Indonesia's Military Identity Crisis and the Attack on Activist Andrie Yunus



On March 12, 2026, four members of the Indonesian Armed Forces' Strategic Intelligence Agency (BAIS TNI) threw sulfuric acid at Andrie Yunus, an activist with KontraS (the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence). On April 29, 2026, the case was heard at the Jakarta Military Court II-08, where prosecutors characterized the attack as an act of "personal revenge" (Ibrahim, 2026). At first glance, this framing makes the incident appear to be a private dispute, with four soldiers gone rogue and acting on individual grudges. But a closer look at how military institutions actually function reveals something far more troubling. There is a structural failure in how members of the TNI understand their relationship to the institution they represent.

This article argues that the core problem in the Andrie Yunus case is not simply the individual wrongdoing of the four accused soldiers. It is a broader conceptual failure within the TNI's culture and training systems about what it means to be a member of a military institution. Using frameworks from organizational theory (Muzio et al., 2024), sociological systems analysis (Parsons, 1991), behavioral-institutional development studies (Huggins et al., 2025), TNI character education research (Ghazalie, 2020), military mental readiness policy (Kusumawardhani et al., 2026), and studies on soldier psychological well-being (Sulistiyani et al., 2022; Setyawan et al., 2021), this piece builds a case that institutional identity and individual conduct are inseparable, especially when those individuals wear a uniform.


The Symbolic Weight of Military Identity

In organizational studies, symbols carry meaning far beyond their physical form. Muzio et al. (2024) describe symbols as the "connective tissue" of institutions, the binding force that links observable actions to collective understanding. Symbols build and reproduce social reality, including an institution's legitimacy and public identity. A military uniform is arguably the most powerful institutional symbol in public life. It is not merely clothing; it is a sign that communicates a set of values, authority, and responsibility on behalf of the organization that issued it.

This point is reinforced by research from Witt and Dhami (2022), who demonstrate that the visual organization of symbols directly shapes how people assess risk and form judgments. Applied to institutional behavior, this means that every action a TNI member takes in public, especially while in uniform or while publicly identified as a soldier, functions as an "organized symbol" that shapes how the public processes and evaluates the TNI as a whole. A violent incident connected to military identity is not processed by the public as an isolated event. It becomes relevant data about the character of the institution.

Ghazalie (2020) confirms this from within TNI's own empirical context. The identity of the TNI is a reflection of the character of its soldiers. Their research explicitly concludes that character education within the TNI has a significant influence on soldiers' mindsets, attitudes, and behavior. This means that the TNI's public image is not determined by formal press statements from institutional spokespersons but by the cumulative behavior of its members. When a soldier acts in ways that contradict the values their uniform is supposed to symbolize, the damage is not limited to personal reputation. Public trust in the entire institution is what erodes.

Institutions Are Not Separate From the People Who Compose Them

One of the most significant flaws in the TNI's response to the Andrie Yunus case is the implicit assumption that the institution is a freestanding entity, cleanly separable from the actions of its individual members. This assumption is fundamentally at odds with contemporary theory on how institutions actually function.

Huggins, Dixon, and Thompson (2025), writing on the behavioral-institutional dimensions of regional development, argue forcefully that institutions cannot be understood as rigid rule systems that exist independently of the people who compose them. Instead, institutions are manifestations of the collective behavior of their members. The informal values that animate an institution, including integrity, professionalism, and respect for human rights, emerge from the average psychological character of its members and in turn define the institution's quality in the eyes of the outside world. The implication is direct. If an institution has members who repeatedly act outside ethical and legal boundaries, then it is not just those individuals who are the problem. The institution itself is communicating its real values to the public.

This perspective directly dismantles the "personal revenge" narrative offered by the TNI. If an institution is a manifestation of collective behavior, then the actions of four BAIS soldiers, recruited, trained, and resourced by the institution, are part of the collective message being sent to the public. They cannot simply be quarantined as individual deviations. As Huggins et al. (2025) make clear, informal values are the engine of an institution's reputation and legitimacy, and those values are formed, maintained, or damaged by the real, daily conduct of members.
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Talcott Parsons' AGIL framework (1991) describes the function of "Latency" or Pattern Maintenance in any social system, which is the preservation of the values and cultural patterns that underpin the system's legitimacy. The acid attack on Andrie Yunus visibly disrupts this function, exposing a deep gap between the values the TNI claims to uphold and the values actually operating in the field.


Mental Readiness as a Prerequisite for Institutional Integrity

The claim that members' behavior reflects the institution is only complete when we understand what shapes that behavior. This is where military psychology makes a critical contribution.

Kusumawardhani, Saputro, and Sutanto (2026) argue in their study of TNI soldiers' mental and psychosocial readiness that military effectiveness depends not only on physical capability and weaponry but on the psychological stability of soldiers as representatives of the institution. They explicitly state that mental readiness is a strategic component because it directly affects ethical behavior and field decision-making. With appropriate pre-deployment mental assessment and post-deployment psychosocial support, the TNI can help ensure that every soldier in the field delivers a professional message that reflects institutional integrity.

This argument carries serious weight in the Andrie Yunus case. The four BAIS soldiers who planned and executed the acid attack over several days, using institutional facilities, dividing tasks, and coordinating their actions, were operating within a cognitive framework in which violence against a civil society activist was considered a legitimate response. That kind of cognitive framework does not form overnight. It is the product of psychological conditions and an institutional environment that gradually shape a person's understanding of what is and is not permissible in the name of institutional honor.

Sulistiyani et al. (2022), in their systematic review of Indonesian soldiers' psychological well-being, found that soldiers with low psychological well-being tend to develop maladaptive coping mechanisms, including aggression and norm violations. More specifically, the inability to develop positive environmental mastery and healthy self-acceptance was found to correlate with tendencies to act in ways that contradict Pancasila (Indonesia's founding principles) and the constitution. This finding strengthens the argument that attention to soldier mental health is not merely a welfare concern. It is a direct concern of the TNI's institutional integrity and public image.

Setyawan, Nasution, and Pujiadi (2021) add another dimension. Resilience in TNI career officers, specifically the ability to internalize institutional values as an inseparable part of one's own identity, is what distinguishes soldiers who act with integrity from those who do not. Officers who successfully integrate institutional values into their personal character will not experience cognitive dissonance when faced with situations requiring ethical choices. Those who fail to internalize these values are vulnerable to treating the institution as an external entity to be protected by any means necessary, including violence.


The "Personal Revenge" Paradox in a Command-Based Institution

The argument that members and institution cannot be separated becomes even sharper when we examine the internal contradictions of the "personal revenge" narrative. As Julius Ibrani, Chair of the Indonesian Risk Centre's Board, pointed out, "It is impossible that they could move, take initiative, in an institution whose operational and behavioral basis is command" (Irfani, 2026). This is not merely a legal observation. It is a sociological proposition about how military organizations function at their core.

The timeline of the attack, as laid out in the indictment, reinforces this point. Discussions took place in the BAIS TNI barracks, tasks were divided, chemical materials were prepared using institutional facilities, and the group mobilized together using vehicles from military premises (Ibrahim, 2026). Every piece of infrastructure used belonged to the institution. The question is not only whether there was an explicit order from above. It is also this. How could four soldiers develop a moral framework that justified violence against an activist without an institutional environment that, explicitly or implicitly, tolerated or normalized that kind of thinking?

Erasmus Napitupulu, Director of the Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (ICJR), stated that the "personal revenge" narrative strategically "closes off the possibility of a structured attack" and eliminates the chain of command and coordination that should be investigated (Irfani, 2026). In the sociology of organizations, this strategy is known as decoupling, a mechanism by which organizations symbolically separate their formal policies from the actual practices of their members in order to protect institutional legitimacy (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). In other words, the "personal revenge" framing is a decoupling tool that shields the institution from structural accountability while ignoring the fact that member conduct is itself a reflection of institutional conditions.

Huggins et al. (2025) remind us that an institution's informal values cannot be controlled through formal regulation alone. They must be genuinely internalized by members as part of their own identity. When that internalization fails, the gap between the values formally claimed and the values informally practiced by members becomes the source of institutional crisis. This is precisely what we are witnessing here.


How Judgments About Soldiers Become Judgments About the Institution

The arguments above converge on one central proposition in institutional communication. Public assessments of TNI soldiers' conduct are direct feedback on the TNI as an institution. There is no clean separation between the two in public perception.
Witt and Dhami (2022) demonstrate empirically that how symbols are organized and displayed determines how the public constructs risk assessments and makes decisions. When symbols associated with the TNI, including uniforms, facilities, and membership identity, are consistently linked to incidents of violence against civilians and activists, the public does not process each event in isolation. Cognitively, the public integrates these patterns into a comprehensive assessment of risk and trust in the institution as a whole. Every act of TNI-connected violence that is not handled transparently and proportionately does not only damage the reputation of that particular case. It accumulates as cognitive data in the public mind, progressively reinforcing negative perceptions of the TNI as an institution.

Muzio et al. (2024) affirm that institutional symbols, the glue that connects claimed values with the experiences the public actually has, determine how robust an institution's legitimacy is. When those symbols, including uniforms and soldiers' actions, send messages that contradict the values being claimed, public trust collapses. And trust, once lost, is far harder to rebuild than a reputation that was never damaged.

The message that the Andrie Yunus case sends to the public is not only about four soldiers who crossed a line. The deeper message, which the public has been reading through the processes of meaning-construction described by Muzio et al. (2024) and Huggins et al. (2025), is this. Is the TNI as an institution genuinely committed to professionalism, the rule of law, and respect for civil liberties? That question, in large part, is answered not by words but by the institution's actions in responding to this case.


Reforming Character, Not Just Procedure

What is needed in response to this case is not only legal reform in a technical sense, though the shift of jurisdiction from military to civilian courts is an urgent step. What is more fundamentally needed is a reform of understanding within the TNI itself, namely that the character of its members and the image of the institution are one and the same entity, not separable.

Ghazalie (2020) recommends a comprehensive modernization of TNI character education, covering organizational structure, human resources, curriculum, methods, and facilities, so that it genuinely produces soldiers who internalize the values of Sapta Marga (the soldiers' code of conduct) as a personal identity and not merely a formal obligation. This recommendation takes on new urgency in the Andrie Yunus case. If four active soldiers could plan a coordinated violent act without experiencing serious value conflict, something has failed in the character formation process.

Kusumawardhani et al. (2026) complement this by emphasizing that TNI human resource policy must systematically integrate mental readiness assessment, not as an administrative checkbox but as a strategic instrument to ensure that every soldier on duty carries the right message on behalf of the institution. They recommend comprehensive pre-deployment mental assessment and structured post-deployment psychosocial support as non-negotiable components of military human resource management.

Setyawan et al. (2021) and Sulistiyani et al. (2022) together demonstrate that resilience and positive psychological well-being are prerequisites for behavioral integrity in soldiers. Investment in mental health and resilience-building is therefore not merely an individual welfare matter. It is a direct investment in the institutional integrity of the TNI. A psychologically healthy and resilient soldier is a soldier capable of sending the right message through every action, a message that strengthens rather than damages public trust in the institution.

Finally, a closed military tribunal, as feared by Erasmus Napitupulu (Irfani, 2026), will only deepen this crisis. Transparency is not only a demand of justice for the victim. It is also the corrective mechanism through which the institution can learn from its own failures and send a credible signal to the public that its claimed values are actually being practiced.


Conclusion

The Andrie Yunus case is a mirror that reflects the face of an institution and not just the faces of four individuals. Seen through the lens of symbolic theory (Muzio et al., 2024), behavioral-institutional dimensions (Huggins et al., 2025), and military psychology (Kusumawardhani et al., 2026; Sulistiyani et al., 2022; Setyawan et al., 2021), no soldier acts entirely as a private individual when they move using the capacities and resources that attach to the institution they belong to. The uniform is a message; the action is a sign; and the public is an active communicant that constructs meaning from everything it witnesses. As Witt and Dhami (2022) show, the way symbols are organized and displayed determines the judgments that form.

The TNI's public standing is not determined by official spokesperson statements. It is determined by the cumulative behavior of its members. As Ghazalie (2020) affirms, the character of the soldier is the identity of the soldier and therefore the identity of the TNI as an institution. If something is wrong with the TNI, it does not mean the institution is inherently bad as an abstract entity. It means the institution is being influenced, and in this case damaged, by its own members.

Ultimately, understanding the TNI as an institution inseparable from its members is not an attack on the TNI. It is, in fact, the prerequisite for making the TNI a genuinely strong and trusted institution. Because a strong institution is not built on impunity or convenient narratives of separation but on coherent integrity between claimed values and real actions.



References

Ghazalie, G. (2020). Character education of TNI in facing globalization challenges (Character education study at the Mental Development Center of TNI). Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 7(1), 574–584. https://doi.org/10.14738/assrj.71.7737

Huggins, R., Dixon, L., & Thompson, P. (2025). The behavioural-institutional dimensions of regional development. Values, personality psychology and culture. European Planning Studies, 33(12), 2207–2235. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2025.2552435

Ibrahim, R. A. (2026, April 29). Sidang perdana penyiraman air keras Andrie Yunus ungkap motif ‘dendam pribadi’ empat anggota TNI – Mengapa TAUD memprotes dan menolak persidangan ini? BBC News Indonesia. https://www.bbc.com/indonesia/articles/cwy2xvye1g9o

Irfani, F. (2026, April 19). Mengapa narasi motif ‘dendam pribadi’ dalam kasus penyerangan Andrie Yunus bermasalah? BBC News Indonesia. https://www.bbc.com/indonesia/articles/c5ywzy2d59ko

Kusumawardhani, C., Saputro, G. E., & Sutanto. (2026). Integrating mental and psychosocial readiness into military human resource policy for conflict zone deployment in Indonesia. PALAR (Pakuan Law Review), 12(1), 250–272. https://doi.org/10.33751/palar.v12i1

Meyer, J. W., & Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized organizations. Formal structure as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology, 83(2), 340–363. https://doi.org/10.1086/226550

Muzio, D., Dalpiaz, E., Jancsary, D., Moser, C., Leixnering, S., Höllerer, M., Phillips, N., Kornberger, M., & Meyer, R. (2024). Organizations, institutions, and symbols. Introduction to a point-counterpoint conversation. Journal of Management Studies, 61(8), 3786–3792. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13060

Parsons, T. (1991). The Social System (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203992951

Setyawan, W. A., Nasution, S. M., & Pujiadi, A. (2021). Resiliensi pada karir prajurit perwira di Markas Besar Tentara Nasional Indonesia. Analitika. Jurnal Magister Psikologi UMA, 13(2), 12–23. https://doi.org/10.31289/analitika.v13i1.5679

Sulistiyani, S., Andriany, M., & Dewi, N. S. (2022). Psychological well-being structure of Indonesian soldiers. Systematic review. Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences, 10(F), 736–744. https://doi.org/10.3889/oamjms.2022.8805

Witt, J. K., & Dhami, M. K. (2022). Visual organization of icon arrays affects Bayesian reasoning and risk judgments. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 11(4), 542–553. https://doi.org/10.1037/mac0000044

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