Indonesia’s vigilante mobs deliver brutal ‘justice’

JAKARTA: It was just after dawn prayers when the caretaker at a Jakarta mosque noticed a man stealing from the donation box, prompting a furious mob to beat him to death, for taking the equivalent of $130.

The lynching was one of hundreds of vigilante killings across Indonesia in recent years, highlighting a brutal trend driven by rising religious conservatism and low faith in a corruption-riddled justice system.

Mob violence has also been aggravated by rapid urbanisation that brings together strangers from across the Southeast Asian nation in often poor, overcrowded neighbourhoods, raising stress levels and fuelling mistrust, observers say.

The lynching had echoes of the grisly 2017 murder of 30-year-old Muhammad al-Zahra who was set ablaze for allegedly stealing a mosque´s amplifier in the hard-scrabble Jakarta suburb Bekasi, as onlookers cheered and filmed the scene on mobile phones.

As the electronics repairman pleaded for his life, insisting he was not a thief, the frenzied mob poured gasoline over him and took his life. His widow, who miscarried their second child days after his death, told reporters that her husband often fixed damaged equipment, including amplifiers -- before reselling them. Half a dozen people were sentenced to between six and seven years in prison over the attack, as doubts about his guilt lingered.