Police arrest man for spreading hoax teen was killed by cops in viral video, admit officers’ actions were ‘excessive’

Screenshot from viral video showing Brimob officers beating a man in the Kampung Bali neighborhood of Central Jakarta on Thursday (23/5).
Screenshot from viral video showing Brimob officers beating a man in the Kampung Bali neighborhood of Central Jakarta on Thursday (23/5).

In the wake of the post-election protests and riots that gripped Jakarta last week, a viral video emerged showing a group of riot police in the Kampung Bali neighborhood of Jakarta beating an unarmed man. The video was accompanied by captions falsely stating that the victim in the video was a teenage protester who died from the assault.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkGjILGmclY

The Indonesian police have admitted that the video was authentic, but said that the victim was neither a teenager nor dead.

According to authorities, the clip depicts the arrest of a man on Thursday morning in the Kampung Bali neighborhood of Tanah Abang, near the Alu Huda Mosque.  

“That viral video carried the narrative that the incident caused the victim to die because of the actions of security forces. In reality, the person in the video is a perpetrator of the riots known as A alias Andri Bibir,” National Police spokesperson Dedi Prasetyo said Saturday morning as quoted by Detik.




According to police, Andri contributed to the riots by supplying large stones to protesters as well as providing water to those affected by tear gas to wash their eyes so that they could continue rioting.

Dedi said that the reason the Mobile Brigade (Brimob) officers in the video acted the way they did is because Andri attempted to escape him. However, he said that the officers acted in an unjustifiable manner.

“If the rioter surrendered there should not have been excessive actions taken,” Dedi said, adding that police would do an internal examination of the officers involved in the incident.

A spokesperson for Indonesia’s National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) called the actions in video an excessive use of force and said that the officers involved could be criminally charged, saying it was a clear violation of human rights.  Amnesty International has called for an independent investigation into the incident.

Yesterday, police announced that they had arrested Mustofa Nahrawardaya, a member of a Prabowo Subianto volunteer group, for sharing the Kampung Bali video along with a caption saying that the victim was a 15-year-old who had died from his injuries. He has been charged with violating Indonesia’s Law on Electronic Transactions and Information (UU ITE) for disseminating misinformation online leading to unrest.

 



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