Indonesia's human rights commission has demanded the government abandon a mandatory military training component for managers of President Prabowo Subianto's flagship village cooperative initiative, citing five participant deaths that occurred within the first ten days of a 45-day programme. The deaths, which took place between June 17 and June 26, have prompted serious questions about the appropriateness of subjecting civilian economic workers to military-style instruction and raised broader concerns about Prabowo's expanding integration of military structures into civilian governance.
The "Red and White Cooperatives" scheme represents a cornerstone of the Prabowo administration's economic strategy, launched in July of the previous year with an ambitious mandate to establish approximately 80,000 village cooperatives throughout Indonesia. The programme seeks to tackle unemployment while simultaneously supporting the government's target of achieving 8% economic growth by 2029. These cooperatives are designed to provide essential services to rural communities, including the distribution of basic consumer goods, subsidised cooking gas, and agricultural fertilisers—critical commodities that directly affect household budgets and farming productivity across the archipelago.
The training requirement has created an unexpected controversy. Nearly 35,000 prospective cooperative managers have been required to complete basic military training across multiple regional military installations, a prerequisite that began on June 14 and is scheduled to conclude on July 31. This stipulation represents an unusual fusion of military discipline with civilian economic management, blurring traditional boundaries between defence and commercial sectors in ways that independent observers find troubling.
Pramono Ubaid Tantowi, an official at the national human rights commission, articulated the fundamental objection to the military training component with precision. He noted that cooperatives are fundamentally economic institutions centred on business management, member services, and organisational governance—skill sets bearing no necessary relationship to military protocols or procedures. The commission's position reflects a widespread view that military training is simply not an appropriate foundation for developing managers of agricultural supply networks or cooperative enterprise systems.
The Defence Ministry attributed the five deaths to diverse underlying medical conditions rather than the training itself. Major General Ketut Gede Wetan, the ministry's head of human resource development, reported that the fatalities resulted from cardiac arrest, heat stroke, tuberculosis, and pneumonia occurring between mid-and late June. The ministry maintained that all participants had undergone medical screening before enrolment and received appropriate clinical care according to established protocols. Nevertheless, the concentration of deaths in such a compressed timeframe—five fatalities among nearly 35,000 trainees within just ten days—suggests either inadequate health assessment mechanisms or environmental conditions that proved dangerous for vulnerable individuals despite pre-training clearances.
The timing of these deaths carries particular significance for Southeast Asian observers monitoring how the Prabowo administration manages large-scale civilian programmes. The president, himself a retired military officer who assumed office in 2024, has demonstrated a consistent pattern of expanding military involvement in ostensibly civilian initiatives. This trajectory raises questions about institutional capture and the degree to which military cultures and procedures may be becoming embedded in non-defence governmental operations across Indonesia.
In response to mounting pressure, the Defence Ministry announced plans for a comprehensive programme evaluation addressing health monitoring, risk detection for vulnerable participants, and recalibration of activity intensity. The health ministry will reportedly participate in redesigning components of the training. These adjustments, however, come only after fatalities occurred, suggesting reactive rather than preventive safety mechanisms were in place initially. The ministry's emphasis that the training involved "no strenuous physical activity" and focused on non-combat instruction contradicts the apparent physical demands that precipitated deaths from heat-related illness and cardiac events.
The human rights commission has escalated its response by calling for government investigation into the deaths and urging law enforcement to commission forensic autopsies as part of a potential criminal inquiry. This escalation reflects concern that deaths during government-mandated training programmes demand rigorous accountability mechanisms rather than dismissal as unfortunate natural occurrences. For Malaysian observers, the situation illustrates how expansive government programmes, particularly those merging military and civilian spheres, require robust independent oversight and health safeguards.
Pramono articulated an alternative framework for developing cooperative manager competencies, emphasising managerial skills, leadership capacity, and financial literacy as appropriate focal points. These skill domains directly address the operational requirements of village cooperatives, whereas military training adds no demonstrable value to members' ability to manage supply chains, maintain financial records, or provide member services. This distinction proves crucial for programme legitimacy and effectiveness across rural regions where cooperatives operate.
The Red and White Cooperatives programme's strategic importance to Prabowo's economic agenda means that training reforms will likely proceed, but the deaths have crystallised concerns about military involvement in civilian economic development. Indonesia's archipelagic geography and dispersed rural populations make national cooperative networks essential infrastructure for economic inclusion, yet building such networks through military training apparatus represents a structural choice that merits scrutiny. For the broader region, Indonesia's experience demonstrates that large-scale development programmes combining military and civilian components require careful institutional design, independent health and safety oversight, and clear boundaries separating defence from economic management responsibilities.
