VIVAnews - The Prophet Muhammad sketch drawing competition was held today on Facebook despite the wide-scale protests from thousands of Muslims throughout the world.
Therefore, the Indonesian Communications and Technology Ministry is planning to block the page of the group that is called Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, which joined the social networking site since April 25.
“We won’t be blocking the access to the entire website. It’ll be only to the group’s page,” the ministry’s Information and Public Relations Center Head Gatot S Dewa Broto told VIVAnews in Jakarta on Thursday, May 20.
The Communications and Information Ministry also plans to invite ISPs (Internet Service Provider) and the Indonesian ISP Association (APJII) to discuss about the access blocking.
“As soon as we agree on that, we’ll send a letter to the Facebook administrators to block the access of the page to Indonesia,” Broto said.
In addition to defamation against Islam and possible provocative reactions, the main reason why the ministry would remove the access is because the content violates the applicable laws in Indonesia.
“First, it’s against Article 21 Law No 36/ 1999 on Telecommunication, which states that telecommunication providers are not allowed to run any business that clashes with public interests, morality and public order”.
Law No 11/ 2008 on Information and Electronic Transaction also mentions in its Article 28 paragraph 2 that everyone is prohibited from intentionally and illegally publishing information that aims to evoke anger or individual and/or group conflicts between certain members of the society based on racial and religious diversity.
“The facts allow the ministry to take serious action against the event, although now, it’s only been sending a letter to the administrators stating our objection towards the publication of the forum and expecting them to consider removing the group from Facebook,” Broto said.
He also said the gesture did not aim to perform a unilateral blocking because it was only an appeal. However, by sending the letter, the government has taken a concrete and immediate action.
“Basically, we only want the URL to be blocked because however, we think Facebook has a lot of advantages,” he said.
--
Translated by: Nataya Ermanti
