Jakarta – Rights groups from Amnesty International Indonesia to the Bandung Legal Aid Foundation (LBH) have criticised the National Police (Polri) Criminal Investigations Directorate's (Bareskrim) move to arrest a Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) student who allegedly made a meme of former president Joko "Jokowi" Widodo and the current President Prabowo Subianto.
The ITB student is being prosecuted using the Information and Electronic Transaction (ITE) Law on content that violates public morality.
Amnesty International Indonesia Executive Director Usman Hamid said the arrest of the female student shows that the police continue to carry out authoritarian practices in repressing freedom of expression in digital space.
"This time by using the argument of morality. Peaceful expression no matter how offensive, either through art, including satire and political memes, is not a criminal offense. Polri's response is clearly a form of criminalisation of freedom of expression in digital space", Hamid said in a written statement on Friday May 9.
According to Hamid, the arrest of the student is also contrary to the spirit of the latest Constitutional Court (MK) ruling which states that causing unrest on social media is not classified as a criminal act. Hamid said that Polri's alleged disobedience over the Constitutional Court's ruling reflected the authoritarian attitude of law enforcement officials who apply a repressive response in the public space.
"Freedom of opinion is a right protected both under international and national human rights laws, including the 1945 Constitution. Although this freedom can be restricted to protect the reputation of other people, international human rights standards recommend that this is not done through criminalisation", he said.
Hamid said that state institutions including the president are not entities whose reputations are protected by human rights laws. According to Hamid, criminalisation of expression will only create a climate of fear in society and is a cruel tactics to silence criticism in public space.
"Polri must immediately free the student because her arrest is contrary to the spirit of the MK's ruling. The state must not be anti-critic, let alone use the law to silence criticism", he said.
Hamid is also of the view that criminalisation through the ITE Law not only punishes the victim but also causes psychological trauma for their family. "In some cases, they must be separated from their family while the legal process runs due to detention and imprisonment. This is a repressive and unfair tactic", he said.
Similarly, in a separate statement, LBH Bandung criticised the actions of police officers who arrested the ITB student for making the Jokowi-Prabowo meme.
LBH Bandung head of the advocacy and networking M Rafi Saiful said that the students' actions on social media were part of their expression and criticism of the government.
"It was part of criticism of the government. Especially because we know that the Jokowi government and the Prabowo government are one unit, where the current government reflects the oligarchy in power", said Saiful at the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) offices in Jakarta on Friday.
He alluded to the use of articles in the ITE Law to ensnare the student. Saiful said the ITE Law is always imposed on those who criticise the government.
"Then if we look at morality, where is the morality? Actually, if we talk about it in the context of the ITE Law, it's a rubber [catch all] article and often ensnares activist friends or anyone who dares to criticise", he said.
Saiful explained that when he received a report about the incident, LBH Bandung immediately coordinated with LBH Jakarta to provide assistance because the case was being handled by the National Police's Criminal Investigations Directorate.
"Then the LBH Jakarta went to Bareskrim to accompany her, but the person had already brought another lawyer. So in the end LBH Jakarta did not accompany her", he said.
Earlier it was suspected that a fine arts and design student from the ITB was arrested by the Criminal Investigations Division after posting a meme of President Prabowo and the 7th President of the Republic of Indonesia Widodo "kissing".
The information was initially conveyed by an X account named @MurtadhaOne1. The account said the arrest was made for making a fake photo that resembled Prabowo and Widodo.
Meanwhile, another X account, @bengkeldodo, uploaded a photo of the alleged ITB student who was reportedly arrested along with a photo of the meme in question.
There was also an X account @gtobing2903 that uploaded a fake photo or meme of Jokowi-Prabowo and it was suspected that the creator was an ITB student.
National Police public relations division head Brigadier General Trunoyudo Wisnu Andiko has confirmed the arrest related to the meme. When sought for confirmation on Friday morning however, he did not answer directly whether the person concerned was an ITB student or not. He said that the perpetrator who was arrested was a woman with the initials SSS.
"Confirming that a woman with the initials SSS has been arrested and processed", he confirmed via a text message.
Andiko also did not explain the chronology of the woman's arrest. He only said that the perpetrator SSS was suspected of violating Article 45 paragraph (1) in conjunction with Article 27 paragraph (1) and/or Article 51 paragraph (1) in conjunction with Article 35 of Law Number 1 of 2024 of the ITE Law.
[Abridged translation by James Balowski. Four paragraphs detailing the contents of the ITE articles at the end of the report were not translated. The original title of the article was "Amnesty-LBH Kritisi Polri Ciduk Mahasiswi terkait Meme Jokowi-Prabowo".]
