For the last couple of years, Indonesia through its government has been romanticizing the criminalization of human rights defenders as a form of keeping civil society away from hoax or untruthful information. Although those that were stated by the human rights defenders were based on research and field practices, the government decided to sharpen their fangs with ‘defamation’ laws. The same pattern happened to Fatia Maulidiyanti and Haris Azhar, two of the prominent human rights defenders in Indonesia.

On the 20th August 2021, Fatia and Haris were discussing the involvement of veteran officials as well as the present Coordinating Minister of Maritime and Investment Affairs, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan in the mining business in Papua via Haris’ Youtube Channel. It was not critiques, improvements, nor evaluations stuck in the mind of the mentioned public official, but rather subpoenas which were sent on the 26th August 2021. That was the starting point of their whole criminalization case. After that, arbitrary summons and further criminalization acts passed as they set out on their first trial on the 3rd April 2023.

Indictments were set out that both were charged with Article 27 paragraph (3) of the ITE Law, Article 14 paragraph (2) of Law No. 1 of 1946, and Article 310 paragraph (1) of the Criminal Code. They will face their next trial on the 17th April 2023. But still, several oddities were found even before the trial. Therefore, this factsheet will lead readers to comprehend the complete set of timeline as well as oddities highlighted.

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