The latest session in the ongoing blasphemy trial of Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama is being held today, and lawyers are hoping there will not be a repeat of last week’s incident in which three witnesses for the prosecution failed to show up. As Ahok and his lawyers have noted before, there have been numerous irregularities with the witnesses testifying against the governor (remember the Fitsa Hats meme?), but now they believe they have a clear case of a witness giving false testimony.
Yesterday, Ahok’s legal team reported FPI Jakarta chairman Muchsin Alatas to the Jakarta Police for testifying that he had received innumerable calls and messages from residents of Pulau Seribu saying that the speech he gave there on September 27 had been blasphemous. According to Ahok’s lawyers, Muchsin has been unable to provide any evidence of this claim whatsoever.
“He (Muchsin) said that after our client, Pak Ahok, did his speech on September 27, he received thousands of calls and SMS messages stating that there has been blasphemy in Pak Ahok’s speech,” one of the governor’s attorneys, Rolas Sitinjak, said on Monday night as quoted by Vivanews.
Rolas said Muchsin became evasive after he was asked to show any evidence that these calls or text messages had taken place. Eventually, Muchsin said that all records of the calls and messages had been erased from his phone (a claim which he also had no evidence for).
Muchsin and other members of FPI reported Ahok were among those who filed criminal reports against Ahok for his alleged blasphemy, despite the fact that none of them were actually present at the speech.
Muchsin, as well as FPI Jakarta secretary general Habib Novel argued in court that numerous residents from Pulau Seribu had complained to them about the blasphemy in Ahok’s speech, spurring them to file the report. However, there is no evidence that is true and, in fact, numerous residents of the islands have come forward to defend Ahok.
“If [Ahok] had insulted my religion, [FPI leader Habib Rizieq] wouldn’t have needed to report him, I would have stabbed Pak Ahok right there,” Abdi, a 21-year-old resident of the Thousand Islands said while speaking at Ahok’s campaign headquarters in Menteng, Rumah Lembang, in early January.
Ahok’s legal team reported Muchsin to the police for violating articles of the criminal code regarding defamation and giving false information while under oath.
It should be relatively easy for police to subpoena technical data from Muchsin’s mobile phone operator to prove whether or not he received thousands of calls and SMS messages from Pulau Seribu around the time of Ahok’s speech. Hopefully, the truth will come out.
