Speaking in a webinar on Tuesday, Era Purnama Sari of the Foundation of the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute (YLBHI) said universities had become repressive and targeted academics with defamation charges under the Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law.

“[Universities] are being repressive and we need to ask why,” she said. “Campuses are supposed to be a place where ideas that might be considered taboo are challenged,” Era said, referring to a case implicating Saiful Mahdi, a lecturer from Syiah Kuala University in Banda Aceh, Aceh.

Saiful was named a suspect in a defamation case in September 2019 after he criticized the result of a civil servant test for engineering school lecturers in the university’s WhatsApp chat group, which included around 100 lecturers. He was reported to the police by the dean of Syiah Kuala University’s School of Engineering – who was not part of the WhatsApp group – for defaming the dean, despite the fact that Saiful never mentioned any names.

For delivering his criticism, which was deemed offensive to campus executives, Saiful was charged under Article 27 of the ITE Law, which carries a maximum sentence of three months’ imprisonment and a Rp 10 million (US$ 683.4) fine or an additional one month in prison.

“In this case, freedom of speech on campus was treated like a crime,” Amnesty International Indonesia executive director Usman Hamid said. “The impacts were not only the obstruction of freedom of expression on campus and the violation of Saiful’s personal rights but it also affected students’ rights.”

 Usman argued that higher education could only be effectively implemented within a free environment where the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge and learn was guaranteed under the law. The criminalization of Saiful, he said, could serve as a setback in the promotion of critical thinking in higher education institutions.

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