The street art has ruffled the feathers of the authorities for insulting the President as “a state symbol’, driving them to overpaint it and hunt its mysterious creator. The incident has sparked criticism from the online community, who quickly turned the image and the phrase “404: not found” into a rallying cry for freedom of expression in the country.

In response, the authorities doubled down on its attack on civil liberty by cracking down on people selling T-shirts bearing that image. A 29-year-old man in Tuban, East Java, was questioned by the cyberpolice squad after peddling the T-shirts on his Twitter account.

A video of him publicly apologizing went viral after being uploaded on Twitter by an account purportedly owned by a cyberpolice official.

“[An image] on a wall or T-shirt that is disrespectful to the head of state does not reflect our culture as Indonesians,” writes a Twitter account with the handle @M1_nusaputra. “We are keeping [an eye] on you.”

The tweet has triggered both fear and condemnation online.

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