Celebrity musician, failed politician and Nazi-apparel aficionado Ahmad Dhani was officially named a suspect for spreading hate speech online by the Jakarta Police yesterday over a tweet in which he said that whoever defended former Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama should be spit on.
“(Ahmad Dhani) has been named a suspect under UU ITE Article 28,” said South Jakarta Police Chief Kombes Iwan Kurniawan when contacted by Detik yesterday. UU ITE is the Law on Electronic Transmissions and Information and Article 28 criminalizes the dissemination of information meant to cause hatred towards individuals or groups based on race, religion, ethnicity or group affiliation with a maximum sentence of six years in jail.
Dhani was reported to the police in March by members of BTP Network, a group of volunteers working for Ahok and former Vice Governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat during their reelection campaign, for a tweet from Dhani’s official Twitter account in which he wrote, “Anyone who supports the religious blasphemer is a bastard who needs to be spit on in their faces”.
The musician, who is also a member of the Gerindra party and tried win the position of vice regent of Bekasi during the last election (he claimed he’d bring over the Red Hot Chili Peppers if he won, yet somehow he still lost), had been an outspoken critic of Ahok during his time in office and often took to Twitter to make crude, provocative statements about the former governor as well as President Joko Widodo (he was also reported for alleged hate speech against the president last year, though that case seems to have gone nowhere).
https://www.instagram.com/p/BaT-z-RHwOF/?hl=en&taken-by=ahmaddhaniprast
Dhani’s lawyer, Ali Lubis, did not deny that his client wrote the tweet in question but said that it did not explicitly violate UU ITE and thus should be protected as freedom of speech.
“With regard to his legal defense, we will defend him to the fullest, because we are not only protecting Ahmad Dhani, but also in a broader context, saving Indonesian democracy,” Lubis said as quoted by JPNN.
It’s a bit ironic that Dhani would claim a free speech defense considering he was a major proponent of the politicized accusations of blasphemy against Ahok for his speech in the Thousand Islands that many experts said did not fulfill the definition of blasphemy.
It’s even more ironic that his lawyer would say that defending Dhani is important to saving Indonesian democracy, considering the failed politician was arrested in January for his alleged involvement in a plot to overthrow the government.
The musician is scheduled to undergo police questioning in the case tomorrow. In response to a Detik reporter’s question, Dhani wrote on Whatsapp (yes, in all caps) “I AM READY TO FACE THE DEFENDERS OF THE RELIGIOUS BLASPHEMER”.
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