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Police charge Blitar woman under ITE Law for sharing 'Jokowi pharaoh', 'dog demon' memes
The woman, who claims she merely forwarded the images she found on Facebook, has been charged under the Electronic Information and Transactions Law while police continue their investigation into uncovering the original poster.
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A woman holds up a mobile phone showing an image of the President doctored to resemble an Egyptian mummy, which was published on the Aida Konveksi Facebook account. (TJP/Asip Hasani )
T
he Blitar Police have charged a local woman with defamation and hate speech after she referred to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo as "pharaoh" in an image that has become a viral meme.
The woman, 44-year-old Ida Fitri of Blitar, East Java, is suspected of allegedly insulting the President by sharing a picture of him edited to resemble a mummy on Facebook and captioned "The New Pharaoh” in Indonesian.
In addition to sharing the "pharaoh" meme, Ida allegedly shared another meme captioned "The Dog-Faced Demon", which featured a Constitutional Court justice whose head was replaced with the image of a dog's head.
The two memes were reportedly shared on her Facebook account, which is registered under the username Aida Konveksi.
Ida claimed that she had taken the memes from a Facebook group called The Voice Of People.
Blitar Police chief Sr. Comr. Adewira Negara Siregar said the police had obtained enough evidence for a preliminary hearing on the case.
“We are being assisted by the [cybersecurity] teams of the East Java Police and the National Police to discover the [original poster] who uploaded these images to Facebook,” Adewira told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
Ida has been charged under Article 45 of Law No. 11/2008 on electronic information and transactions (ITE), which carries a minimum sentence of 5 years in prison. (dpk)
