Ekip
13 June 2017•Update: 13 June 2017
By Ainur Rohmah
TUBAN, Indonesia
A university lecturer accused of stirring religious hatred edited footage of the former Jakarta mayor, a court heard Tuesday.
Buni Yani is said to have cut more than 90 minutes of Basuki Tjahaja Purnama’s speech to 30 seconds before uploading it on Facebook, local media reported.
The footage went viral and led to Purnama, an ethnic Chinese and Christian politician, being tried and convicted of blasphemy over comments related to the Quran.
In the edited video, Purnama refers to the Quran's Surah Al Maidah 51. His remarks were interpreted as being blasphemous and triggered uproar across Indonesia -- the world's most populous Muslim nation.
He was later convicted and jailed for two years despite claiming that he was calling for people not to be “deceived” by those using the surah, or Quranic chapter, not that the verse itself was insulting.
Yani is accused of inciting hatred based on ethnicity or religion and intentionally changing or transmitting electronic information belonging to others, The Jakarta Post reported.
Prosecutor Andi Taufik told a court in Bandung, West Java, that Yani had downloaded the video of Purnama’s speech last October and edited it.
“Furthermore, the defendant uploaded on his Facebook account an edited version of the video,” Taufik said at the start of trial, the Kompas news platform reported.
He said Yani had changed the transcript of the video and attached a caption alleging Purnama had said Muslims had been deceived by the surah.
“The defendant's actions resulted in the hatred or hostility of Muslims against Basuki Tjahaja Purnama… who is Chinese-ethnic and non-Muslim,” Taufik said.
Yani faces up to five years in jail if convicted.
