scamming social media is on the rise, but the authorities must stop prosecuting people who exercise freedom of expression.
Thereabout 10 years, I worked in a busy office Jakarta alongside a New Zealander whose tasteful repertoire office pranks included creating my web browser to gay porn site every time I got up from my desk for a coffee. I quickly taught me how to lock my screen.
These days, such a prankster could be arrested under several Indonesian laws - although the vulgar jokes should never be a cause of action in court. Instead, police and prosecutors must be treated with real crooks, including cyber criminals.
The police began in 2016 warning that scammers use social media profiles increasingly convincing fake, sometimes posing as state officials, prey on the unwary. Victims are tricked into transferring money for investments, charities, prices or employment - or they may be invited on dates and then raped. Identity theft is a growing problem with piracy crooks social media accounts and offering products at unfeasibly low prices.
online fraud Many are not reported in Indonesia because the victims do not want to pay for a police investigation. News portal Detikcom reported that Jakarta police handled only 46 cases of cybercrime in 2015. The West Java Police treated 124 cases of cyber crime, 77 have been resolved. Worryingly, most of these "crimes" involved "insults and defamation via ".
Law No. 11 of 2008 on Information and Electronic Transactions, which carries a prison sentence of six years, was supposed to protect the public against online fraud. Unfortunately, it is used to suppress freedom of speech. More than 100 people were arrested under the law for posting defamatory or indecent content deemed.
Punishing the victim
Take the case of Wisni Yetti, a mother of 47 years with three children, from the West Java capital of Bandung. She was jailed last year for a chat with an old friend from school through private messages on .
In 2008, Wisni created a account on his BlackBerry smartphone. In 2011, she joined a group for former of his former high school SMPN 1 Solok in West Sumatra. Among the old friends she had met with a man named Murshid Nugraha. The two exchanged messages over three months until October 2011, when the husband Wisni, Haska Etika, looked through his phone and found the cat. He accuses her of having an affair online and beat her so badly that she was hospitalized.
Haska sought to Wisni shame in having his younger brother, Harry Budiman, make an impression on the private messages, which ed about 200 pages.
Wisni said her husband again assaulted during an argument in March 2012 and domestic violence continued until Haska reported to police in July 2013. The couple divorced this year .
In February 2014, Haska launched a complaint against attack domestic violence from his ex-wife. accusing her of indecency, he presented 900 pages of alleged messages to the police as evidence. In October 2014, police arrested Wisni to his mother's house in Solok. "I felt like a terrorist because there were a lot of police officers involved," she said. She was taken to Jakarta, Bandung and led to shut for six days.
Wisni was considered the Bandung District Court in February 2015, accused of "dissemination or transmission of electronic content that violated decency". She denied that her cats were immoral . She argued that they were private and were then retyped to stretch over 900 pages. The prosecutor recommended a sentence of imprisonment of four months and a fine of Rp.10 million. The presiding judge Saptono chose a more severe penalty. In March, he was found guilty and sentenced to five months and a fine of Rp.100 million.
Saptono judged Haska was justified to access account Wisni because both were married. He said that the accused was a bad example for social media users, and its actions have hurt her husband and his family. He said the only mitigating circumstance was that it had been his first "criminal offense".
Wisni call. She suggested that the verdict has been rigged because Haska had boasted of knowing the sentence a month before it was made. Indonesia in 2005 set up a judicial commission to fight against misconduct by judges, but it has proved to be largely powerless. Saptono was never reprimanded for his decision. Instead, Bandung District Court this month proudly presented his judges a plaque of appreciation "Role Models".
Bandung High Court in September 2015 announced that it had reversed the Wisni of conviction on the grounds that copied printed electronic document can not be considered as valid evidence.
Haska appealed to the Supreme Court. He is also back in Bandung district court, this time as a defendant, the complaint of domestic violence. His lawyers asked the case to be thrown because of a difference in the charges laid by the police and prosecutors, and because they claim there is no hard evidence that Wisni was seriously injured during beatings.
Bad Boss
A little more luck than Wisni was Ervani Emi Handayani (30), who was detained for nearly three weeks to spend five months the test. His offense? Complaining on concerning the dismissal of her husband in a jewelry store in Jogjakarta.
It was back in July 2014 when she made the post referring to the manager of Jolie Jogja Jewellery Sarastuti Dias alias Ayas, as "childish" and "unstable" for the shooting of her husband, Alfa Janto after refusing a transfer to the city of West Java Cirebon.
Ayas was upset by the Post and Ervani reported to the police. She was arrested in October 2014 and imprisoned for 20 days. His trial began in December 2014 and ended in May 2015 with an acquittal.
Ervani said she hoped there would be no more cases of people unjustly arrested under the information law and electronic transactions.
Information and Rudiantara minister last month said the government had prepared a draft revision of the law. The proposed revision does is reduce the maximum prison sentence for defamation and libel online from six to three years. It is unlikely to be passed any time soon because it is not even on the agenda this year for discussion by the House of Representatives.
Cop That
In September 2015, Ternate police, Maluku province, arrested an anti-corruption activist, Adlun Fiqri for electronic defamation after downloading a video that showed a police officer to accept a bribe from a motorcyclist.
The motorcyclist did not have a license and was carrying a passenger not wearing a helmet. The National Police insisted the video did not show corruption, the police officer had just collected a "deposit" of Rp.115,000 a fine.
After a public outcry, defamation charges were dropped and Adlun was released on October 3. Police said they had reached a "law" with family Adlun.
Although such cases, it is easier for foreign sarcastic critique Indonesia, all the suspects were eventually released or exempted. But the fact that people can still be arrested, sentenced and imprisoned for sending messages - while massive corruption, violations of human rights and environmental crimes go unpunished - is not the image of Indonesia favors
.