Several women’s rights activists grouped under the Network of Women and Human Rights Activists for Justice have come to The National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) to file a complaint against the controversial pornography law.

They perceived that the law violated human rights and targeted the wrong people, saying that the pornography law had “criminalized the wrong people. It charges people who are not guilty and puts them into jail.”

“The government interferes too much with the people’s privacy. They do not protect the country from porn. They only make people feel uncomfortable about their own right to privacy,” Vivi Widyawati from the coalition told a press conference Friday after it met representatives from Komnas HAM.

She pointed out that women were most likely to be the victims of the pornography law saying, “the pornography law corners women.

“We oppose pornography, but the pornography law fails to make the country free from it,” she said.

The coalition pointed out that at least three cases were built using the law which victimized innocent parties: A case involving porn video in Karang Anyar, Central Java, an arrest of four strippers in Bandung, West Java and the famous Nazriel “Ariel” Irham-Luna Maya case.

Firliana Purwanti from a women’s rights group that provides legal aid, LBH Apik, added that the implementation of the pornography law was off the mark.

“The implementation of the law in the three cases victimized innocent parties and the government has violated people’s constitutional rights,” she said.

She said that the complaint it filed to Komnas HAM was one of its efforts to show the public and the government that there was something wrong with the law. “We want to show the public that the law has
put several innocent people in jail,” she said.

Another effort it would most likely make, Firliana added, was to file a judicial review on the law.

She said the network was still gathering new evidence on new similar cases to prepare for a new judicial review.

In March last year, several human rights activists filed a judicial review on the law, but they lost the battle when the Constitutional Court overruled their case.

The court decided to uphold the law, citing no clauses in the law contradicted the Constitution. They said the plaintiffs’ argument that numerous clauses within the law ran counter to each other.

Long before its endorsement by the House of Representatives in 2008, the law has ignited a public outcry, especially from civil groups and communities in East Indonesia, fearing it will stifle freedom of expression and the pluralist nature of Indonesian society.

Luna Maya’s lawyer Taufik Basari said in the case of the Ariel-Luna video, the law take affect on those who distributed it, not the victims.

“My client, Luna, is a victim because the process of justice is wrong; the victim is re-victimized because the process of law is wrong,” he said.

Komnas HAM member Ridha Saleh, who met the coalition, said that his office would soon follow up the complaint and study the case thoroughly.

“From our meeting, so far, we have found that the three cases have potentially violated human rights,” he said, adding that his office would soon study the complaint.

Ridha said there were at least three points of misconduct in relation to the implementation of the pornography law on the three cases.

“The government failed to protect the innocent and there were also breaches of privacy rights, which are recognized by the constitution,” he said.

He added that the victims had also been discriminated against.

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