The Makassar attorney general’s office has decided to issue an arrest warrant for Muhammad Arsyad, an Indonesian anti-corruption activist, who was arrested in August 2013 for posting a BBM status which called Golkar politician and former head of Indonesian football association Nurdin Halid a corruptor and asked people not to vote for his brother.
Abdul Waris Halid was at that time planning to run for a legislative seat in this year’s election but was later forced to withdraw over inability to show police documents clearing him of any criminal convictions.
Nurdin Halid was actually convicted of corruption and sentenced to two years in prison in 2007 following allegations of overseeing the misuse of $18 million of Palm oil funds when he was the head of the state logistics agency in the 1990s.
Arsyad was reported to the police for libel over his BBM status by another Golkar politician, Abdul Wahab, and subsequently spent seven days in jail during which various organizations lobbied for his release.
Indonesia’s Electronic Information and Transaction Law (UU ITE) and its highly controversial article 27 paragraph 3 was used as the basis for his arrest. The law allows the arrest of anyone accused of defamation by electronic means. In other words, if you say something bad about someone on the internet or over SMS, you’re liable and may be arrested if reported. However, Indonesian law requires the subject of the alleged defamation to personally file the report. Since the person who filed the police report in this case was not the subject himself, the decision to arrest Arsyad in August and again on the 25th by the city of Makassar’s attorney general’s office is unlawful.
Indonesian media and various freedom of speech organizations have decried and denounced the law for violating people’s rights to freedom of speech and expression and brings Indonesia back to the era of former president Soeharto who ruled with an iron fist and clamped down any voice of dissent by force.
Indonesia’s ITE Law Continues Its Path Against Freedom of Expression
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