Old clip of detained debt collector falsely linked to Indonesia protests

Published on April 21, 2025 at 06:25
3 min read
By Felix NATHANIEL, AFP Indonesia

Thousands of Indonesians rallied in February against the government's proposed budget cuts but a video circulating online does not show a protester arrested for burning portraits of the country's leaders. The misrepresented clip actually depicts police officers taking a debt collector into custody.

"The moment the mastermind behind the burning of the Prabowo-Gibran photos during a protest was arrested today after being on the run for six days," reads the Indonesian-language text overlay on a TikTok video, referring to the archipelago's President Prabowo Subianto and Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka.

The clip -- shared April 2, 2025 and watched over 12,000 times since -- shows a hooded person escorted by a police officer leaving a vehicle.

Screenshot of the false post taken on April 10, 2025

The video circulated following nationwide demonstrations in February against budget cuts by Prabowo's government aimed at funding a free-meal programme for schoolkids and other big-ticket campaign pledges (archived link).

Local media Detik reported some protesters burned photos of the president and Gibran in Malang city in East Java province (archived link).

Malang Police Department spokesperson Yudi Risdiyanto told AFP on April 10 that no arrests had been made in relation to the burning of Prabowo and Gibran's portraits.

Kompas news organisation separately said at least six people were arrested but later released in Makassar in South Sulawesi province during a demonstration that turned chaotic (archived here and here).

The video surfaced elsewhere on TikTok, SnackVideo and Facebook alongside similar claims.

But a reverse image search on Google found it was taken from a news report that local media TvOne uploaded on YouTube on February 23, 2023 titled "Debt Collector Yells at Police, Threatens to Kill Driver" (archived link).

Its caption says police arrested seven debt collectors accused of forcibly seizing a person's car and yelling at the police, and that they could be jailed for up to seven years.

Screenshot comparison of the false post (left) and TvOne's video

KompasTV also reported about the arrests and published a video showing the same man flanked by officers (archived link).

Screenshot comparison of Kompas's video (left) and TvOne's video

AFP has debunked more misinformation related to protests in Indonesia.

Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.

E-mail