On November 18, 2025, something died in the House of
Representatives.
Not a person, exactly—though God knows enough souls had been
crushed beneath its weight over the years. What died was the 1981 KUHAP,
Indonesia’s Criminal Procedure Code, which had slouched through four decades
like some exhausted beast finally permitted to lie down. Its replacement—sleek,
modern, promising electronic evidence and restorative justice—would take effect
on January 2, 2026. Progress, they called it. The future.
But if you listened closely (and in Jakarta, as in Pine
Hollow or Red River Bend, there were always those who listened closely), you
could hear the whispers. The Civil Society Coalition said the government was
lying about consultation. Indonesia Corruption Watch claimed names had been
stolen, participation fabricated. Just like the old days, some muttered. Just
like it had always been.
The thing about criminal procedure law—and this is something
Herbert Packer understood when he wrote The Limits of the Criminal Sanction
back in 1968, during that ugly American year—is that it tells you what a
country really thinks about its people. Packer identified two models, two ways
of seeing the world. Due Process, which treated citizens like human beings who
might be innocent, who deserved protection from the machinery of the state. And
Crime Control, which assumed guilt, prioritized efficiency, and cleared the
streets fast.
One was an obstacle course. The other was a conveyor belt to
prison.
Indonesia had always preferred the conveyor belt.
The Colonial Curse
The Dutch brought their legal system to Indonesia the way
they brought everything else: with guns, racism, and the absolute certainty
that brown people didn’t deserve the same protections as white ones.
September 14, 1847. That’s when they enacted the Reglement
op de Strafvordering—the RVs for short, because colonizers loved their
abbreviations almost as much as they loved their hierarchies. This system,
which kicked in May 1, 1848, looked pretty good on paper if you were European.
There was a rechter-commissaris, an investigating judge who protected
suspects’ rights, prevented unlawful detention, ensured fair trials. Real legal
protection.
But here’s the thing about colonial justice—and this is
where it gets dark, where it always gets dark—that protection only applied to
Europeans and “those considered their equals.” Which is a fancy way of saying:
not you.
Indigenous Indonesians? Chinese? Indians? Arabs? They got
the Het Inlandsch Reglement—the HIR—which wasn’t a criminal procedure
code so much as a manual for breaking people. No investigating judge. No real
procedural safeguards. Confessions were king, and the police knew a thousand
ways to extract them, most involving fists and bamboo sticks and rooms where
nobody could hear you scream.
It was a two-tier system, separate and catastrophically
unequal. Europeans got tried in the Raad van Justitie. Natives got the Landraad.
One promised justice; the other delivered punishment. And if you think that
distinction doesn’t matter, you’ve never been on the wrong side of it.
The Japanese Interlude
Then came March 1942, and the Japanese rolled in like a new
nightmare replacing an old one. They issued Osamu Seirei No. 1, which
essentially said: we’re keeping the Dutch system, except now we’re in charge.
To their credit—and it pains me to give imperial Japan
credit for anything—they unified the court system. No more separate courts for
Europeans and natives. Everyone got tried under HIR procedures now. Progress,
sort of. Like replacing one prison cell with a slightly larger one.
But the Japanese only lasted 3.5 years, and they didn’t
fundamentally change anything. The HIR remained, that colonial ghost haunting
every courthouse, every police station, every cell where suspects waited for
justice that never came.
Independence and Irony
August 17, 1945: Independence Day. Merdeka.
You’d think a newly free nation would burn its colonial
legal codes, dance on the ashes, start fresh. But that’s not how it works. That’s
never how it works. The 1945 Constitution kept the old regulations alive.
Emergency Law No. 1 of 1951 officially made the HIR the national criminal
procedure code.
Let that sink in. Indonesia used the same legal tool that
had oppressed its people under colonialism to build its independent justice
system. The same judges who’d bent to Dutch authority now bent to Indonesian
authority. Same corruption, different flag. The culture of “Bapakisme”—where
judges and prosecutors played God—continued uninterrupted.
They tried to fix it in the 1960s. The National Law
Development Institute drafted reforms. But then Guided Democracy happened, and
law became politics, and judicial independence evaporated like morning mist.
The doctrine was “The Revolution Is Not Yet Complete,” which meant suspects’
rights were a bourgeois luxury the nation couldn’t afford.
Then came 1965. The G30S tragedy. Reform drafts piled up
like corpses.
The Cases That Broke the Dam
But evil—and I mean that word precisely—has a way of
overreaching. Of pushing so hard that something finally pushes back.
Sum Kuning was eighteen years old, an egg seller from
Yogyakarta. On September 21, 1970, she was kidnapped and raped by a group of
young men. Traumatized, terrified, she did what you’re supposed to do: she
reported it to the police.
The police arrested her.
They said she’d made it up. They beat her at the station.
They forced her to confess the complaint was fabricated. They invented a story
about consensual sex with a meatball vendor named Trimo. They did everything to
her except the one thing they were supposed to do: investigate the actual
crime.
Sum Kuning became a symbol, a name people whispered. The HIR’s
ultimate victim. It took General Hoegeng Imam Santoso—one of the few honest
cops in a system rotten with corruption—to get her freed. But even he couldn’t
bring the real perpetrators to justice. Political pressure from “influential
figures.” Always the same story.
Then came Sengkon and Karta in 1974. Two poor farmers
accused of robbery and murder in Pondok Gede, Bekasi. They were tortured into
confessions. Convicted. Sengkon got twelve years; Karta got seven.
In Cipinang Prison, they met an inmate named Gunel who
worked in the kitchen. And Gunel—maybe drunk, maybe guilty, maybe just tired of
carrying it—told them the truth: he was the real killer. He and three
others.
Three years later, after a judicial review—a brand new legal
mechanism created specifically for cases like theirs—they were freed. January
1981. Justice delayed, but finally, finally delivered.
The 1981 KUHAP: Hope and Disappointment
December 31, 1981. Law No. 8 of 1981. After 134 years of
colonial procedure, Indonesia finally had its own criminal code.
The government called it a “masterpiece.” And in some ways,
it was. Suspects became subjects with dignity. Presumption of innocence. Right
to counsel from the investigation stage. Strict detention limits. The pretrial
mechanism—praperadilan—a uniquely Indonesian innovation.
But here’s what I know, what horror writers understand in
their bones: the monster never really dies. It just changes shape.
The 1981 KUHAP carried its flaws like birth defects. Rolen
Purba and others in Medan sat in detention for months, far exceeding the 90-day
limit, while judges and prosecutors blamed each other. “Please,” Purba begged
in Tempo magazine, October 30, 1982. “We want to be tried quickly. We
admit we took part in the theft. But we want to know how long we must serve.”
The pretrial mechanism was weak, checking only
administrative boxes while torture continued behind closed doors. Prosecutors
lacked control over investigations. Case files bounced back and forth like
ping-pong balls while real people rotted in cells.
Professor Mardjono Reksodiputro saw it clearly: despite its
human-rights rhetoric, the 1981 KUHAP still prioritized Crime Control over Due
Process. It was “boxed-in,” trapped by its own design, giving police and
prosecutors too much power and suspects too little protection.
The Modern Failures
After the 1998 Reform era, the cracks became chasms.
Arbitrary detention continued. Torture remained endemic.
Legal aid for the poor was theoretical, not actual. The Jakarta Legal Aid
Institute’s 2023 report documented case after case where defendants at the
investigation stage proceeded without lawyers, even though Article 56
guaranteed that right.
And then there was technology—the internet, digital
evidence, cybercrimes. The 1981 KUHAP’s definition of “documents” was laughably
rigid. The Corruption Eradication Commission and the Electronic Information and
Transactions Law had to create special rules. The police made up their own
procedures. Legal chaos masquerading as order.
The 2025 Code: Promise and Poison
Which brings us to November 2025 and the new KUHAP,
effective January 2, 2026.
It promises electronic evidence. Wiretapping regulations.
Restorative justice. A fairer, more inclusive, more modern system. Progress,
they say. The future.
But whose future?
That’s the question that keeps some people awake at night,
staring at their ceilings, listening to the old ghosts whisper. Because legal
reform in Indonesia has always been about who controls the machinery of
justice. And the machinery—well, it has a way of grinding up the same people,
no matter what you call the gears.
The 2025 KUHAP stands at a crossroads, they say. Promise on
one hand, suspicion on the other. Hope and fear, married together like they’ve
always been.
And if you’ve read this far, if you’ve followed this long
walk through 133 years of Indonesian criminal procedure, you know what I would
tell you:
Constant Reader, the monster never really dies. It just
learns to wear a better mask.
The question isn’t whether the 2025 KUHAP will work.
The question is: for whom?
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