Shela Octavia, Jessi Carina, Jakarta – Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network (Safenet) Executive Director Nenden Sekar Arum has revealed that participants in the protest actions against the Draft Law on the Indonesian Military (RUU TNI) have come under attack in the digital world.
"We also saw incidents of digital attacks that accompanied these protest actions. At least in the last few days, after a series of actions last week until now", Arum said in a discussion organised by the Coalition for Freedom of Assembly (KKB) that was held on the YAPPIKA-Action Aid YouTube channel on Wednesday March 26.
Arum said that there were at least 25 incidents of digital attacks that were monitored and reported to Safenet. The form of the attacks was also diverse.
"Starting from doxing for intimidation [purposes], threats, hacking Instagram, WhatsApp (WA) accounts. We also saw several cases of impersonation, then there was the suspension of accounts, and spam chats, yes, through WA", she continued.
Arum considers these attacks to be a form of repression of people's freedom to express their views and aspirations actively.
"And this also shows that the forms of repression are not only physical, but also use technology and even efforts to narrow the public domain in digital [space]", Arum reiterated.
Not only that, Safenet also found content that tried to influence public opinion, primarily aimed at forming a negative narrative about the participants in the protest actions.
"There was content that carried the narrative that participants in the demonstrations against the RUU TNI were foreign stooges or lackies", she said.
Arum said that this content was even uploaded by official accounts affiliated with the TNI, both from the TNI Headquarters (Mabes TNI), regional military commands (Kodam), district military commands (Kodim) and sub-district military commands (Koramil).
"The content was quite massively distributed, there are indications that 14 official TNI accounts took part in spreading the videos. This was from several levels of the institution, from the Mabes TNI, Kodam, Kodim, Koramil", she added.
Arum explained that this narrative of intimidation or pattern of attacks has often been used in similar incidents, for example when there have been striking political events such as the Emergency Warning protest actions in 2024 and the demonstrations against the Omnibus Law on Job Creation in 2019.
Arum hopes that the government can address these digital attacks. The reason being, that if left unchecked, this will make people afraid to express their aspirations openly.
"If allowed to drag on, this will have a broader impact on how people will feel afraid of expressing their aspirations so that there is self-censorship there, which will further affect the democratic process in Indonesia", reiterated Arum.
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "Safenet Temukan Peserta Aksi Tolak RUU TNI Alami Serangan Digital, Didoxing dan Akun Medsos Diretas".]
