Families are frantically scrambling to secure their children from potential abductors, as others turn to vigilantism that sometimes turns deadly.

The clip of the child apparently being dragged into a sack by a man in a black jacket in the city of Bekasi, near Jakarta, was rubbished by investigators as a hoax, spread maliciously.

Hengki, the police chief of Metropolitan Bekasi, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, said it was “scaremongering”.

“We’ve determined the CCTV footage actually dates back from 2020 and the incident didn’t take place in our city,” he said.

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A spokesman for the Bekasi police urged the public to “verify claims on social media before jumping to conclusions”.

Yet photos and videos showing alleged kidnappers in action – or being apprehended by vigilantes across the country – are proliferating across the internet.

Sherly Hadi, 35, a homemaker in Surabaya, said she kept getting messages on WhatsApp about abductors hunting for child victims across the country on behalf of an international organ harvesting syndicate.

“This has me worried about the safety of my 11-year-old daughter. I keep telling her not to play outside and to avoid strangers,” she said, clicking on a video of an alleged kidnapper being tackled by citizens in a street not far from her home.

The kidnapper in question turned out to be a homeless woman with mental health issues who had been loitering in the neighbourhood only to be accused by suspicious residents of being a child abductor. They forcibly took her to a police station.

Surabaya Mayor Eri Cahyadi categorically denied child kidnapping had taken place in his city.

“I have checked with the police who told me the accused turned out to be innocent,” he said. “It was an overreaction on the residents’ part.”

But Hadi – like many other anxious parents – remains unconvinced.

“Maybe they got the wrong person this time but I’m sure the other cases are true,” she said.

Rumours with deadly outcomes

Fact and fiction have become blurred in Indonesia as rumours abound and interest in conspiracy theories increases.

On January 10, two teenagers in Makassar, South Sulawesi, were arrested by police on charges of kidnapping and murdering a 10-year-old boy named Muhammad Fadli Sadewa.

The perpetrators told police they had seen a website that offered a huge sum of money for human organs, which drove them to kidnap and murder the child. But when they tried to email the website, there was no reply.

After the arrest made headlines, unconfirmed rumours of kidnapping spread like wildfire on social media. Other misleading information contained claims of sightings of child abductors in various parts of Indonesia, especially urban areas in Java, Sulawesi, Kalimantan and Papua.

Makassar-based journalist Ruknuddin Suleman said the current mass paranoia over child abductions was misguided.

“The feverish vigilantism acts as a collective salve to comfort ourselves that we are doing something right to protect our children,” he said. “But are we really?”

In January, a woman in her 40s was accused of being a child kidnapper by residents in Sorong, Papua. A mob roughed her up, stripped her naked and paraded her through the streets before a man doused her with petrol and set her on fire. She died in hospital.

Testimonies by those who knew the woman pointed to her having mental health issues. A 26-year-old man was arrested over the killing.

It only takes an accusation

A week later, and some 2,500km to the west in Surabaya, Agus Hidayat, 27, was attacked by an angry crowd after someone shouted “Abductor!” at him for offering confectionery to a child.

Police duly revealed him to be a missing person from Bangil, Pasuruan, a nearby town. His family told the police that Hidayat, who has a mental illness, had wandered away from home in January. He was found, and beaten up, 50km away.

The “mass moral panic”, said sociologist Oki Rahadianto Sutopo, is a “phenomenon suggesting a systemic crisis in our society whereby citizens feel they can’t expect adequate protection from the authorities”.

In the absence of credible reassurances and accountability from the authorities, the public often conjure up villains from vulnerable groups, in this case homeless people and those with mental health issues.

“Unable to demand accountability from the top, people scapegoat those at the bottom in a process of social sublimation,” said Sutopo, an academic at Yogyakarta’s Gadjah Mada University.

He added that the general lack of understanding and empathy for those struggling with their mental health makes them a convenient target.

Indonesian society is no stranger to instances of mass panic with deadly consequences, according to Bagong Suyanto, dean of the social and political sciences faculty at Surabaya’s Airlangga University.

He cited the 1998-1999 so-called witch hunt in Banyuwangi, a coastal town in East Java, during which 309 people were executed by vigilantes, accused of being dukun santet or “dark magicians”.

Subsequent investigations by human rights groups found the victims to be spiritual practitioners, traditional masseurs, Muslim clerics and local village heads.

The list includes the 1965-1966 anti-Communist purge, the shooting by undercover snipers of thousands of suspected gang leaders in the 1980s, and 1998’s riots that saw thousands of Indonesian Chinese murdered, raped and their properties looted.

Rights groups say Widodo’s acknowledgement does not go far enough to restore justice to victims and their families, although many agree it is a positive, albeit small, step to address collective amnesia over the atrocities that pockmark Indonesia’s recent history.

“The general deficit of trust in the government as a source of credible information and as an upholder of justice is also a factor at play when it comes to vigilantism and extralegal mob justice,” Suyanto added.

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Suleman, the journalist in Makassar, said the fatal burning of the woman in Sorong was “gruesome” and “an embarrassment to the nation”.

Importantly, similar episodes may divert attention from the reality that most cases of child abuse and abduction are not linked to strangers.

Statistics are scant and incomplete, but the Indonesian Police Force recorded 2,303 cases of child abductions and child abuse in 2019. The Ministry for Women Empowerment and Child Protection claimed there were 22 child abduction cases in 2022, most committed by family members or close friends.

“People like to imagine unknown faceless people are the real threat,” Suleman said. But the perpetrators “tend to be relatives or those with direct access to our children”.