Muhammad Ridwan – The Instagram account belonging to Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW), @sahabaticw (@friendsoficw), was suspended or temporarily blocked by Meta. The reason given was that it had violated the internal platform rules.
The ICW Instagram account was suspended on Thursday evening, August 29, at around 11.14 pm. However as of 3 pm today, Friday August 30, the account is operating normally again.
"After more than 14 hours of being suspended, finally the ICW account was restored. Thank you for the support and assistance of all parties", read the ICW's first posting uploaded at 3.23 pm after the account was restored.
Earlier, ICW announced that its Instagram account @sahabaticw account had been suspended by Meta. "We are still unable to access the account and are currently appealing the suspension decision", ICW public campaign division coordinator Tibiko Zabar told journalists on Friday.
Zabar said he suspects that the suspension was politically motivated because a short time before there was an orchestrated campaign on social media to report the @sahabaticw account.
This suspicion arose bearing in mind that the @sahabaticw account was intensively campaigning along with the public in the "Emergency Warning" social media campaign against efforts to perpetuate President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo's family dynasty which was fertilised by practices of nepotism and reckless politics.
"We together with other civil society organisations in recent days have actively campaigned for #PeringatanDarurat (#EmergencyWarning), #KawalPutusanMK (#SafeguardtheMKruling), #TolakDinastiJokowi (#RejectJokowisPoliticalDynasty), #AdiliJokowi (#TryJokowi) and other forms of protest", continued Zabar.
Just before the @sahabaticw account became inaccessible, said Zabar, ICW put up a series of postings that criticised President Widodo's efforts to wash his hands of the polemic surrounding the House of Representatives' (DPR) revisions of the Regional Elections Law that contradicted an earlier ruling by the Constitutional Court (MK), which he did by criticising the delays in the discussions on the Draft Law on Asset Seizures.
In the postings, ICW said that the delays in the enactment of the asset seizure bill was not just due to the DPR's poor commitment to this law, but also from the government side, especially President Widodo.
The postings were also ICW's attempt to set the record straight on the narrative being promoted by buzzers trying to delegitimise public anger at the DPR and Widodo by claiming the protests were "aksi pesanan" or funded by a third party.
The argument being that they only took up the issue of the revisions to the Regional Elections Law and gave the impression that the movement does not support efforts to ratify the asset seizure bill.
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "Sempat Di-suspend Diduga Buntut Menyuarakan Peringatan Darurat, Akun Instagram ICW Sudah Pulih Kembali".]
