Indonesia wildfire haze sparks city protests

Indonesians protested in several cities on Tuesday over wildfires and toxic haze that have made thousands of people unwell for weeks and spread pollution across Southeast Asia.

Student groups called demonstrations as President Prabowo Subianto's government marked its second year in office. Protesters criticised the government in Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Pekanbaru and Makassar, with many focusing on its response to fires across Borneo and Sumatra since July.

In Jakarta, one protest banner read: “I have the right to breathe. Extinguish the fires immediately.”

Residents in Palangkaraya, on Borneo, described the impact of the haze. Melsi, a 40-year-old streetside drinks vendor, said sales were quiet and income had fallen. Sifra, a 29-year-old homemaker, said her husband and two children had been coughing for a month and that smoke entered the house.

Jeanny Sirait, a Greenpeace campaigner, said police detained six activists who had draped Greenpeace banners from a monument at Jakarta's Bundaran HI roundabout before the student marches.

National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Berton Panjaitan said more than 60,000 firefighters, including volunteers, were deployed nationwide. He said 49 aircraft were available for water bombing and cloud seeding, though many had been grounded at times because of the haze.

The Nusantara Atlas wildfire monitor said Monday that Indonesian blazes burned more than 1.9 million hectares of land in the first nine months of 2026.

The fires have sent air pollution as far as Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Indonesia experiences fires every dry season, but this year's blazes have been particularly severe, partly because of a severe El Nino weather episode.