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Netizens wary of libel suits under draconian ITE Law
“If we can’t express our opinions in social media, then where? Should we go to the State Palace?” said 23-year-old Retno Wulandari, a newly graduated pharmacist
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“If we can’t express our opinions in social media, then where? Should we go to the State Palace?” said 23-year-old Retno Wulandari, a newly graduated pharmacist.
“We only want to take part in watching the government.”
Retno has been actively discussing politics with her friends in social media, usually on Kaskus and Twitter and on messaging services like WhatsApp and Line, but she said she did not feel she had the freedom to talk freely as she was aware that she could easily be charged with defamation, as stipulated in Article 27 of the 2008 Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law.
The article imposes criminal punishment on anyone who purposely distributes or transmits electronic information or documents with defamatory content.
Although she never got into trouble because of her activities in social media, the regulation forces her to be careful in giving opinions.
A 22-year-old social media specialist, Tommy Surya Pradana, said the defamation article in the law was ambiguous and could be easily abused by the authorities. “It really depends on how we deliver our words. I have to fully understand what I write before I publish it,” he said.
The key issue is that law enforcement institutions often confuse criticism with defamation, the latest case of which saw the National Police, the National Narcotics Agency (BNN) and the Indonesian Military (TNI) reporting a human rights activist for breaching the ITE law after he wrote scathing statements about the institutions on Facebook.
The activist, Haris Azhar, was added to a long list of people accused of defamation for criticizing public officials or complaining about a service from a private company.
Furqan Erwansyah, aka Rudi Lombok, was jailed in 2015 for violating the ITE Law after criticizing a West Nusa Tenggara tourism advertisement that he said was more promoting the head of the tourism body than the province.
Housewife Prita Mulyasari was sued for defamation by the Omni International Hospital in 2009 after she complained about the hospital’s services on an online mailing list.
Florence Sihombing, a Gadjah Mada University (UGM) student, was sentenced to two months in jail after venting her anger on Path against the people of Yogyakarta.
Many other people have been charged with this draconian article, but their cases failed to make headlines in the media or to trigger public outrage in social media.
Despite the criticism, the government and the House of Representatives have decided to retain the article in the revision to the ITE Law, which is to be enacted soon. They only agreed to reduce the punishment from a six-year maximum to less than five years in prison to prevent the police from detaining suspected violators.
Critics said reducing the prison sentence was not enough. “Even when they reduce the imprisonment to two years, it still can be a tool for public officials to jail those who criticize them,” Supriyadi W. Eddyono from the Institute of Criminal Justice Reform (ICJR) said.
He claimed that most defamation cases, like the one against Haris, were launched by public officials who could not take criticism.
University of Indonesia (UI) criminal law expert Ganjar Laksamana Bondan argued that the problem with the defamation article in the ITE Law was more about its implementation than its wording. The law enforcers often do not understand the cases they are handling, he said. “They should be able to distinguish what constitutes defamation or is only criticism. People who file a defamation report against somebody may not understand, but the law enforcers should.”
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