Unrests Threatens Indonesian Heritage
Indonesia’s cultural heritage faces a critical crisis. Following the August 2025 mass protests, historic buildings and cultural sites, many repurposed from Dutch colonial era, have suffered severe damage from arson, looting, and neglect.
The destruction of iconic sites like Surabaya’s Grahadi Building and the Bagawanta Bhari Museum in Kediri highlights the fragile link between heritage preservation, collective memory, and socio-political unrest.
Fire disrupts hybrid heritage and collective memory. Structures like the Grahadi Building, which shifted from colonial instruments to civic spaces, represent Indonesia’s complex postcolonial identity. Their damage erases physical loss and disrupts ongoing negotiations of meaning, fracturing narratives that bind generations to their shared past.
Archaeologists, including the Indonesian Archaeologists Association, are deeply concerned about these events. They emphasise that cultural heritage must be preserved under international frameworks like the 1954 Hague Convention, as it embodies Indonesia’s identity, unity, and educational value. The destruction of sites during protests, regardless of political grievances, is a blow to the nation’s cultural fabric.
The damage extends beyond buildings. Museums like Bagawanta Bhari have suffered looting of valuable artefacts, including ancient statues, traditional batik textiles, and manuscripts, that link to intangible cultural traditions. The loss of these artefacts diminishes Indonesia’s historical knowledge and cultural diversity.
Fire, historically a tool of revolutionary strategy in Indonesia’s past struggles for independence, now paradoxically threatens the nation’s shared heritage. The 2025 protests reveal an unsettling dynamic: sites once reclaimed as symbols of postcolonial governance are targeted, risking the loss of the layered histories they represent.
