On Today’s Microsite and Book Launching
Today I was asked to give a general view on the ITE Law, but since I am not a legal person, I will give a view on the ITE Law from a different point of view.
Did you know, there were :
- 316 cases recorded in SAFEnet data from 2008 to 2020
- 1,842 cases recorded in Supreme Court Decisions data from 2013 to first quarter 2021
- 15,056 accounts being investigated by the police from Cybercrime Directorate of Indonesia National Police from May 2017 to the end of 2020 ?
These numbers appear in the media, in policy briefs, in executive summaries, in reports from domestic and foreign institutions. Even journalists quote our nunbers. Kominfo quoted our number. HoR quoted numbers from us as well.
But are there any significant improvements after they quote our numbers? What I mean by improvement is a total revision of the ITE Law from their problematic articles.
So far, none.
Therefore I was not surprised when seeing the impact of this zero improvement. Take a look at the reports of various foreign and domestic institutions. Many scholars were loudly mentioning that there was a democratic regression in Indonesia, a decline in democracy, a turning back from democracy – in one spectrum, while there was another spectrum that saying Indonesia has face Neo Authoritarianism, New Order Volume 2, and digital authoritarianism.
Starting today I will stop talking about numbers. And from now, I will tell more stories about humans who I have met individually while advocating for their cases since 2013. For eight years I have been constantly meeting with them and hearing their stories.
They are ordinary people such as housewives, boarding house residents, workers. People who have to go back and forth went to the police station. Detained for days, some even up to 100 days. Then convened and imprisoned. And have to pay penalty for 1 Billion rupiah.
These people are not numbers, they have names. They have life, which was then taken away. They suffered because of the crime that they never committed. Alas their stories were not widely heard. So let me tell you more stories today.
Let’s read the story of Arsyad, Baiq Nuril Maknun, Diananta, Ervani Emy Handayani, Furqan Ermansyah, Muhadkly Acho, Saidah Syamlan, Saiful Mahdi, Wadji, Vivi Natalia through the book and the website https://semubisakena.jaring.id that being launched today.
I believe these stories will bring improvement. Except those who should have heard ALREADY DEAF.
