http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2203&Itemid=202
An Indonesian Campaign to Save a Housewife
Written by Ben Bland
Friday, 18 December 2009
Photo: Prita Mulysari, Jakarta GlobeWith a bank clerk facing ruin from a
bizarre defamation suit, the Internet explodes to come to her rescue
There was nothing remarkable about Prita Mulyasari's decision to email a
few friends to complain about the treatment she had received at a private
hospital on the outskirts of Jakarta last year. On paying a lot of money for
any particular service, whether it's health care, car repairs or plumbing, most
people would grumble to their friends if they felt they'd got a raw deal.
But when her friends forwarded the note, they unwittingly put into motion
a chain of events that catapulted the 32-year-old bank worker from suburban
anonymity into headline news and sparked a national outcry against the uneven
nature of the justice system in Indonesia.
Prita's email criticized Omni International Hospital and two of its
doctors, who she claimed had misdiagnosed her as suffering from dengue fever
when, in fact, she had mumps. She initially sent the note to just 20 friends,
relatives and colleagues but once they began passing it on, it ended up being
posted on a mailing list for doctors and was ultimately brought to the
attention of the hospital.
Their response wasn't what most people would think of as measured: Omni
filed a civil defamation suit against the mother of two, while the two doctors
launched a separate criminal defamation suit. After being charged with criminal
defamation, Prita was locked up at the Tangerang women's penitentiary in May,
at which time she was still breastfeeding her second child. News of her
predicament had already begun seeping out through messages boards and social
networking sites such as Facebook and the decision to jail her crystallized
online curiosity into a rapidly-growing internet campaign.
The burgeoning public anger at the way she was being treated forced the
authorities to release her from jail after three weeks on condition that she
not abscond. Prita lost the civil case regardless and was ordered to pay Omni
Rp204 million ($21,600) in damages - a decision upheld by a higher court
earlier this month.
The good citizens of Indonesia - channeling their energies through
Facebook and blogs - came to her aid once again, launching a "coins for Prita"
campaign to raise the necessary funds to cover the damages and any associated
legal costs. The campaign caught the public mood with everyone from politicians
to businessmen and garbage scavengers to school children chipping in. By the
time the collection drive closed on Monday, Prita's supporters had raked in
well over Rp500 million, with many more donations still to arrive in Jakarta
from elsewhere in the sprawling archipelago.
Amid such overwhelming public support for Prita, the hospital finally
realized that its reputation management efforts had rather backfired and, last
week, it offered to drop its civil suit against Prita on the condition that her
lawyer drops a Rp1 trillion countersuit. However, Prita has refused to settle
with Omni unless the two doctors withdraw their support for the criminal
prosecution, which is still in progress.
Legal experts say that there is no mechanism to abandon a criminal trial
once it is underway and the presiding judge told Prita on Tuesday that they
would reach a verdict within two weeks. With the prosecutors having called for
a six-month prison sentence, Prita's fate still hangs in the balance.
Whatever the eventual outcome, the whole saga reveals a great deal - both
positive and negative - about a country that, while undoubtedly on the way up,
is still very much in transition.
Living in a gated community outside Jakarta, Prita makes for a rather
unlikely voice of the downtrodden. It seems bizarre that the malnourished and
the poverty-stricken would hand over their hard-earned and much-needed cash to
help out a middle-class bank employee who got into trouble by complaining about
the service at her private hospital. But Prita's case has struck such a chord
across Indonesia because it embodies just how corrupt and unfair most people
perceive the justice system to be.
In almost every country in the world, developing or developed, there is a
widespread belief that the scales of justice are tipped massively in favor of
the rich - just ask most Americans what they think about the OJ Simpson case or
look at some of the recent scandals in Malaysia.
But in Indonesia, that sense is particularly acute and for good reason.
Although successive governments have made some progress in the fight to root
out the graft that permeated all areas of society under Suharto's rule,
Indonesia remains one of the most corrupt nations in the world. Indonesia
ranked 111th of 180 countries in the latest Corruption Perception Index by
Transparency International, a well-respected anti-graft campaign group. And the
justice system is widely considered to be the worst of a bad bunch.
Part of the problem stems from the proliferation of shady "case brokers"
- known as "makelar kasus" or "markus" for short - who can halt arrests,
intimidate witnesses and destroy evidence for an appropriate fee.
While the kleptomaniac oligarchs and money-grabbing politicians are
rarely forced to justify their actions in a court of law, ordinary folk, who do
not have the financial ammunition to block police investigations or pay off
judges, are given no such quarter.
Prita's case is only one of several recent causes celebres that have
focused public attention on the problem. There is Minah, the illiterate
55-year-old grandmother from central Java forced to face criminal charges after
stealing three cocoa pods; West Jakarta resident Aguswandi Tanjung, who was
arrested for "stealing electricity" after daring to charge his mobile phone in
the hallway of the apartment block where he lives; and the two men from East
Java who were remanded in custody for 70 days after stealing a solitary
watermelon.
Perhaps the extra cash collected by the coins for Prita campaign could go
toward establishing a fund to help poor crooks buy their way out of trouble in
the same way that Indonesia's moneyed felons do?
That might not do much to restore popular faith in Indonesian justice but
it would rebalance the scales a little while the county awaits the reforms that
were promised by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono during the July elections
and that helped him win a strong mandate from the people.
In the meantime, there is always Facebook, which allows Indonesia's
politically-active masses to protest from the comfort of their bedroom rather
than sweating it out in one of the real-world demonstrations that take place
almost every day at the Hotel Indonesia roundabout in central Jakarta.
Although as the Prita case shows only too well, the internet is not a
one-way street for those seeking to air dissenting views. It is merely another
arena in which battle can be joined. The internet may help save Prita in the
end but it was the highly-contagious nature of electronic communications that
got her into trouble in the first place.
Ben Bland is a freelance journalist based in Jakarta. He blogs at
http://www.asiancorrespondent.com/the-asia-file.
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