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Homemakers face prison for spreading hoaxes online
Kazahra Tanzania, a stay-at-home mother who lives in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, advised residents in a Facebook post to wear protective masks because she had heard that a man in the city who had recently visited China had been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus
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azahra Tanzania, a stay-at-home mother who lives in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, advised residents in a Facebook post to wear protective masks because she had heard that a man in the city who had recently visited China had been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus.
The information, which she received from her brother who works at a local hospital, turned out to be false, and she quickly took down her post and issued an apology. “Apologies for my previous post, which has been troubling residents of Balikpapan,” she wrote.
But panic had already been sown. Residents rushed to get masks to protect themselves after reading the post. Kazahra was detained by the police on Monday for allegedly spreading false information, which, according to the Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law, carries a sentence of three to 10 years of imprisonment.
“Maybe she meant well by warning the community. It just happened to be false information,” East Kalimantan Police spokesperson Sr. Comr. Ade Yaya Suryana said.
This was not the first time that the law had implicated homemakers due to their activities on social media. Between October and November 2018, the National Police arrested seven stay-at-home mothers for allegedly spreading various pieces of false information — from airplane accidents to child kidnappings. None of the women created the false information; they only shared it.
The ITE Law is controversial as it has been used to jail more than 300 internet users since 2008, according to the Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network (SAFEnet).
As of last year, the group recorded that there had been 475 criminal cases filed based on violations of the law. Perpetrators were mostly charged for defamation, hate speech and spreading hoaxes and false news.
Indonesian Anti-Slander Society (Mafindo) chairman Septiaji Eko Nugroho said that homemakers were prone to spreading hoaxes because they often worried about their family’s wellbeing, especially when there was a crime or health threat.
“They usually have a high level of concern about others, wanting to help and remind them, but they don’t realize that they endanger others,” Septiaji told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
Suryanti, a 50-year-old mother, said the law was too harsh on people who spread misinformation, although she was often annoyed by unverified information posted in WhatsApp groups.
“Although [the hoaxes] can be really annoying, arresting [those who spread them] might be too much because they have no intention to harm anyone,” she told the Post.
A survey conducted in 2019 by Tirto.id and International Center for Journalist (ICFJ) researcher Astudestra Ajengrastri found that people above the age of 35 were more likely to believe and share information they received from Whatsapp messages.
Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (ELSAM) researcher Wahyudi Jafar suggested that the ITE Law was flawed because it did not specifically define what a hoax was.
“[In the ITE law], Article 28 only regulates false information in a commercial context, where it may cause consumer loss,” he told the Post. “The criminal law does charge false information that causes public anxiety, but to prove it is very hard and 10 years of imprisonment is too severe,” he said.
Septiaji said the police must investigate the motives of the people that spread the false information since many were not ill-willed but rather driven by worry. There were also “intellectual actors” who maliciously intended to mislead others.
“Those intellectual actors are the ones who should be punished,” he said. (mfp)
