Indonesia’s parliament yesterday approved an amnesty for a woman who was jailed after recording lewd telephone calls from her boss, in a case that has caused outrage and warnings that it could discourage victims of sexual abuse from speaking out.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo had granted an amnesty to Baiq Nuril Maknun after she had exhausted all other legal avenues in the controversial case.
The parliament’s approval was met by loud applause as the tearful mother of three, who was in the chamber, covered her face with her hands before kissing the ground.
Indonesian Legislator Erma Suryani Ranik read a statement confirming the decision and said that in this case “Baiq Nuril was the real victim, instead of the perpetrator.”
Maknun, who had been working at a school on the island of Lombok, recorded some parts of lewd telephone calls from the school’s principal without his knowledge in 2012 after complaining of sexual harassment.
She then gave a recording to a third person, and distributed it on an electronic device, which resulted in the principal losing his job, court documents showed.
In 2015, the principal reported Maknun to police, and she was prosecuted under laws targeting the electronic distribution of pornographic material.
Although the case was dismissed by a lower court, prosecutors took it to the Supreme Court and Maknun was jailed for six months and given a 500 million rupiah (US$35,783) fine.
While the amnesty might have lifted Maknun’s punishment it would do little to tackle the issue of sexual harassment in Indonesia, said Sri Nurherwati a member of the Indonesian National Commission on Violence Against Women.
There have been a number of high profile cases in Indonesia in the past few years that activists say show how victims are often being penalized for speaking out about sexual harassment.
Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country and is predominantly conservative.
While some women have recounted experiences of sexual harassment as part of a #MeToo movement, in general, women are less likely to speak out about abuse compared with women in some other countries, activists say.
“We face different risks here when speaking out about anything sexual,” said Kartika Jahja, an outspoken artist and rape survivor who has been a strong advocate for gender equality in Indonesia.
“Whether it’s sexual violence or being sexually expressive, I think the norms here sort of punish women for doing that,” Jahja said.
In an interview ahead of the decision, Maknun told reporters that if granted an amnesty she intended to take an Umrah Islamic pilgrimage and spend more time with her family after the lengthy time spent fighting the case.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant