Internal documents reveal Soros-linked funding behind Indonesia’s protests
New Delhi: Nationwide protests that shook Indonesia from late August to early September this year are now at the centre of a fierce new battle over foreign influence, with internal documents shared with The Sunday Guardian revealing how a George Sorosfunded network has been bankrolling organisations that supported activists at the heart of the unrest. Until now, however, those charges have rested largely on rhetoric, geopolitics and conspiracy-minded speculation. The 25 August-9 September demonstrations—now officially recorded as the “August 2025 Indonesian protests”—began as public outrage against a massive housing allowance and perks for Members of Parliament in the world’s thirdlargest democracy. As food prices, education costs and taxes climbed, students, gig workers and labour unions flooded the streets of Jakarta, Surabaya, Medan and dozens of provincial capitals. Clashes with police escalated into riots: government buildings were torched in Kediri and Surabaya, public transport infrastructure was burned, and solidarity protests broke out as far away as Germany and Australia. President Prabowo Subianto—a former general accused of past humanrights abuses who won the 2024 election on a populist, law-and-order, free-meal and “food estate” agenda—was forced to cancel an overseas trip as the domestic crisis deepened.
A cache of internal agreements, grant proposals and emergency funding contracts between the Jakartabased Kurawal Foundation and its partners—seen by The Sunday Guardian—shows, for the first time, how money originating in George Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) has moved through an Indonesian intermediary to organisations that were directly involved in, or immediately protecting, networks at the centre of the August-September unrest, as well as to activist hubs mobilising resistance to President Prabowo’s flagship policies in Papua. At the core of this architecture is OSF’s new “Network Grants” programme—a flagship, long-term funding window that explicitly aims to provide “flexible, core, and long-term support to backbone organizations” and to “strengthen and sustain coordination, collective action and learning across issues, regions, and partners” in the name of advancing democracy, justice and human rights. In its own words, Network Grants exists to back “frontliners, ecosystem enablers, and issue framers”—activist groups, regranting hubs and think tanks that “shift ecosystems” and keep civic movements alive between waves of protest.
One of those ecosystem “enablers” is Kurawal. In a grant application titled “General Support Grant to Kurawal Foundation 2025-2028”, the Indonesian intermediary requests USD 1,670,782 from OSF—including USD 300,000 earmarked specifically for Papua—to consolidate a civil society movement across Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Kurawal describes itself to OSF as “an intermediary agency for social justice philanthropy…working for structural change” by “strengthen[ing] democracy institutions and practices” and “facilitating the emergence of democrats” who “disregard all other forms of (non-democratic) government”. It sets its 2024-2029 strategic priority as “consolidating civil society movement”, with five “pathways”: reclaiming contested local spaces for movements, “penetrating political space”, expanding civic space in Papua and “connecting movement space across the Global South”. An internal review Kurawal submitted to OSF in 2023 even notes that it has been “the only Indonesian funding organisation explicitly supporting social justice for democracy programs” in the country two decades after the fall of Suharto.
That lofty framing translates into very concrete political work on the ground. A Kurawal grant letter for a project known as “Expedition to Discover New Voices”—part of the “Ekspedisi Indonesia Baru” series and contracted under the reference KEIB_PS 2025—lays out a multi-year plan to reshape how young Indonesians imagine their country’s future. The proposal argues that “the vision of Indonesia’s future is monopolized by a small political elite”, while major policies, such as revisions to the law on the military, are passed without meaningful public participation. The project explicitly aims to “counter power concentration” by creating “a counter-narrative” and “space for the public to formulate their own visions of a more democratic, just, and participatory ‘New Indonesia’.” The “Expedition” will digitise 18 terabytes of video and 12,000 photos collected during earlier journeys across western Indonesia, and turn them into a documentary series, a book called Restart Indonesia, and a wave of community screenings and discussions “leading up to the 2029 elections particularly aimed at engaging younger generations and first-time voters.” Partners include Watchdoc, a leading independent documentary producer; media groups like Remotivi; labour organisations including the Labour Party; major Islamic organisations Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama; and networks of content creators and student activists. The grant’s learning section stresses that short-form video for TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels will be strengthened, and that “youth participation is far more meaningful when they are treated as active contributors… rather than passive audiences.” While the grant itself is framed in broad terms of public education, the timing and emphasis are politically sensitive.
The project spans August 2025-August 2026, overlapping directly with the protests that have rocked Indonesia, and it is explicitly designed to build an ecosystem of youth-centred narratives capable of challenging “dominant state narratives” and contesting power ahead of the next national election cycle. For critics of Soros and OSF, that language reads less like neutral civic education and more like a sophisticated soft-power campaign to incubate a new generation of opposition leaders.
Where the internal documents become even more contentious, however, is in the operation of Kurawal’s “Dana Cepat Tanggap Darurat” (DCTD)—the Rapid Response Fund that, on paper, is meant to offer short-term support to civil society actors under threat, including emergency relocation, legal aid and basic living costs. Kurawal’s own public communications and academic commentary describe DCTD as helping Indonesian organisations “kritisi kebijakan pemerintah Indonesia yang tidak demokratis”—to criticise undemocratic government policies—using money channelled from OSF via Kurawal. In another document, titled “Emergency Response Fund Agreement” between Kurawal and a group identified as Kompol and signed on 11 September 2025, illustrates how this works in practice. Under the contract, Kurawal releases 40 million rupiah (around USD 2,500) from its Rapid Response Fund for the period 1-30 September. The stated purpose is to provide “temporary protection and safe housing for activists who are facing criminalisation and threats of violence” after being accused of “inciting violent actions” during the August-September protests. The budget covers rent for a safe house, food, transportation and basic needs, along with costs for legal consultations and documentation of rights violations. In return, Kompol must provide narrative and financial reports, keep receipts for audit and abide by Indonesian law.
A similar emergency-fund contract, dated 8 September, is signed with the Social Movement Institute (SMI). This time, the amount is 10 million rupiah, again for a one-month period, to “support activists and organisers facing digital attacks, doxxing and criminal accusations” linked to the same wave of protests. The grant explicitly mentions relocation, psychological support and emergency legal assistance. Like Kompol, SMI is required to submit detailed financial and narrative reports and accept Kurawal monitoring and audits. A third internal form in the same packet—an application to DCTD from LBH Semarang, a legal aid organisation—outlines requests for safe housing and legal work around protest-related cases in Central Java, according to the documents shared with The Sunday Guardian.
Together, these documents show a clear pattern: organisations that Indonesian media and commentators have associated with the August-September protests and subsequent riots turned to Kurawal’s Rapid Response Fund for emergency support, and that support was granted on an accelerated basis as the crisis unfolded. Formally, none of these contractual documents say that Kurawal or its partners planned, directed or financed the protests themselves. They are framed as solidarity with activists and communities facing repression. But in political terms, the line between sustaining a movement under pressure and underwriting a broader anti-government mobilisation is thin. By paying for safe houses, legal defences and living costs of organisers accused (rightly or wrongly) of inciting violent actions, the Rapid Response Fund has become, in effect, a Soros-backed financial backstop for a segment of Indonesia’s protest ecosystem. For Indonesian authorities, this is precisely the concern: that foreign-funded intermediaries are not only critiquing government policy in the abstract but are materially supporting networks that challenge his authority in the streets.
Kurawal’s entanglement with Prabowo’s policy agenda is even more visible in Papua, one of the most sensitive regions in Indonesia’s post-Suharto politics. Two further grant contracts show how Network Grants money is used to contest the president’s flagship “food estate” projects in the Papuan region of Merauke—a cornerstone of his food-security narrative—and to train students as the “guardians” of what grantees call “ecological democracy”. In one agreement, Kurawal channels funding to the national legal aid foundation YLBHI and its LBH Papua-Merauke project. The accompanying proposal describes Papua as Indonesia’s largest remaining forest block—33.8 million hectares—and details how the designation of more than 2 million hectares of indigenous land in Merauke as a National Strategic Project (PSN) for food and energy estates under the Jokowi and Prabowo administrations has “worsened the socio-ecological and human-rights situation” for indigenous Papuans. The text accuses the PSN and associated “food estate” schemes of ignoring free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), bypassing environmental reviews and causing “mass deforestation, forced evictions, peatland destruction and irreversible ecological degradation”. It goes further, calling the resulting damage a form of “ecocide by the state” and linking the project to intensified militarisation, necropolitics and even “ethnocide” against Papuan communities.
LBH Papua-Merauke’s role, as described in the proposal, is to document abuses for litigation and international human-rights mechanisms, conduct critical legal education for indigenous communities, and strengthen local paralegals so they can resist the food estate projects over at least the next five years. The grant explicitly aims to raise “critical awareness” as the “precondition for consolidated resistance” against the Merauke PSN food estate. Another grant, to Sophia Nusantara, funds a programme titled “Guardian of Ecological Democracy”. Its background section bluntly states that the Merauke food estate, marketed as a national food-security solution, has in fact caused “destructive impacts on ecology and democracy in Papua”, including the seizure of more than 500,000 hectares of customary land from the Malind, Yeinan and Moi peoples without FPIC, the destruction of sago forests—a vital food source and cultural symbol—and the burial of sacred sites. The document describes Battalion 755 acting as de facto project guards, intimidating villagers who refuse relocation, while companies such as PT Global Papua Abadi and the Jhonlin Group allegedly reap the benefits.
In this “critical condition”, the proposal says, Papuan students, especially in South Papua, have become the “front line of resistance”, connecting “campus and kampung”, documenting human-rights violations and demanding accountability. To support them, Sophia Nusantara’s programme seeks to “strengthen students as a strategic force guarding democracy and ecology”, treating them as “architects of Papua’s future” who will keep control of their land and identity. The strategy section outlines intensive training on ecology, FPIC and indigenous rights, fieldwork in affected customary areas, and the creation of a “Forum of Ecological Democracy Student Guardians” involving student bodies across South Papua and national organisations like PMKRI and GMKI. It plans alliances with LBH Papua-Merauke, cultural festivals as “symbols of resistance”, a digital platform branded #SaguUntukDemokrasi (Sago for Democracy) for investigations and petitions, and safe-house arrangements and security training to manage “campus and military repression”. Here, too, the target group is explicitly youth-driven: 100 university students as “main agents of the movement”, 50 indigenous youth “culture-based action partners”, along with artists, religious leaders and academics. The language of the closing section is unambiguous: “Guardian of Ecological Democracy places Papuan students as a transformative force”, with the aim of building a long-term, organised, youth-led resistance infrastructure around ecological and democratic issues.
Taken together, these internal documents sketch a coherent picture. At the top sits OSF’s Network Grants, a Soros-funded vehicle whose own publications state that the goal of the foundation’s network is to “transform closed societies into open ones” and support structural, systemic change through civil society. Kurawal is selected as an “ecosystem enabler” under that scheme, and, in turn, uses OSF money to fund multi-year youth-oriented narrative projects like “Expedition to Discover New Voices”, Papuan organisations contesting Prabowo’s food estate policies, and rapid-response safe-house and legal-aid schemes for activists caught in the vortex of the 2025 protests. None of this, on its own, proves that George Soros or OSF “organised” Indonesia’s August-September protests. There is no smoking-gun memo ordering Kurawal or its grantees to bring down Prabowo’s government, and OSF has consistently insisted—in other contexts as well—that its work is lawful and peaceful, focused on human rights, transparency and justice. Kurawal’s contracts are standard NGO documents: they mention audits, compliance with Indonesian and UN sanctions rules, and the obligation not to use funds for terrorism or violence.
What the documents do show, however, is that Soros-funded money is tightly woven into the fabric of Indonesia’s protest and advocacy ecosystem at precisely the moment when President Prabowo faced his first major legitimacy crisis: it supports organisations shielding activists accused in the riots, and it underwrites sustained campaigns against the President’s most politically symbolic policies in Papua. These revelations do not exist in isolation. As revealed by The Sunday Guardian earlier, across South and Southeast Asia, similar protest waves, tied to foreign entities, have destabilised entrenched regimes in the recent past. In Bangladesh, the 2024 quota reform protests ended with up to 1,400 deaths and the eventual collapse of Sheikh Hasina’s government. Nepal’s 2025 Gen Z uprising forced Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli from office after violent demonstrations mobilised largely through social media. The Sunday Guardian has previously reported on Biden administrationlinked organisations and Soros-tied networks allegedly plotting destabilisation in Cambodia through funding, coordination and narrative warfare.
The Indonesian case, however, represents the first time that internal contracts and grant documents directly trace a documented flow of OSF-originated funding to organisations operating at the very heart of the Indonesian protest movement and its surrounding ideological ecosystem. Although OSF maintains that its mission is to promote democracy, transparency and pluralism through lawful methods, the operational reality emerging from these documents suggests a sophisticated architecture of influence that blurs the line between civil society support and political engineering. What is indisputable is this: long before tear gas filled the streets of Jakarta, OSF’s Network Grants team in New York and Kurawal’s strategists in Jakarta had identified Indonesian youth and Papuan communities as pivotal actors in a broader project of “social transformation”. Now, after the August-September protests, those bets—and the money behind them—are finally coming into public view.
