JAKARTA - Coordinating Minister for Legal, Human Rights, Immigration, and Corrections Yusril Ihza Mahendra said academics are free to criticize government policies because it is not prohibited.
"If the academic, he is free to criticize the government, yes, no one forbids it, no one prevents it," said Yusril in response to the report against Feri Amsari and Ubedilah Badrun.
Regarding some academics who delivered criticism with the status of state civil servants (ASN), Yusril said that the ethics mechanism should be prioritized to assess whether there is or is not a violation, instead of being immediately prosecuted.
"If ethics says there is no ethical violation, yes, what else? What is the basis for wanting to conduct a criminal investigation?" he said, quoted by ANTARA, Wednesday, April 22.
According to Yusril, the enforcement of ethics is generally prioritized over criminal law, unless there is evidence of other violations of the law, such as incitement.
"If incitement is indeed a criminal offense. It's a bit of a hassle, but I think it's not a delict of incitement, people think, it can't be hindered," he said.
On the other hand, Yusril reminded everyone has the right to report others. However, every police report must go through a series of processes to study the validity or not of the report to proceed to the next stage.
He said that academics who were reported to the police should follow the series of report processing, including when they were asked for information. In the forum, the academic can provide clarification.
"Whoever, whether he is an academic or not, if the police then study and are invited, yes, not called, invited for clarification, my suggestion is to just attend. The problem is clarified. Thank God, after being clarified, there is no need to escalate to the investigation or investigation steps," he said.
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