Haris Azhar, executive director of Lokataru, and Fatia Maulidiyanti, coordinator of Kontras, underwent an initial hearing on the reading of the indictment Monday, April 3, 2023, for the charge of defamation against Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan. This case started with Haris Azhar’s conversation with Fatia Maulidiyanti as a resource person in Haris Azhar’s YouTube content on August 20, 2021. This case began with the mention that there was a mine control game, which was named in a report titled “political economy of military deployment in Papua: the case of Intan Jaya” in Haris Azhar’s video content entitled “There is Lord Luhut Behind the Intan Jaya Economic-Military Ops Relations General BIN (State Intelligence Agency) Were there. “
Through attorney Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan on August 26, 2021, sent his legal notice to Haris Azhar, and on August 31, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan sent a legal for Fatia. However, both of Fatiya-Haris’ are not giving their response to Luhut Legal notices. Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan then reported the report regarding the alleged crime of violating his honor on September 22, 2021. The case of Fatiya and Haris went up to the investigation stage in December 2021. Both of them underwent examination on February 07, then the first trial of the Haris – Fatiya case began on April 03.
Fatia was charged with violating Article 27 paragraph 3 in conjunction with Article 45 paragraph 3 of the ITE ( the law of electronic information and transaction), Article 14 paragraph 2 of Law Number 1 of 1946, Article 15 of Law Number 1 of 1946, and Article 310 of the Criminal Code regarding defamation. At the same time, Haris Azhar was charged with violating Article 27 paragraph 3 in conjunction with Article 45 paragraph 3 of the ITE Law and Article 55 paragraph 1 1 of the Criminal Code. Meanwhile, article 27 is considered a rubber article because it has multiple interpretations and can be misused by irresponsible parties.
In 2021 there were 38 people entangled in the ITE Law case, where the most significant number were activists, victims/accompanists, residents, journalists, and workers. Meanwhile, in 2020 the ITE Law ensnared 84 people. From 2013 to 2021, the ITE Law trapped 393 people. According to SAFEnet’s study, the ITE Law does not guarantee improvement in the right to freedom of expression. ITE Law is unsuitable for freedom of expression., since many criminalization victims come from human rights defenders (HAM) Backgrounds. In terms of freedom of expression, many public officials use the ITE Law to silence the voices of critical groups.