Jakarta, Apr 29 (AP) Amnesty International criticised Indonesia's government Tuesday, saying it suppresses free speech with crackdowns on public protests, targets journalists and rights activists and uses spyware against dissidents.

The rights group said in its annual report on Indonesia that public protests “were met with excessive and unnecessary force and arbitrary arrests,” including in August when thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to protest attempts by the House of Representatives to change the country's election law.

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The amendment would have permitted Kaesang Pangarep, the son of former president Joko Widodo, to run for regional office despite not meeting the age requirement for candidacy. The parliament eventually withdrew the bill after widespread criticism.

The report said at least 344 people were arrested while taking part in public protests across the country in 2024, 152 of them were physically harmed and 17 suffered from the effects of tear gas, while 65 suffered multiple abuses, including 15 university students who were hospitalized. Most of those arrested were later released.

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It also recorded 123 cases of physical assaults and 288 digital attacks and threats against media workers and human rights activists, including 11 journalists in the capital, Jakarta, who were reportedly targeted by law enforcement. Incidents involved acts of intimidation, death threats and physical violence.

The group also said unlawful killings of civilians “continued with impunity” as the conflict between the Indonesian military and armed separatist groups in the restive region of Papua continued.

Amnesty said the government continued to use spyware against dissidents despite a new law that came into effect last October that was supposed to protect people from digital snooping. The group said that the Personal Data Protection Law had not yet been implemented, including what was supposed to be the establishment of a dedicated data protection agency.

Amnesty previously has reported that, based on its own research, the government from 2017 to 2023 imported spyware from Greece, Israel, Malaysia and Singapore that was used by police and government agencies.

“If the use of authoritarian practices is not stopped immediately, then we could be heading towards an epidemic of human rights violations, something we do not want,” said Usman Hamid, the Executive Director of Amnesty International, while launching the report in Jakarta.

Hamid said that although Indonesia has failed to uphold human rights in 2024, the group will continue to voice their support for President Prabowo Subianto's administration "to make human rights the key to every policy the country takes, both domestically and internationally.”

The Ministry for Law and Human Rights did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Jakarta-based Institute for Criminal Justice Reform or ICJR said arbitrary arrests and torture will continue in the country until its criminal code is reformed to curb the powers granted to law enforcement.

“Such reforms are essential to address the root cause of poor law enforcement, which arises from the broad powers granted to investigators to make arrests without proper oversight or legal review,” the ICJR said in a statement. (AP)

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