More than a dozen members of the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations, including the Human Rights Law Centre, have expressed concern about the harassment and threats of prosecution faced by two human rights defenders in Indonesia.

Fatia Maulidiyanti, from the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (KontraS) and Haris Azhar, Executive Director of Lokataru Law and Human Rights Office, have been subpoenaed by Indonesia’s Coordinating Minister for Maritime and Investment Affairs, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan – also a retired army general – over their participation in an online talk show.

During the program they discussed the ties between active and retired members of the army and gold mining concessions in Papua. In particular, using recent research by KontraS and other local human rights and environmental organisations, the video claims Pandjaitan is a shareholder of PT Toba Sejahtera Group, a company that controls some of the mining operations in the increasingly militarised Blok Wabu area.

Maulidiyanti and Azhar face up to six years imprisonment for online defamation, up to nine months for “intentionally harming someone’s honor or reputation” and up to four years for defamation.

INCLO members are concerned that these actions are a form of judicial harassment and abuse of power. Human rights defenders have a right to express their opinion as provided in Indonesia’s Constitution and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by Indonesia in 2005.

In a joint statement, INCLO members call on Indonesian authorities to:

• Immediately drop the threat of prosecution against Maulidiyanti and Azhar

• Ensure the National Commission on Human Rights identifies Maulidiyanti and Azhar as human rights defenders whose work should be protected

• Prevent the criminalisation of human rights defenders and combat the abuse of authority of officials who intimidate human rights defenders

• Revise or repeal every discriminative and repressive regulation, including the articles about defamation, which tend to repress human rights defenders’ freedom of opinion

Signatories to the statement include Agora American Civil Liberties Union, Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, Dejusticia Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Law Centre, Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Kenya Human Rights Commission, Legal Resources Centre and Liberty.