Greenpeace Indonesia’s forest campaigner, Asep Komarudin said that Indonesia’s democratic climate had been damaged by the steps taken by the Secretary General of the Legal Mafia Eradication Committee, Husin Shahab, who had policed two Greenpeace members for criticizing President Jokowi’s speech.
Asep’s view is that a criticism should not be responded to by reporting it to the police, but through dialogue.
“Reports like this damage the democratic climate, criticisms of the government should not be responded to by police reports,” Asep told CNNIndonesia.com, Sunday (14/11).
Even so, Asep admitted that his party was ready to face the report. He emphasized that the data that Greenpeace had submitted to the public was valid data.
“We will face this report even though we are currently in a climate crisis that requires real action from this government which is more important which requires real attention and action rather than reporting,” he said.
Greenpeace Valid Data
The head of Greenpeace Indonesia, Leonard Simanjuntak, who is also the reported party, also denied that the data presented by his party was invalid and a hoax. In fact, said Leo, the data was issued by the KLHK itself.
“So we use official data from the deforestation data, the KLHK itself,” said Leo to CNNIndonesia.com, Sunday (11/14).
“That we convey our views based on our interpretation, the approach we take is our intellectual property. We can look at the problem with the same data from different angles, right,” he added.
Leo explained that Greenpeace used a forest permit moratorium approach in 2018. Then it used a comparison of 8 years back.
His side saw, in the span of 8 years before and 8 years after the moratorium, there was an increase in deforestation. In fact, he said, if the moratorium was enforced, deforestation should have decreased.
Leo admitted that the moratorium was originally set by Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as president in 2011. Then it was continued during the 2019 Joko Widodo period as a permanent moratorium. However, the results were not satisfactory.
“In the end, this policy was continued by Pak Jokowi. The problem is that the results for our deforestation problem, the results of this moratorium determination are not encouraging,” he said.
“Deforestation has actually increased. That’s what we have explained since last week. So that is our criticism, and it is our right to criticize it,” he added.
Husin Shahab reported two members of Greenpeace after they criticized Jokowi’s speech at the Cop 26 Summit in Glasgow. The two members of Greenpeace were reported to be in a case of making fake news that caused trouble.
Husin also said the two men spread information aimed at causing hatred or hostility.
Husin reported to Greenpeace with articles 14 and 15 of Law Number 1 of 1946 concerning the Criminal Code (KUHP). He also uses Article 28 paragraph (2) in conjunction with Article 45A paragraph (2) of Law Number 11 of 2008 concerning Information and Electronic Transactions (UU ITE).
