Asip Hasani, Blitar – The Blitar Police have charged a local woman with defamation and hate speech after she referred to President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo as "pharaoh" in an image that has become a viral meme.
The woman, 44-year-old Ida Fitri of Blitar, East Java, is suspected of allegedly insulting the President by sharing a picture of him edited to resemble a mummy on Facebook and captioned "The New Pharaoh" in Indonesian.
In addition to sharing the "pharaoh" meme, Ida allegedly shared another meme captioned "The Dog-Faced Demon", which featured a Constitutional Court justice whose head was replaced with the image of a dog's head.
The two memes were reportedly shared on her Facebook account, which is registered under the username Aida Konveksi. Ida claimed that she had taken the memes from a Facebook group called The Voice Of People.
Blitar Police chief Sr. Comr. Adewira Negara Siregar said the police had obtained enough evidence for a preliminary hearing on the case.
"We are being assisted by the [cybersecurity] teams of the East Java Police and the National Police to discover the [original poster] who uploaded these images to Facebook," Adewira told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
Ida has been charged under Article 45 of Law No. 11/2008 on electronic information and transactions (ITE), which carries a minimum sentence of 5 years in prison. (dpk)