Affan Kurniawan should have been invisible that evening. On August 28, 2025, in Jakarta, he was just another young man weaving through the streets, delivering food for Gojek to support his family. A breadwinner. A son. A brother. Someone who carried more than his own weight, balancing responsibility, dreams, and hope.
But that night, he was not standing. Not tall. Not whole. He crawled, hands scraping asphalt, heart pounding, lungs burning. Crawling the way out of hell, reaching for safety, for another day, for a future that seemed just within reach.
Then the machine came. Cold, armored, unstoppable. It did not see Affan as a human being. It did not see a dream or a life. It saw only a mere body in its path. He could not rise up. He could not stand on his feet completely. And someone made sure he would not.
Hundreds witnessed the burning flame of chaos. Friends tried to pull him out, neighbors shouted in panic, and strangers captured the moment on video. Candles flickered in the night as social media erupted with his name. His family demanded justice. The public demanded justice. The nation demanded justice. In that grief, Affan became more than a boy on a motorcycle. He became one of the many symbols of a city refusing to forget its victims.
Affan’s death is a wound, but it is also a spark of outrage that refuses to die. His struggle, his stolen breath, became a voice louder than one life could ever carry. He reminds us that those sworn to protect can sometimes destroy. He reminds us that ordinary people can be extraordinary, when we are oppressed and deprived of something that we deserve. Every voice that rises in protest, every act of witnessing, pushes a society toward justice.
He could not rise that night. But today, in protests, in hashtags, in every act of remembrance, he stands taller than fear. Taller than indifference. Taller than the machine that tried to flatten him. Affan Kurniawan rides on—not just in memory, but in action, in justice, and in the relentless heartbeat of a city refusing to forget.
In every spray of paint and whispered shout, one question refuses to die: Who do you call when the police murders?
