Imagine a place – silent, homogeneous, where conformity replaces diversity, and difference is treated as a threat. It is no longer a safe space, but a repressive environment where people are denied the freedom to express their true selves as members of society. As the state increasingly polices its citizens and funding that once sustained civic space begins to disappear, fear and exclusion become normalized. This article explores the consequences of a state that refuses to listen to, acknowledge, and protect diversity. Yet, it also offers hope by imagining a future in which people stand together in solidarity to defend and rebuild civic space on their own terms.
What happens to our civic space?
In July 2026, multiple incidents in Indonesia involved transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals being attacked in public while a group of bystanders filmed the assaults, sometimes live-streaming and sharing the footage online. Homophobic online campaigns led by anti-LGBTQ groups calling themselves “Anti-Boti”, have called for individuals labeled boti, a derogatory term used for non-heterosexual male and gender-nonconforming people, to be “returned to normal” through violence. These campaigns have manifested in mob attacks across several cities in Indonesia.
In one widely reported incident, at least 10 trans women in Bogor, West Java were chased and attacked violently. Furthermore, local governments and community groups have cited Presidential Regulation No.111/2025 on National Security and Defence Policy–which categorizes the spread of LGBTQ culture as non-military security threat, to justify anti-LGBTQ campaigns, public declarations, and proposed regulations targeting LGBTQ communities. The regulation establishes national defence policy for 2025–2029 under Law No. 3 of 2002. Its classification of the “spread of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer culture” as a non-military threat has sparked debate. Because the classification lacks adequate conceptual and legal grounds, it risks securitizing LGBTQ people and legitimizing human rights violations against them in Indonesia.
What happens when the state goes beyond regulating civic space and begins deciding who is legitimate enough to be part of it?
Civic space is not curtailed only through banning protests, the arrest of activists, or shutting down organizations. It can also shrink when certain people are deemed socially, morally, or politically illegitimate. When people fear leaving their homes, communities hesitate to organize, or activists think twice before speaking out or expressing opinions online, civic space has already begun to contract, even in the absence of formal prohibition.
Nono Sugiyono, chairperson of Arus Pelangi, an Indonesian LGBTQ Federation reflects:
“Indonesia is experiencing an increasingly evident narrowing of civic space. Changes in the climate for freedom of expression create an atmosphere of fear in society, both online and offline. The situation is becoming increasingly complex, particularly for LGBTI communities, as social pressure and regulations place growing restrictions on their right to live openly and safely. People are also becoming more cautious about expressing their views, fearing legal or social repercussions. This phenomenon reflects a decline in civil liberties and human rights in Indonesia."
The state does not always repress civic actors directly. It can create an environment where communities, political groups, and local authorities become agents of restriction themselves.
The recent anti-LGBTQ mobilization illustrates this transformation, especially when the campaign is backed by the government agenda, as Tempo found in their investigative report on The Orchestration of Anti-LGBTQ Hate Narratives on Social Media. A national security narrative can move from presidential policy into political rhetoric, from rhetoric into local government initiatives, and from those initiatives into community surveillance, public exposure, intimidation, and violence.
Hence, the anti-LGBT campaign is not just about LGBTQ rights. It also shows how civic space itself is being reshaped and reorganized.
CIVICUS currently categorizes Indonesia's civic space as ‘obstructed’ under President Prabowo, citing criminalization, harassment, attacks against activists, restrictions on protest, and increasing military involvement in civilian affairs. Human rights defender Andri Yunus was violently targeted in an acid attack by military personnel, which cost him his eyesight. This assault occurred after he demanded accountability regarding military involvement in civilian affairs, specifically during discussions on revising Indonesia's National Army Law on 15 March 2025. A year later, on 12 March 2026, Andrie was attacked. On 20 March, the House of Representatives finally approved the revision. The proposed changes sparked debate over the military’s possible return to civilian affairs, including the revival of its dual function in civilian institutions.
Who owns civic space when funding is cut
Indonesia’s civic space is under pressure from both domestic and external influences. Domestically, securitization, conservative mobilization, criminalization, and the growing use of state and non-state actors in policing dissent are narrowing the space available for civic participation and collective action. Internationally, the rapid withdrawal of foreign financial assistance is reducing the resources that have historically enabled civil society to protect and expand that space.
The immediate concern is organizational survival: Can organizations retain staff while maintaining legal support and documentation? Can they continue community organizing, advocacy, protection, and emergency response? A deeper question is what happens to civic space when resources that sustained it disappear?
In 2016, Barbara Unmüßig, a former President of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Foundation, warned that one of the government’s tactics against civil society was cutting off the financial lifeline connecting local organizations to international support. Restrictions on foreign funding, she argued, could portray international support as “foreign interference” and weaken critical civil society.
Ten years later, things look different, and perhaps even more complicated.
Today, pressure on civic spaces comes not only from governments seeking to limit local movements’ access to international support. International funding is also being scaled back.
International funding can create an unequal relationship between donors and movements. It can influence political priorities, push for more professionalization, create dependency, and sometimes favor short-term projects instead of long-term organizing.
However, foreign funding should not always be seen as foreign intervention.
At its best, international funding is a form of solidarity. It means people and organizations from different countries share resources, knowledge, and support so that communities can exercise their rights and participate in decisions that affect them. Foreign funding can also be seen as a form of reparative efforts for harms inflicted on former colonized country, as mandated by the UN General Assembly through Resolution 2626.
The key question is not just where the money comes from, but who controls it, who decides the agenda, and whether movements retain their independence.
When ‘solidarity’ disappears
The withdrawal of international funding raises big questions about shrinking civic space. What is happening to civic space in countries that once funded expansion elsewhere?
If governments and institutions that once supported open civic space, human rights, democracy, and feminist organizing are stepping back, shrinking civic space may not be happening only in Indonesia.
This may reflect a broader international shift away from the ideals of open civic space and democratic society.
This does not mean assuming that international support was always benevolent. Foreign support has often been shaped by geopolitical interests, foreign policy, and strategic priorities. From this, we should ask: if solidarity and acts of reparation disappear when politically inconvenient, was it solidarity or always foreign policy with a certain agenda?
Is the withdrawal of funding merely a funding crisis, or does it signal a broader retreat from international solidarity to a democratic commitment to open civic space?
This is not an argument that movements should wait for international donors to return. Quite the opposite. The withdrawal should compel us to reconsider what kind of civic space and infrastructure we want to build and who should own and sustain it.
The future civic space we imagine
Let us imagine three possible futures of civic space in Indonesia.
First, civil society survives but becomes increasingly professionalized, cautious, and disconnected from grassroots communities. Organizations focus more on institutional compliance and risk management, while activism becomes increasingly confined to formal institutions and professional advocacy. Second, as funding disappears, organizations shrink, and activists retreat into survival mode. Movements compete for dwindling resources and become fragmented, while state and conservative actors occupy an increasing share of the public sphere. Last, movements build decentralized civic infrastructure based on solidarity, mutual aid, shared resources, and collective protection.
Of these three futures, the last is the one we should choose to build.
That future will not materialize unless we strengthen relationships across movements. In Emma Dabiri’s words, ‘coalition building, moving beyond allyship’ in her work to reimagine building solidarity by moving allyship to coalition building across movements1. It means sharing knowledge, expertise, emergency funds, and physical space and infrastructure. It means recognizing that community organizers, workers, artists, lawyers, journalists, human and environmental rights defenders, and LGBTQ activists may advance different causes, but they are all protecting the fundamental rights to organize, participate, and dissent within a shared civic space. Each is asserting the same fundamental principle that people have the right to organize, speak, dissent, and participate in shaping the just society to which we all aspire.
It also means rebuilding something that no donor can provide: class and collective political consciousness – a modality to achieve an open civic space.
Resistance becomes critical in rebuilding this consciousness. It does not always have to take the form of policy submission or formal advocacy. It can take creative forms of resistance, from artivism2 and storytelling to mutual aid initiatives, resource and infrastructure sharing, strengthening community education, and the creation of spaces where people can come together to imagine and reimagine the future. Feminist scholar Raisa Kamila, a writer and PhD Researcher at SOAS University of London reminded me and the rest of the audience during her speech at the Jakarta International Literary Festival (JILF) 2026 of the importance of preserving our nongkrong3 culture as a way for people and communities to gather, share concerns, and build collective imaginations.
The future we imagine collectively
The future of civic space cannot depend entirely on whether donors find it politically convenient to support it. Nor should international solidarity be dismissed as foreign intervention simply because resources cross borders. The challenge is to build forms of solidarity that are accountable to movements themselves rather than to geopolitical interests.
Indonesia may be entering another difficult phase for civic space. The question is not simply how civil society survives when foreign funding disappears. Rather, it is whether activists can build civic infrastructures that are rooted deeply enough in communities to withstand being withdrawn, outsourced, or shut down.
Perhaps there is an equally important question for the international community: if we are no longer willing to invest in open civic space abroad, are we still willing to defend it at home?
The future of civic space may ultimately depend not on who funds it, but on whether we continue to believe that people – everywhere – have the right to create it.
Let us imagine a future in which movements build decentralized civic infrastructure grounded on solidarity, mutual aid, shared resources, and collective protection. This vision becomes possible when people come together across movements, strengthen solidarity, share resources and systems of mutual support, and cultivate class consciousness. Through these efforts, communities can collectively imagine and create a future where civic space is not granted by the state but actively claimed, sustained, and defended by the people.
It also means rebuilding what Hunt and Benford (2004) reconceptualized: collective and class consciousness4.
People need to believe that collectively, they have the right to speak, organize, dissent, create, and participate, even when the state tells them otherwise. This requires both resistance and solidarity in action.
The objective is not merely to survive repression, but to imagine and build a more just future within an open and inclusive civic space.
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Lini Zurlia was previously the Advocacy Manager, ASEAN SOGIE Caucus, and currently the Deputy Director at Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR).
Disclaimer: This published work was prepared with the support of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung. The views and analysis contained in the work are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the foundation. The author is responsible for any liability claims against copyright breaches of graphics, photograph, images, audio, and text used.
References
1 Dabiri, E. (2021). What white people can do next: From allyship to coalition. Penguin UK.
2 Artivism combines art and activism, using their intersection to offer an alternative way to criticize corrupt power and imagine solidarity across borders amid shrinking civic space. Read more about it here https://beautifultrouble.org/toolbox/tool/artivism or learn about The Southeast Asia Queer Artivist Manifesto https://aseansogiecaucus.org/latest/asc-statements/339-the-southeast-asia-queer-artivist-manifesto
3 An Indonesian term for when a group of people get together to relax and chat
4 Hunt, S. A., & Benford, R. D. (2004). Collective identity, solidarity, and commitment. The Blackwell companion to social movements, 433-457.
