The Jakarta Metro Police is on high alert today after an ISIS flag was found on the outer fence of a police station in Kebayoran Lama, South Jakarta early this morning.
At around 5:30am today, officers saw an unidentified man loitering outside the station before driving away on his motorcycle in a hurry. When they checked the fence, the officers found an ISIS flag and a note which was put inside an empty water bottle.
The note, as reported by Detik, contains a message imploring the police and military to stop idolizing the pluralist values that are promoted by Pancasila, the state ideology of Indonesia. The message also calls for the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in Indonesia, urging others not to call Islamic militants as terrorists before threatening that they’d terrorize the nation, turning Jakarta into a war zone like Marawi.
Marawi, of course, refers to the city in the southern Philippines which has been besieged by ISIS-affiliated Islamic militants since late May. In the ongoing conflict between the militants and the Philippines military, nearly 400,000 have reportedly been displaced from their homes while the fighting has killed around 400.
The Jakarta Metro Police have not yet identified who put up the ISIS flag and placed the threatening note. The police said they are interviewing witnesses and reviewing CCTV footage of the area in order to determine who the culprit is.
Jakarta has experienced a spate of terrorist attacks in recent years, including the recent suicide bombing at a bus station in May that killed three police officers, as well as the bombing of a police station and subsequent firefight that killed eight in January 2016. ISIS claimed responsibility for both major attacks.
