A female activist in Indonesia’s Aceh province was on Tuesday sentenced to six months in prison for defaming President Megawati Sukarnoputri at a rally last year.
Raihan Diani (20) was guilty of ”insulting the president and vice president of the Republic of Indonesia” by defacing pictures of Megawati and Hamzah Haz by drawing a cross over them during a rally in July last year, said Judge Arsil Marwan.
The time Diani has spent in custody since her arrest on July 16 will count against her sentence, meaning she will be free in nine days.
Diani and five fellow activists held the rally to criticise the government’s failure to stop the violence in Aceh. They called for a new government.
An estimated 10 000 people have died since the separatist war began in the province on Sumatra island in 1976. A peace deal with the Free Aceh Movement separatists went into force on December 9. ”I never intended to insult the president and vice president because what I’ve done was only my protest against the policies of the government of Megawati and Hamzah Haz,” Diani told the court.
She also urged the public to ”continue their fight to topple the government of Megawati and Hamzah and form a new government that fights for the poor.”
Last October two protesters were jailed for a year in Jakarta for defacing a portrait of Megawati. Some human rights lawyers criticised that prosecution, the first of its kind since the fall of longtime autocratic president Suharto in 1998. – Sapa-AFP