Yusniar - Antara

The Makassar District Court suspended the detention on Wednesday of Yusniar, a housewife who was currently on trial in a criminal case resulting from a post she made on Facebook.

The panel of judges turned down her legal team’s request to drop the case, but agreed to release the 27-year-old, who has been behind bars since Oct. 2. “We, the panel of judges, agree to suspend the defendant’s detention and change it to a city arrest as of Nov. 24,” presiding judge Kasianus said.

The case began when Sudirman Sijaya, a councilor on the Jeneponto legislative council in South Sulawesi, who is also apparently a lawyer, filed a report against Yusniar over remarks she made on her Facebook account.

She wrote on March 14, in Makassarese, “Thank God. The problem is finally over. Stupid councilor, stupid lawyer. [You] want to help a guilty person, [but it is] clearly my parents’ land [that you] came to and disturbed.”

The post came a day after her parents’ house on Jl. Sultan Alauddin was attacked by 100 people, allegedly including Sudirman. Yusniar did not mention any names in her post.

Yusniar has been charged with violating the 2008 Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law and the Criminal Code (KUHP) on defamation, which carry a maximum penalty of six years in prison.

The panel of judges said the decision to release her was made based on several considerations including the fact that Yusniar was a low-income housewife who needed to work to support her family and that she was cooperative while attending the trial hearings.

Earlier, Yusniar’s lawyers had asked the panel of judges to release the defendant by dropping the charges against her as they lacked substance. They argued that the defendant had not defamed or insulted anyone in the Facebook post given that it did not mention any names.

The panel of judges, however, overruled the objection, arguing that the prosecutors’ charges met the requirements, were careful and comprehensive. “[We] state that the objection presented by the defendant’s lawyers is unacceptable. The charges filed by the prosecutors are legitimate,” Kasianus said.

The judges also ordered the prosecutors to proceed with the examination. The trial was adjourned until next Wednesday when witnesses would be examined.

The defendant’s lawyer Abdul Azis Dunia accepted the judges’ decision and expressed optimism that his client would be cleared.

“We have prepared defense witnesses including an expert witness who will demonstrate the main point that the defendant did not defame or insult anyone,” he said.

During the hearing dozens of activists and observers staged a rally in front of the court. They called on the panel of judges to drop the charges against Yusniar. They also demanded that the South Sulawesi Police name Sudirman a suspect in the attack on Yusniar’s parent’s house.

The house in question had been the subject of a dispute between Yusniar’s father and his elder sister, a relative of Sudirman.

Before the trial began, she and her father visited Sudirman three times in Jeneponto to apologize and ask him to drop the case, but Sudirman refused.

The case adds to a growing list of people charged with criminal offenses based on the ITE Law, which has been widely condemned as a threat to freedom of expression.

The most infamous case was housewife Prita Mulyasari, who was imprisoned for complaining about OMNI International Hospital in 2009 in a private email that went viral. The most recent case involved a man in Medan, North Sumatra, who was sentenced to 14 months in prison in August for being tagged in a story on Facebook.

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