Defending Legal Freedoms in Indonesia provides fresh insights into how cause lawyers navigate political and institutional change, by presenting and analysing the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI), the oldest and most influential legal and human rights organisation in Indonesia.

Based on rich ethnographic research, this book charts the developments of the organisation since its founding in 1970, its contribution to the ending of the authoritarian, military-backed New Order (1966-1998), its relative decline in the years following Indonesia’s democratisation and its revival in recent years as Indonesian democracy and human rights come under threat. The author examines the tactics the organisation has used, including show trials and working alongside grassroots communities, organising them and educating them about their rights. It highlights how this organisation flourished more under an authoritarian regime than under democracy and how its present, prominent, adversarial-political version of cause lawyering is playing a leading role in civil society resisting further erosion of democracy and human rights. The book addresses recent democratic erosion under President Joko Widodo, and documents pivotal moments in Indonesia’s contemporary history, such as the ‘Reform Corrupted’ mass demonstrations in 2019, illuminating how democracy shrinks, and how lawyers push back.

The first book on Indonesia’s crucially important cause lawyering, activist lawyers’ group, this book will be of interest to researchers in Asian Law, Indonesian Studies. It is also an essential point of reference for future research in public lawyering in Asia.