CoDA Series 1: Yogyakarta. Civic Spacetime in a City of Contradictions

Nested within the global third wave of autocratization, the nation-wide crackdown of activists, and the local context of keistimewaan, shrinking civic spacetime in Yogyakarta presents a perfect storm. It is high time that civil society organizations (CSOs) and actors (CSAs) up their capacities to connect, defend, and act in ways that center the ethics of collective care.

Globally, the third wave of autocratization attests to how autocratic actors have been borrowing tactics from one another, perfecting their authoritarian playbook. Using salami tactics, they “sliced off” democracy ever so gradually. Instead of dismissing democracy altogether through swift coup d’états, autocratic actors utilized democratic procedures to slowly grab and consolidate power, and eventually erode democracy from within, outplaying democracy-loving actors in their own game. So far, only a few countries managed to enact a democratic U-turn, some of them through Gen-Z-led revolutions, including Chile, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Madagascar.

Nationally, CSOs/CSAs have tried to put forward a discourse of Indonesia being darurat (in emergency), gelap (in darkness), and needing a reset. Obviously, autocratic elites have no intention to hand over power. As anticipated by CDA’s baseline study on Indonesia, they resorted to a number of tactics from the authoritarian playbook: stoking violence, quashing criticism and dissent, and spreading disinformation. Following the Reset Indonesia uprising in August 2025, over 1,000 arbitrary arrests were made, with over 300 of them targeting minors. Also, as the new set of Criminal Code and Criminal Procedure Code come into effect in 2026, criminalization of activists, or even lay citizens, becomes easier than ever. While CSOs/CSAs may have standard procedures to safeguard and defend themselves against criminalization and various kinds of attacks, the massiveness of the most recent crackdown speaks to the need to stress-test these procedures and support systems.

Locally, Yogyakarta CSOs/CSAs are bound to the context of keistimewaan—that is, a special political status, where governorship is automatically held by the Sultan and passed down hereditarily. Here, a culture of “harmony” is imposed amidst structural poverty and inequality. This produces a condition within which Yogyakarta CSO/CSAs are more assertive in voicing nation-wide concerns and more restrained in working on local issues, especially those linked to the Sultanate.

Amidst such a perfect storm of civic spacetime, Yogyakarta CSAs/CSOs have started developing new strategies and tactics. It is this very process that the CoDA civic spacetime monitoring program wishes to record. CoDA is developed by Institute of International Studies (IIS) Universitas Gadjah Mada as part of Connect, Defend, Act! (CDA), a project conceived by Hivos and Humanis, with the support of the Norwegian Agency for Development and Cooperation (NORAD).

Albeit being a civic spacetime monitoring report, this document feels more like a love letter, collectively composed by Yogyakarta CSAs/CSOs dedicated to their own cohort. We deeply thank our informants for sharing their space and time with us, and for generously contributing to enhancing our civic spacetime. We believe that your commitment to collective care would sustain your endeavors in outsmarting and outlasting autocratic actors.

Yogyakarta, January 2026