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s the National Police ignored a recommendation from the Press Council and pressed ahead with its move to process a complaint against Tempo weekly'€™s cover story of the fat bank accounts of Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan, a number of independent press associations on Thursday called on President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo to take action to stop what they deemed '€œcriminalization'€ of the media by the police.

During a press conference on Thursday at the Press Council office in Jakarta, Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) chairman Suwardjono urged Jokowi to order acting National Police chief Comr. Gen. Badrodin Haiti to comply with the 2012 deal made between the police and the press council in which the two parties agreed to transfer any police reports against the press to the Press Council for further action.

'€œAll ongoing investigations against media outlets with regard to their journalistic products must be handed over to the council and in future the police must direct any complaints regarding news publication to the council,'€ Suwardjono said.

On Jan. 22, the Indonesian General Society Movement (GMBI) filed a report against Tempo over an investigative piece on Budi'€™s wealth.

The group accused the magazine of divulging state secrets and violating both the 1998 Banking Law and the 2010 Money-Laundering Law.

Many have said that the police'€™s move to accept the complaints could bring dire consequences.

'€œIf the police in Jakarta criminalize journalists here, what about our fellow reporters in regions across the country. By processing the Tempo case, the police have infringed upon the jurisdiction of the Press Council,'€ Yadi Hendriana, Indonesian Television Journalists Association (IJTI) chairman, said during the press conference.

Yadi said that the police should comply with a recent finding issued by the Press Council that Tempo did not violate any journalistic code of ethics as regulated under Article 40 of the Press Law and that the dispute between the magazine and the plaintiff had to be settled through the Press Council.

Also present, Tempo magazine'€™s chief editor Arif Zulkifli said that the police move against his media outlet was a serious threat to the freedom of speech that the country had been enjoying over the past 17 years, following the ouster of president Soeharto.

Arif said that the police report against Tempo could also be seen as confirmation of what the magazine had printed because the plaintiff had not accused Tempo of violating the Press Law by questioning the validity of the data in the report, merely accusing it of revealing state secrets.

Arif further said that he had received information that the police were currently holding off their probe, but there was no guarantee that criminalization against the media would stop.

He said that the police had also made a similar move in their investigation into The Jakarta Post, whose editor-in-chief Meidyatama Suryodiningrat was named a blasphemy suspect for publishing a cartoon in the Post July 3 edition criticizing violence conducted by the Islamic State (IS) organization, by postponing their investigation, not officially stopping it.

'€œThese cases must be solved once and for all by issuing an order saying that the investigation has been officially stopped. By postponing them, the police could dig up the cases in the future should Tempo and The Jakarta Post write another critical story that offends certain parties,'€ Arif said.

Earlier on Thursday, Arif and senior journalist Goenawan Mohamad held a meeting with Jokowi at the Presidential Palace, where they discussed the criminalization of the press, among other issues.

'€œPak Jokowi is very concerned with such cases,'€ Arief said at the Palace. '€I believe it is interesting that Pak Jokowi gives his full attention to the condition of our press, not only Tempo, but all the media in the country.'€