ICC Note:

An Indonesian professor admitted to changing the words of the Chinese-Christian governor of Jakarta, known as Ahok. The professor is being blamed for causing the upheaval that has rocked the Islamic community in Indonesia for the past few weeks. The professor posted a doctored video online in which a word was left of Ahok’s speech as he quoted the Quran, changing the meaning of his speech. This doctored speech has been the focal point of the tens of thousands of protesters that have descended on Jakarta in the last two protests, some of whom called for violence or even the death of Ahok. The professor claimed that he omitted the world by mistake. A petition against the professor already has over 100,000 signatures.

11/7/2016 Indonesia (Asia News) – A petition has gathered more than 100,000 signatures calling for legal action against the man who appears to have incited the protests on 4 November in Jakarta.

Buni Yani, a former journalist and communications professor at the London School in Central Jakarta, has confessed to manipulating the words of the capital’s governor, which led to charges of blasphemy against him.

For several weeks, Jakarta’s governor, Tjahaja “Ahok” Basuki Purnama, an ethnic Chinese and a Christian, has been under attack after he was accused of “slandering of Islam”.

Last Friday (4 November), tens of thousands of Islamic radicals took to the streets to demand his prosecution. The event, which resulted in violence, was infiltrated by political agitators with the aim of discrediting President Joko Widodo.

After calm returned to the capital, questions were asked as to what could have unleashed this wave of protests. At present, Yani is the only suspect.

Speaking on television, the professor admitted that he had misrepresented Ahok’s words and omitted word “by mistake”, changing the meaning of the sentence and modifying it to an insult against the Muslim community. He rejected however the accusation that he was behind the protest movement that ended in the demonstration in Jakarta.

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