protests and parallel uses of anime and pop-cultural symbolism in Philippine youth activism, the paper explores how popular culture circulates as an affective and political resource in contemporary Southeast Asia.
  In Indonesia, the One Piece pirate flag emerged as a visual counter-symbol to President Prabowo Subianto’s call to display the national flag (merah-putih), signaling youth frustration with corruption, authoritarian tendencies, and economic precarity. In the Philippine context, anime- and meme-based protest symbols have similarly been mobilized by young activists to critique elite politics, historical revisionism, and democratic erosion. While differing in political context, both cases reveal how globally circulating cultural symbols are locally reworked to express dissent, solidarity, and political anger.
  Drawing on Zizi Papacharissi’s concept of affective publics, the paper argues that the political power of the One Piece flag lies not only in its symbolic meaning but in its capacity to mobilize emotion—hope, irony, anger, and defiance
  —across digitally networked spaces. Social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and TikTok function as infrastructures through which these affective expressions circulate, accumulate, and crystallize into collective action. Rather than forming coherent ideological movements, these protests operate as fluid affective formations, driven by shared feelings and mediated visibility.
  By analyzing online circulation of protest practices, this paper demonstrates how youth in Southeast Asia use popular culture to bridge entertainment and politics, transforming fandom into a language of dissent. The study contributes to youth and cultural studies by highlighting how affect, digital media, and transnational popular culture shape contemporary protest and political belonging in Indonesia and the Philippines.

Part 2

• “Memeification”, Platform Politics, and Transnational Digital Activism: The Milk Tea Alliance as an Online Public Sphere Pablo Henri Ramírez Didou National Autonomous University of Mexico

  The Milk Tea Alliance (MTA) has established itself as one of the most prominent examples of transnational digital activism in Asia, illustrating how meme cultures and platform infrastructures are reshaping contemporary political discourse. Emerging from an online “meme war” in April 2020, the alliance quickly transformed into a decentralized, youth-driven pro-democracy network that connected activists and ordinary internet users in Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and, later, Myanmar. This article develops a theoretical framework for understanding the political reach of memes, integrating insights from cultural theory, communication sciences, and political sociology. Drawing on the concepts of memetic compression, affective publics, algorithmic intermediation, and networked protest, it analyzes how memes function as compressed political signals, how social media algorithms structure their circulation, and how memeticized discourses both enable and limit forms of transnational coordination. The article argues that the MTA illustrates a new form of memeticized political discourse, capable of rapidly generating affective cross-border solidarity, yet structurally fragile due to its dependence on the logics of platforms and the economies of attention. In doing so, it contributes to discussions on digital activism, transnational civil society, and the transformation of public spheres in the age of platforms.

• “Punk Belum Mati”: Music, Protest, and Artistic Freedom in Contemporary Indonesia Guilhem Cassagnes Institut d’Asie Orientale, École normale supérieure de Lyon

  Indonesia’s newly elected president, Prabowo Subianto, captivated the youth with his unconventional political campaign as a “dancing grandpa.” However, this charismatic figure no longer commands universal support among students and young activists, who have mobilized since February 2025 as part of the “Indonesia Gelap” (“Dark Indonesia) movement, opposing the government’s vision of “Visi Indonesia Emas” (“Golden Indonesia Vision”)—a plan to transform Indonesia into a prosperous and powerful nation by its centenary in 2045.
  Amid this wave of dissent, a unifying anthem emerged: “Bayar, Bayar, Bayar” by Sukatani, a punk band from central Java. The song, which denounces the corruption of certain police officers and amplifies the voice of a youth oppressed by an inequitable, oligarchic system, quickly goes vira on social networks. However, under mounting pressure, on February 20, 2025, the band members— Muhammad Syifa Al Lufti (alias Alectroguy) and Novi Citra Indriyati (alias Twister Angel)—released a public video apology addressed to the National Police Chief, General Listyo Sigit Prabowo, and removed the track from streaming platforms. This higly publicized incident underscores the critical issues surrounding artistic freedom in an increasingly less liberal democracy.
  My presentation will analyze the role of music as a vehicle for political dissent in contemporary Indonesia. By situating the Sukatani case within a historical continuum, I will examine how musical expression has helped forge a democratic space for disagreement, essential for restoring the national ideal embodied by Indonesia’s founding president, Sukarno.

• The 2025 Anti-Corruption Protests in the Philippines: Chronology, Demands, and Notes on Related State Responses/Actions Crizel Sicat-De Laza University of the Philippines Diliman David Michael San Juan De La Salle University Jonathan Vergara Geronimo University of the Philippines Diliman

  On September 25, 2025, the anger of the Filipino people over the plunder of funds allocated for flood control erupted in two massive protest actions in Metro Manila—Baha sa Luneta: Aksyon na Laban sa Korapsyon (BSL; Flood in Luneta: Act Now Against Corruption) in the City of Manila and the Trillion Peso March (TPM) at the boundary of Quezon City and Pasig City along EDSA, Philippines—as well as in many similar actions in various parts of the country. These protests were etched into the pages of Philippine history as among the biggest national days of protest in recent years. Similar actions were repeated on November 30, 2025, and are expected to occur again in 2026.
  Guided by Antonio Gramsci’s ideas on counterhegemony, theories on 21st century social movements, and as a contribution to the initial documentation of people’s history and “voices from below” related to the BSL, this paper aims to present a brief chronology of the events that culminated in the BSL, analyze the content of the BSL’s demands, and scrutinize the state’s responses and related actions. In general, this paper seeks to answer the following questions: (1) How did the broad anti-corruption movement that culminated in Baha sa Luneta: Aksyon na Laban sa Korapsyon (BSL) on September 25, 2025 emerge? (2) What were the demands of the BSL? (3) How did the state respond to the grievances raised by the BSL?

• Streets Against the State: Anti-Corruption Protests, Democratic Backsliding, and the Politics of Contention in Contemporary Indonesia Gizem Bütün Social Science University Of Ankara

  Between 2019 and 2025, Indonesia witnessed at least five major waves of mass mobilization — from the 2019 protests against the weakening of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and the 2020 Omnibus Law demonstrations, to the August 2024 “emergency warning” (peringatan darurat) protests against electoral manipulation, the February 2025 Indonesia Gelap (“Dark Indonesia”) movement, and the August–September 2025 nationwide uprising that spread across all 38 provinces following the police killing of delivery driver Affan Kurniawan. Each wave had distinct triggers, yet all expressed a similar critique of Indonesia’s political elite and the pervasive corruption that runs through it.
  This paper examines these recurring cycles of protest as a window into the structural tensions of Indonesia’s post-Reformasi democracy. It argues that the movements reflect a deepening rupture between two worlds of Indonesian politics: an ever-widening gap between the governing elite who inhabit the country’s democratic institutions and the young protesters whose forebears played a crucial role in building those very institutions. The protesters’ demands — strengthening the KPK, passing an asset confiscation law, returning the military to the barracks, reforming the police, and reversing austerity policies — reveal not merely episodic grievances but a systemic crisis of democratic legitimacy, driven by a public that is more informed, more digitally connected, and more willing to test the state’s narrative against everyday experience.
  Situating Indonesia within a broader comparative frame, the paper also explores how protest symbols — most notably the One Piece “straw-hat pirates” flag — traveled across borders to demonstrations in Nepal and the Philippines, pointing to an emerging regional protest culture among Gen-Z youth. By analyzing the overlapping issues of anti-corruption, democratic backsliding, militarization, and economic precarity, the paper contributes to a comparative understanding of 21st century protest movements in Southeast Asia and beyond.

Show Paper Abstracts

Abstract

Keywords

• Indonesia
• Malaysia
• Milk Tea Alliance
• One Piece
• academic freedom
• anti-corruption movement
• civil society
• corporatization
• counterhegemony
• democracy
• digital activism
• domination
• environmentalism
• farmers’ resistance
• land grabbing
• land reclamation
• lawfare
• mass protest
• memes
• music protest
• neoliberal reforms
• people’s history
• platform politics
• protest movements
• resistance
• resistance strategy
• rights to the sea
• social movement
• solidarity
• state repression
• subaltern politics
• transnationalism
• unions
• youth