The key facts

  • Student protests in several Indonesian cities coincided with the second anniversary of Prabowo Subianto's government
  • Fires since July have destroyed more than 1.9 million hectares in Borneo and Sumatra; smog has reached Kuala Lumpur and Singapore
  • More than 60,000 firefighters and 49 aircraft are deployed; police detained six Greenpeace activists

Mass protests against smog

On Tuesday, residents of several Indonesian cities took to the streets to protest against forest fires and the toxic smog that has been worsening the health of thousands of people for weeks. The actions, initiated by students, took place in the capital Jakarta, as well as in Bandung and Yogyakarta on Java, Pekanbaru on Sumatra, and Makassar in South Sulawesi. The demonstrations coincided with the second anniversary of President Prabowo Subianto's government and were directed against what participants saw as incompetence and corruption. Many pointed to the authorities' inability to put out the fires that have been devastating Borneo and Sumatra since July. Banners carried slogans such as 'If we are burning, you are burning with us!' and 'I have the right to breathe. Put out the fires immediately.'

Residents describe the consequences

In the city of Palangkaraya in Borneo, residents told AFP about their despair. 40-year-old street beverage vendor Melsi, crying, said that sales had fallen, prices were rising, and there was no income, and expressed hope that the government would cope with the situation. 29-year-old housewife Sifra said that her husband and two children had been coughing for a month, the smoke penetrates even into the house, and her own health had deteriorated. On Monday, dozens of Palangkaraya residents demanded that a state of emergency be declared.

Detentions and the authorities' response

On Tuesday morning, before the student marches, police detained six Greenpeace activists who had hung banners from a monument at the central Bundaran HI roundabout in Jakarta, said the organization's representative Jenny Sairat. One of the banners read: 'Smog and the Prabowo regime = national catastrophe.' The official spokesperson of the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, Berton Panjaitan, told journalists that more than 60,000 firefighters, including volunteers, are involved in firefighting across the country. 49 aircraft are available for water bombing and cloud seeding to induce rain, although many were periodically unable to fly due to the smog.

Scale of the disaster

According to fire monitoring data from Nusantara Atlas published on Monday, Indonesian fires have destroyed more than 1.9 million hectares of land in the first nine months of 2026. Air pollution has reached high levels as far as Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Fires occur in Indonesia every dry season, but this year they are especially severe, partly due to a particularly powerful episode of the El Niño weather phenomenon.