Activist jailed for insulting Megawati

Activist jailed for insulting Megawati

Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Central Jakarta District Court sentenced on Monday a Muslim
activist to five months in prison for defacing President Megawati
Soekarnoputri's portrait in an antigovernment protest on Jan. 15.

Muhammad Iqbal Siregar, 36, who chairs the Islamic Youth
Movement (GPI), defaced Megawati's portrait with black tape and
allowed it to be run over by a car and a motorcycle during a
rally outside the presidential palace.

"The defendant is guilty of violating Article 134 of the
Criminal Code for insulting a head of state," presiding judge
Cornel Sianturi said.

The five-month jail term was more lenient than the 10 months
demanded by prosecutor Arnold Angkouw.

Iqbal, which took part in the protest involving other groups
opposed to the President, has been detained since his arrest on
Jan. 24. The judges said his detention period would be deducted
from his jail sentence.

This means the defendant will have to serve seven more days as
a convict in Salemba prison, Central Jakarta.

The panel of judges said the lenient sentence was due to the
fact that Iqbal had no criminal record and has a family to take
care of.

Clad in a white Muslim robe during the trial, Iqbal said he
would consider appealing against the verdict.

"The verdict kills democracy in Indonesia. The judges failed
to see the reason for our protest against the President, which
was our response to the simultaneous increases of fuel,
electricity and telephone prices on the first day of this year,"
Iqbal told reporters after the trial.

During the Jan. 15 rally, Iqbal carried a picture of Megawati
and figuratively sealed her lips with black tape. At the top of
the picture was caption reading, "People's Fugitive".

The portrait was then place on the road along Jl. Medan
Merdeka Utara outside the presidential palace, allowing vehicles
to run over it.

Iqbal, according to the prosecutors, also insulted Megawati,
by saying "This is the president who disappoints the people".

Iqbal was the latest of several protesters in the last year to
be sentence to prison for insulting Megawati. Several others are
still awaiting similar trials.

In October last year, two protesters were declared guilty and
ordered to server a year in prison for defacing a portrait of
Megawati. Three months later, an Acehnese activist was jailed for
six months for drawing a cross over posters of Megawati and Vice
President Hamzah Haz.

In a similar case, Kiastomo, a student, was sentenced to five
months in jail for burning an effigy of Megawati.

Rakyat Merdeka daily's editor is currently on trial for
insulting the President in front-page headlines, one of which
described her as "crueler than a cannibal".

Insulting the President or Vice President is a crime in
Indonesia, but until last year there had been no prosecutions
since the fall of longtime dictator Soeharto in May 1998.

Rights activists have lashed out at the government for
enforcing such a law as the unpopular Soeharto did.