MalayMail/Reuters-Mar 11
When police detained an Indonesian teenager accused of bombing his high-school campus in Jakarta in November, he had a life-size toy rifle inscribed with “welcome to hell” and the names of white supremacist mass killers. The November 7 attack, which injured 96 people, may have been the first in the country inspired by white supremacists but police fear it won’t be the last. At least 97 youths — the youngest just 11 — are being monitored after coming under the influence of content glorifying mass violence and white supremacists spread largely on messaging app Telegram, Indonesian police told Reuters in March. At least two were planning acts of violence following the Jakarta bombing, according to the police. And it’s not just Indonesia. Across South-east Asia — home to hundreds of millions of people of different ethnicities and faiths — police are grappling with a surge in teenagers plotting violence inspired by white supremacists such as Christchurch mosque attacker Brenton Tarrant, according to interviews with security officials in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. Singapore’s domestic intelligence agency has detained four youths since December 2020 on grounds that they subscribed to “violent far-right extremism ideologies” and were planning attacks. Far-right extremism has since been named by the city-state’s Internal Security Department (ISD) as a top threat. None of the teenagers Singapore and Indonesia are monitoring are white. Some were plotting attacks they believed would protect the existing racial and religious composition of their countries, according to ISD statements on the detentions. Others, three Indonesian security officials say, were inspired by the violence of far-right attackers, even if they didn’t have similar grievances. In every instance in Singapore and Indonesia reviewed by Reuters, the teenagers were alleged by authorities to have been radicalized through social media posts and communities. Read more at: https://www.malaymail.com/news/world/2026/03/11/welcome-to-hell-how-white-supremacist-content-is-radicalising-teens-in-south-east-asia/212073
