Thousands of students across Indonesia have protested for days over the government’s handling of toxic haze that has blanketed multiple cities and spread across Southeast Asia.
More than 500 demonstrators gathered Friday outside the Central Kalimantan Governor’s Office in Palangkaraya, the provincial capital, demanding solutions to the haze. Some held signs that read “haze emergency” and “If we burn, you burn with us!” Many wore thick masks to protect themselves from air pollution that tinged the city orange.
The protests spread to more than half a dozen Indonesian cities this week, including locations on the island of Borneo, where many of the fires are burning. Student and civil society groups have demanded stronger action for months, with some calling for Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto to declare a national emergency and take more aggressive steps to prevent agricultural practices blamed for fueling the blazes.
“In Indonesia, we’re so angry,” said Vincent Thomas, a student at Indonesia’s Universitas Padjadjaran, who joined protests in Bandung. “We want the officials responsible to be held accountable.”
Thomas continued his call for sweeping government action. “We want the government to openly declare a national disaster emergency,” he said. “Not just regarding Kalimantan, but regarding forest fires across the entire country, in every part of Indonesia.”
Some student-led protests have merged with ongoing demonstrations over Indonesia’s struggling economy. The haze has triggered health concerns and ignited public backlash from Singapore, Malaysia and others in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
More than 333,470 residents have suffered acute respiratory illnesses across the seven provinces affected by the haze since mid-August, according to Indonesia’s Ministry of Health. Singapore and Kuala Lumpur were ranked among the most polluted cities in the world this month by the global air quality monitoring platform IQAir, with many considering this the worst haze crisis to affect the region in over a decade.
Singaporean officials, who have warned the country’s air quality may deteriorate further, are taking legal action against seven companies in Indonesia that Singapore blames for causing the fires.
“For me, the part that does worry me is just the difficulty in getting N95 masks and air purifiers,” said Qiyun Woo, a Singaporean environmentalist. “You just can’t help but worry about your own health, especially when you might not have an air purifier.”
Jemilah Mahmood, executive director of the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, connected the crisis to broader environmental degradation. “The lungs of a child in Pontianak or Johor Bahru depend on the health of a peat swamp hundreds of kilometers away,” she said.
Mahmood also warned about diplomatic fallout. “Crises like this test relationships, and the rhetoric this season has been unhelpful on all sides,” she shared. “My worry is not a permanent rupture. It is that blame becomes a habit and gets in the way of the cooperation we need.”
Experts blame this year’s extreme conditions on a combination of factors: extreme heat, climate change and an intensifying El Niño that may be the strongest in living memory. Indonesia’s forests were a tinderbox because there was less rain during the wet season.
“The current haze crisis is a real symptom, a real example of how climate change affects our day-to-day lives,” said Syahdiva Moezbar, with the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air in Jakarta.
Indonesia’s haze is primarily caused by forest and peatland fires, often started to clear land for farming. While such fires are common during dry season, which usually begins in April, this year’s are the worst on record. Volunteer firefighters extinguishing blazes around Palangkaraya told reporters that they hoped rain would come soon.
The haze has closed schools in East Timor and been detected in the Philippines. Slash-and-burn agricultural practices are common across Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, with burning seasons typically running from January to April. Regional efforts to tackle the issue have lagged.