The Government Has Never Arrested Critics, Really?

President Jokowi (DOK. Setkab)

JAKARTA - President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) through his spokesman, Fadjroel Rachman claimed that so far no one has criticized the way the government has been arrested by the police.

"The government has never arrested the critics. Nobody who criticized was then arrested by the government except in the past," Fadjroel said in an online discussion that aired on YouTube, Friday, February 19.

Although a number of activists such as former journalist Dandhy Laksono have been arrested by the police for criticizing the government, Fadjroel still ensures that the public is free to criticize the government.

Moreover, he had a chance to chat with a team from the National Police and found that the answers to every complaint in the form of complaints or general offenses related to freedom of speech in the country were sought to be processed properly. Including, by searching for and finding elements related to the criminal act in the complaint.

"Second, regarding the ITE Law the decision is not only from them (Polri, red). They always involve at least three experts. Some are about technology, some are about language. So it's not just the law enforcer," he said.

"So this is an effort to make every decision related to freedom of opinion. Strived to be truly selective by law enforcers, that's what I get from their input," he added.

In 2019, Dandhy Laksono, a former journalist, was arrested by the police. He was arrested after writing about Papua on his Twitter account.

At that time, he was named a suspect in the spread of hatred but the police decided not to detain him.

Not only Dandhy, based on Amnesty International's data, there are 119 cases of alleged violations of the right to freedom of expression using the ITE Law, with a total of 141 suspects, including 18 activists and four journalists.

The number of cases is the highest in the last six years. Many of them were accused of violating the ITE Law after expressing criticism of government policies, such as the three leaders of the Coalition for Action to Save Indonesia (WE) Jumhur Hidayat, Anton Permana and Syahganda Nainggolan who are currently undergoing trials.