Down in the WSJC FIR (it's been a while since I've flown to JKT though) you really do get some buildups, often embedded, that barely paint on the weather radar. In the goo or at night you can be flying along fat dumb and happy and boom, all hell breaks loose. Turbulence, St. Elmo's Fire, airspeed and altitude fluctuations. Then as suddenly as it began, you are back out of it in smooth air.
About 10 years ago I was flying in the same region. 4 hours into a 7 hour flight. Happy at FL410/M.80 but in a thin wispy flat layer with light ocnl mod turb. Suddenly the aircraft pitched up violently, both FGCs and ADCs kicked out as did the autopilot, autothrottles and trims. All the screen speed info red X'd and the mach indicated on the Flt Director panel went instantly to M.74 as the max cruise speed for this altitude (hence the initial pitch-up). The OAT had changed within 5 seconds from -54C to -27C. This temp is outside all the aircraft performance charts. Both FMS's warned that the aircraft was exceeding its ceiling altitude. The was NO severe turbulence at any stage but the aircraft became almost uncontrollable and I was left flying on a standby manual AOA indicator and the mark 1 eyeball on the horizon until we could figure out what the hell to do next. After about 45 seconds (felt like an hour) the temps returned to normal and everything was sequentially reset. During that time all I could was keep the aircraft flying upright. Manual flying at that altitude is a delicate process.
I was fortunate to be in an aircraft with a lot of spare thrust and a large margin above the stall in normal cruise. To be honest it scared the sh*t out of me. In an aircraft with a narrower margin above the stall control could be lost very quickly with a low chance of recovery.
The subsequent investigation identified the cause as a rapidly rising column of warm air being funneled up from a developing Cb below. There were no clouds at our level and nothing on the Wx radar.
I guess my point from this experience is that;
Don't be too quick condemn Airbus for icing pitots/AOAs.
Don't be too quick to suggest that the pilots stalled the aircraft through some positive or negative action.
Don't be too quick to blame severe turbulence.