A

lecturer who shared a video of then active Jakarta governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama delivering what a court subsequently declared to be a blasphemous statement has been indicted on charges of disseminating hate speech and tampering with electronic information.

Buni Yani began standing trial at the Bandung District Court on Tuesday, more than a month after the North Jakarta District Court sentenced Ahok to two years in prison for suggesting that some people were misusing a Quranic verse to dissuade Muslim voters from electing a non-Muslism.

He made the suggestion during a speech in Thousand Islands regency in September last year.

The prosecutors charged Buni Yani under Article 28 of the 2016 Electronic Information and Transaction (ITE) Law on hate speech and under Article 32 of the same law on editing and transmitting electronic information belonging to other persons.

The prosecutors accused Buni Yani of inciting hatred or hostility toward an individual and/or a group of people based on their ethnicity, religion and race.

Buni, they said, deleted the word “pakai” (using) in his transcription of Ahok’s statement, making it more contentious: “[You are] deceived by [other people] using Al-Maidah 51.”

Moreover, they said, Buni wrote a caption for the video with the question “Penistaan agama?” (Blasphemy?), which many believed had only gone viral after he posted it on Facebook.

In his defense, Buni said he did not understand the indictment against him and would challenge it. “I don’t understand a thing about the indictment,” Buni said, adding that the police had not questioned him with regard to allegations that he had violated Article 32 of the ITE law.

Buni stated in the hearing that the case against him had lost its legal basis when Ahok had been found guilty of blasphemy in a court of law. Ahok has said he will not appeal his conviction, which had drawn global condemnation.

“What I said is not false news or defamation. I should be free.”

During the hearing, at least 50 people from the West Java Islamic Defenders Alliance staged a demonstration outside the court building and demanded that the judges free the lecturer.

More than 260 West Java Police officers were deployed to guard the court.

Ahok’s speech as shown in Buni Yani’s short clip is said to have been used as a basis for several organizations to report Ahok for blasphemy.

It also sparked several large rallies initiated by the hard-line Islam Defenders Front (FPI) on Nov. 4 and Dec. 2 last year and on March 3 and May 5 this year.

A supporter of Ahok reported Buni to the police for defamation on Oct. 7. Police conducted several investigations regarding the report, which resulted in police naming Buni Yani a suspect on Nov. 24.

The police handed Buni’s complete dossier to the Depok Prosecutor Office on April 10. However, amid security concerns the prosecute decided to move the trial to the Bandung District Court only days before the first hearing. (kuk)