On 17 August, Indonesia will celebrate 80 years of independence – a moment that its leader Prabowo Subianto has said should be marked by citizens proudly displaying the country’s red and white national flag.
Yet it’s a very different kind of flag that has been flying off shelves ahead of Independence Day: one with a classic pirates’ skull and crossbones wearing a distinctive yellow straw hat.
Disgruntled Indonesians have drawn on the Jolly Roger from Japanese anime One Piece as a symbol of rebellion, and the flag is now appearing everywhere, from graffiti on streets to people’s car windows and balconies.
One Piece, a hugely popular Japanese manga and anime that also received a Netflix adaptation in 2023, has a massive fanbase in Indonesia. Protesters are drawing inspiration from the cartoon’s story about a group of pirates who band together against the forces of an authoritarian regime.
The use of the skull and crossbones symbol appears to have begun on Indonesian social media platforms earlier this year alongside student protests, dubbed “Dark Indonesia”, that swept across cities in response to budget cuts and growing military influence in civilian affairs.
Indonesian artist Kemas Muhammad Firdaus, 28, a mural artist in West Java’s Bekasi district, told Reuters he was painting the pirate sign as a form of protest against government corruption and unemployment.
“Many Indonesians are hoisting the ‘One Piece’ flag because they want the government to listen to them,” said Mr Kemas.
In central Java’s Karanganyar district, flag-maker Dendi Christanto said demand for custom One Piece pirate flags has surged so dramatically in the past month that he’s had to stop taking new orders.
The movement taps into a long tradition of student activism in Indonesia, where protests have historically flared into unrest, most notably in 1998, when mass demonstrations brought down President Suharto after 32 years in power.
The spread of the Jolly Roger has not gone unnoticed: the deputy house speaker in the country’s parliament called the trend divisive, while another lawmaker went as far as to label it “borderline treason”.
This week, local media reported that authorities in East Java had seized several One Piece flags, in a move Amnesty International condemned as excessive.
“They didn’t have to do all that, accusing them of dividing Indonesia – that’s wrong,” Mr Kemas said. “It’s just art.”
President Prabowo’s office denied any involvement, saying the government had not ordered the confiscations.
But security minister Budi Gunawan said flying the One Piece flag before the country’s 80th Independence Day is a crime and disrespects the national flag. He warned that the government would take legal action to protect state symbols.
The deputy speaker, Sufmi Dasco Ahmad, also reportedly said that “we have detected and received input from security agencies that there is indeed an attempt to divide unity. My appeal to all the nation’s children is to unite and fight against such things”.
In a Medium post, Mulawarman University student Farhan Rizqullah wrote: “The flag they were talking about was the Jolly Roger of the Straw Hat Pirates, Luffy’s goofy, grinning skull wearing his signature straw hat. It was the symbol of the lovable crew I had just watched sail off into the sunset.
“And now, a real-world government, the government of Indonesia, the world’s third-largest democracy, was treating this cartoon emblem as a legitimate threat to national security. It was being called a ‘provocation’, a ‘systematic movement’ to divide the nation, and a symbol of potential ‘treason’.”
Ubedilah Badrun, a sociology lecturer at Jakarta State University, said the government should listen to its people rather than overreact to the flying of One Piece flag by branding it an act of rebellion.
“In terms of sociopolitical symbolism, any symbol that emerges massively in public arenas, including on social media, is an expression of citizens to convey something,” he told Tempo.
