Indonesia government tracks down those who insult Palestinians on Tik Tok
A young Indonesian with his smartphone in the streets of Jakarta.
(Drawing).
AFP - BAY ISMOYO
Text by: Gabrielle Maréchaux Follow
4 min
The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has now become a digital battle on social media.
In Indonesia, a man risks dear for calling Palestinians “pigs” on Tik Tok, an illustration of Indonesia's unfriendly diplomacy towards Israel.
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From our correspondent in South-East Asia,
The charge against the 23-year-old Tik Tok user is based on a somewhat controversial law that was used by the Sunda Islands police.
It dates from 2008 and punishes up to six years in prison for defamation and hate speech online.
For some observers, the use of this law has been rather vague since its implementation, and its use is variable geometry.
The young man charged today was quick to make it clear that he was sorry, that he was wrong and actually wanted to insult the Israelis but that he misunderstood who was who in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Zero tolerance…
The case of this Tik Tok user is not isolated: both locally and nationally, the Indonesian authorities want to see any content that would insult Palestinians disappear from platforms.
A teenage girl from the island of Sumatra was expelled from her high school after insulting Palestinians on the same platform.
On the side of the authorities, the Ministry of Technology and Information seems to want to seize this problem at its source, directly asking the Tik Tok platform to censor these hate messages.
Forty hateful content against Palestinians has reportedly been detected by the authorities in this country of more than 270 million inhabitants.
Ministry spokesman said Chinese platform was ready to cooperate
To understand the zero tolerance and the responsiveness of the Indonesian authorities to content criticizing or insulting Palestinians, one must refer to the diplomacy of Indonesia, the country with the most Muslims in the world.
Indonesia has never had diplomatic relations with Israel, and unless there is a valid reason - such as a pilgrimage to Jerusalem desired by some minority Christians in the country - Indonesians are not allowed to travel to Israel.
And in recent years Indonesia's position vis-à-vis Israel has not weakened, quite the contrary.
No normalization with Israel
In 2018, for example, Indonesia banned Israeli tourists from entering to condemn strikes on Gaza.
Last year, the United States tried to have the State of Israel recognized in exchange for financial support.
After agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Sudan, the Americans even boasted a little too soon that they could normalize ties between Israel and Indonesia, but this process never came to fruition.
According to several researchers, quoted by the
South China Morning Post
this week, support for Palestine is increasingly shifting to Southeast Asia, whether online, where Indonesia has hundreds of millions of people. citizens very active on social networks, or in terms of diplomacy.
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