Fadli Zon's Response After PTUN Rejects Lawsuit Regarding Denial of 1998 Mass Rape
The Jakarta State Administrative Court (PTUN) did not accept the lawsuit against Culture Minister Fadli Zon for denying the mass rapes of May 1998. Fadli Zon stated that the ruling aligned with his expectations.
“I think the ruling is in line with what I expected. In my opinion, there is no single piece of evidence supporting the occurrence of mass rapes in 1998. If rapes occurred, they might have, but not by state actors, not systematically,” said Fadli Zon in Beijing, as reported by Antara on Monday (26/4/2026).
Previously, on 21 April 2026, the Jakarta PTUN declared it could not accept the lawsuit from the Coalition of Civil Society Against Impunity regarding Fadli Zon’s statements. The panel of judges granted the defendant’s exception on absolute competence, stating that the Jakarta PTUN lacked authority to adjudicate the case.
The panel of judges assessed that the object of the dispute, namely Fadli Zon’s statements, did not meet the elements of a state administrative decision because they did not produce concrete, individual, and final legal effects.
Fadli Zon had previously expressed views on the May 1998 riot events, including in a podcast on 10 June 2025 and an official statement on 16 June 2026. In those statements, he referenced the Joint Fact-Finding Team (TGPF) report, which he said lacked strong evidence, and cautioned against “embarrassing the nation ourselves”.
“The 1998 rape incidents were not structured; the perpetrators were criminals, thugs, and so on. We do not want to distort history. I have also conducted studies and written a book on this,” he said.
He emphasised that his statements were not related to the rewriting of history textbooks by the Ministry of Culture. According to him, the process of writing history is not influenced by statements he has made in public forums.
“That has no connection to the history books. Initially, I mentioned it in a podcast and have explained it clearly in the DPR,” he said.
Fadli also stressed that the government must not distort history, but still maintained that there is no legal evidence indicating the events as structured actions by the state.
“Indeed, it did not happen, and there is no legal evidence for it. But if there were rapes, yes, they might have occurred, but not like people’s imaginations when they talk about it as if there were actors planning it, for example, like the ‘Nanjing Massacre’ in China, where thousands of women were raped by Japanese soldiers, or the rapes of Bosnians by Serbian troops—that’s ‘state actor’, whereas what happened in 1998 was ‘riots’ (riots),” Fadli explained.
Meanwhile, the Coalition of Civil Society Against Impunity previously filed a lawsuit against Fadli Zon at the Jakarta PTUN on 11 September 2025. The lawsuit was submitted because they viewed Fadli’s statements as denying the May 1998 mass rapes while delegitimising the TGPF’s work.
The coalition considered those statements to exceed the authority of the Culture Minister and to contradict several provisions, including the State Administration Law, the Human Rights Law, and the Human Rights Court Law.
The lawsuit was filed after administrative objections to Fadli Zon and an administrative appeal to the President received no response. Public lawyer from LBH Jakarta, Daniel Winarta, stated that they would file an appeal to the High State Administrative Court.