A Historical Decision for Indonesia
Meanwhile, a blunder-prone Minister makes another embarrassing mistake
Hi folks,
It was an eventful week last week and a historical one with the Sexual Violence Crime legislation finally passed into law, even if it is not comperehensive enough and a number of articles removed from the final bill. A personal victory for Speaker of the House Puan Maharani who had been campaigning for the legislation for years.
Meanwhile, another government minister continues his run of embarrassing gaffes ever since he was appointed in a different portfolio, several years ago. This time making a false claim about Malaysia which was denied rather quickly by their Embassy.
And finally, the government seems to have accepted that they won’t win the war on porn after the Minister for Communications and Informatics said that there’s not much they can do if people use VPN to access blocked content.
Dropping the R from RUU TPKS
It’s been a long time coming but finally we have our very own Sexual Violence Crimes Law (UU TPKS) after the House of Representatives passed it into law this past week.
The law prohibits all forms of sexual violence including non physical ones done through gestures, printed, and spoken words. The law also protects people from things like revenge porns and marital rape. It further bars anyone from forcing rape victims to marry their assailants, which is sadly still a thing in Indonesia.
Under the legislation, offenders are not only punished with prison term or fine, but stand to lose custody or ordered to compensate the victims, which are not explicitly stipulated under existing rules and regulations. The legislation also removes restorative justice or mediation as an option for conflict resolution which would have allowed the offender a reprieve from trial and potential prison time.
Although activists and academics aplauded the law, hailing it as a win in the battle to eradicate sexual violence, the law still has its flaws.
During deliberation, lawmakers took out articles on rape and forced abortion arguing that they are already illegal under the Criminal Code. But academics say that the definition of rape in the Code is too narrow and doesn't cover rape as a result of violence, threats of violence, deceit, abuse of power. The Code also defines rape as penetration and thus does not include other sexual acts.
Meanwhile, the Criminal Code is not narrow enough when it comes to abortion, penalizing everyone involved in the act including the victim and not just those who force them to have an abortion.
Like we said, this law is long overdue. it was originally introduced in 2012 as the Sexual Violence Eradication Bill but it took two years for the draft to get started after the National Commission for Women and other rights organizations became involved, and two more years to finalize the first draft.
In 2016 it was entered into the list of priority legislations but the year passed without the bill being discussed. The DPR reentered the bill into the priority list in 2018 but yet again it was largely set aside.
In 2019 the legislation faced significant opposition from religious conservatives within and outside of the parliament with conservative groups insisting that the advocacy of sex education by the legislation violates traditional moral values. They also accused the legislation of enabling non-marital sex by not outlawing it while the proponents of the group defended the exclusion for being outside of the scope of the legislation.
The Sexual Violence Eradication bill was pulled from the priority list in 2020 for being, believe it or not, too complicated to discuss, but it was back on in 2021 albeit under a different name, changing Eradication to Crimes, and also a change in terminology within the legislation from “rape” to “forced sexual act”.
Despite consistent opposition by the religious conservative Prosperous Justice Party, the push for the legislation remained strong, culminating in its approval into law, this past week, with Puan Maharani announcing the adoption of the legislation as a new law as the Speaker of the House.
For Puan, this is considered a personal victory. Ever since the legislation was introduced in parliament, as the Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture, she had been one of the strongest supporters of the legislation and pledged that the legislation will become law.
Musk’s Twitter Takeover
After it was discovered that he had quietly become Twitter’s largest shareholder, Elon Musk launched a hostile takeover bid this week, offering to buy Twitter for $43bn.
Twitter’s board responded by announcing it would implement a plan that could stall or prevent Musk’s attempt by allowing others to buy additional shares at a discount to prevent anyone from having more than a 15% stake in the company.
But this may be more complicated in practice. He is, after all, the richest man in the world with a net worth of around $260bn. Musk could still buy up additional shares of the company on the open market, or win over shareholder support in the case of a vote.
So why is he doing this and is he serious?
Musk is known for his antics, controversial public statements, and unpredictable business decisions. It would not be the first time Musk has been caught bluffing, leading some to question whether this is all a joke to Musk or whether he is just trying to benefit, one way or another, from the ensuing controversy.
Activists, experts, and even Twitter employees are worried about the prospect of a Musk-controlled Twitter.
The billionaire has repeatedly criticized the platform’s content moderation policies and practices, raising the concerns of a possible proliferation of hate speech on the platform should Twitter fall in Musk’s hands.
Ministerial Whoopsies
The Malaysian Embassy denied that their government ever had any plans to register Reog, the East Javanese dance performance, to UNESCO as their own.
The First Secretary of the Embassy and the Deputy Ambassador both spoke to the media regarding the statement made by Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture Muhadjir Effendy the week before, saying that Indonesia must register Reog to UNESCO before Malaysia claims it to the UN body.
Days after making the statement Muhadjir told reporters that Indonesia actually already registered Reog as an intangible cultural heritage to UNESCO in February. This means his statement early last week was by all accounts erroneous.
After multiple Reog groups staged several protests, and local government officials scrambled to find supporting documents in response to Muhadjir’s baseless statement, they seem to have been proven to be completely unnecessary and an absolute waste of time and energy.
This is not Muhadjir’s first gaffe. As Education Minister he once said in 2018 that there were too many ethnic languages which make it difficult for local government officials to communicate with their communities. He wanted the languages to be simplified.
The Minister seemed to have completely missed the point of having Indonesian as our national language. The fundamental reason why the Indonesian language was created almost 100 years ago was to allow the people of the very diverse ethnicities that this nation is made up of, to communicate with each other without everyone having to learn each of the hundreds of languages that we have, nor elevating the status of one ethnic language or a few, over others.
If there are people who still have difficulties communicating in Indonesian, then that’s an issue for the Education Ministry and the Provincial Education Offices and Agencies to remedy, and not by simplifying the languages.
In 2016 he proposed that children stay in school until 4 or 5pm so their parents can come pick them up after work. Such is the privileged and out of touch perspective the Minister has always had. He was apparently so unprepared for the outrage and severe backlash that he received for the suggestion that he spent some time trying to explain his misguided rationale.
The Internet is for Porn*
For about a decade now, the country's Communications and IT Ministry has been launching a war on pornography, barring access to just about every adult website out there as well as the likes of Reddit and Vimeo because "negative or pornographic elements" have been discovered on the sites.
You might also remember that the government once earmarked Rp200 billion to purchase an internet censoring system because they were having a hard time keeping up and blocking pornographic contents manually.
During Ramadan in 2012, the Ministry proudly announced that they have blocked access to over a million pornographic sites and that there was more work to be done given that they estimated there to be more than 2 billion of them.
This week, the government appears to be throwing in the towel, noticing the futility of their effort, after realizing that people can easily access these contents with the help of that little thing called Virtual Private Network.
Three years ago the government sought to regulate the operation and use of VPNs which allow people to bypass the access restrictions put in place by the Communications Ministry. Their claim was that VPN operates no differently to internet providers, offering access to content available on the internet, and because ISPs are regulated, VPNs must also require permits.
The government argued that VPNs also have access to the personal and sensitive data belonging to customers, and those need to be protected via regulations. Never mind the fact that Indonesia until today still has yet to pass the Personal Data Privacy Legislation.
Minister Johnny G. Plate this past week admitted that the government cannot bar people from using VPN because it is within their personal rights to do so. The only thing Mr. Plate said he can do, is to urge people to use VPN in a more productive manner and uphold people’s “personal ethics and morality” when using the service.
As if on cue, former pop singer and current member of parliament from PDIP Harvey Malaiholo was caught watching a porn video on his mobile device while sitting in a session about Covid-19 vaccines. The newly inaugurated member was appointed in January to replace another member who passed away.
PDIP spokesperson Bambang Wuryanto claimed that Harvey was set up or framed by someone who sent him the video over WhatsApp and had his photo taken upon watching the video. Harvey apparently shed tears defending his honor. In any case, the parliament’s Court of Honor is investigating the case and will review all evidence available.
Back in 2011 another parliament member, Arifinto, from the religious Prosperous Justice Party, was also caught watching a pornographic video during a session. He claimed that he was bored during the session and decided to check his emails, one of which contained a video that he ended up watching. He resigned soon after.
*The heading is from a song title from the wonderful stage musical called Avenue Q.
Quick Reads
Fireworks Go Boom
How do you dispose of 100kg of gunpowder and tens of thousands of fireworks confiscated from an illegal fireworks factory?
"Why… you burn them of course", said the cops in Bangkalan regency, East Java before the whole thing got out of hand on Saturday as the explosions damaged 35 – 40 houses and buildings nearby, including one school.
The disposal, overseen by the Police bomb squad no less, created large explosions which can be heard 3km away. The fireworks traveled far from an empty field of a military compound –where the disposal took place– with forces strong enough to damage people's tiled roofs and plaster ceilings.
The Bangkalan police said they take full responsibility and promised to compensate for the damages.
This was not the first time such a disposal caused personal damages or injuries to innocent bystanders.
PeduliLindungi Named Among Potential Human Rights Violation Concerns
Wait, hold, up, what? A report titled Indonesian Human Rights Report 2021 names the Covid-19 mitigation and vaccination app as having a potential human rights issue because the app stores your personal vaccination information as well as tracks locations by recording your check in history.
Health Ministry spokesperson Siti Nadia Tarmizi rejects the accusation and said the report doesn’t actually say the app violates human rights but it is included due to several civil society organizations raising such concerns. Singapore’s TraceTogether and Australia’s COVIDSafe apps also perform similar functions as PenguiniLuigi.
Robbery Victim Who Murdered Two Assailants Released
Amaq Sinta, a robbery victim in Central Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, who fought back and killed two of his four armed assailants and injuring the other two was charged with murder by the police. However, with the case going viral and the amount of public outrage the news generated, it didn’t take long for the police to suspend the case and spare him the trial.
The National Chief Detective was also outraged that the victim of the robbery was made a murder suspect. He said that if the man was defending his own life being a victim of a crime, he needs to be released, otherwise charging him will only empower other criminals.