Assessing Human Rights Backsliding in Prabowo Subianto’s Indonesia and Anwar Ibrahim’s Malaysia

Abstract

This article assesses whether restrictions on human rights under President Prabowo Subianto in Indonesia and Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia represent new deterioration or the continuation of earlier practices. It compares two administrations whose leaders made public commitments to rights protection but govern under different political institutions and coalitions. Using a purposive, document-based comparison of published scholarship, human-rights organization reports, and contemporary news accounts available through August 2026, the analysis examines official responses to expression, peaceful assembly, and religious and sexual minorities. It distinguishes new measures and reported intensification from the continued application of pre-existing laws, and compares legal instruments, administrative enforcement, and accountability. In Indonesia, reports of forceful responses to the 2025 protests and the 2025 defense-policy designation concerning LGBTQ culture indicate new or intensified restrictions, while local resistance to a church is insufficient by itself to establish a national policy shift. In Malaysia, sedition investigations and protest-related policing largely demonstrate continuity of established instruments despite reform pledges; minority-rights controversies also involve earlier administrative decisions. The cases therefore show overlapping rights-protection concerns but not an identical or uniformly established degree of backsliding. The oligarchy thesis provides a plausible interpretation of political constraints, yet the available documents do not establish that elite or conservative pressure caused each enforcement decision. The contribution is a differentiated comparison of rights-related administrative action rather than a comprehensive measurement of national human-rights trends.