Hoax stories have been in heavy circulation on Indonesian social media in recent weeks, and much of it is aimed at making Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama look like he is anti-Islam. These fictitious attacks against the governor began after a video of a speech Ahok gave saying that Islamic leaders were lying to voters about the Quran saying they could not vote for non-Muslim leaders was edited to give the impression he was saying the Quran was lying to people.
Despite the fact that the viral video was shown to have been deceptively edited, the perception that the governor had insulted the Quran was enough to lend fuel to anti-Ahok organizations such as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), who are planning another major protest against Ahok this Friday. The police have already had to deny several hoaxes circulating about the protests, including that they have been given orders to shoot protesters at the first sign of trouble and that there were 500 Chinese nationals who have come to Jakarta just to defend Ahok.
It seems clear that certain people are creating these hoaxes for political purposes, and part of the reason they can get away with it is because the mainstream Indonesian media rarely addresses the hoaxes themselves (until, say, a police spokesperson denies it).
But it looks like Kompas couldn’t take seeing one of their stories, altered for propaganda purposes, going viral on social media and decided to take down this hoax themselves:
The hoax headline is “Ahok: You really think we are going to build mosques and send marbuts (mosque caretakers) on Hajj?”
The headline of the asli (original) article is “Ahok: You think we are lying about building mosques and sending marbuts on Hajj?”
Obviously the change of that single word completely alters the meaning of the headline. And ironically, the original article is about Ahok saying that he is genuinely not anti-Islam and that he doesn’t do things like help build new mosques or send people on Hajj just for the sake of appearances.
Kompas identified Twitter account @TweetParpol as the original spreader of the altered screenshot as well as similarly modified stories from Detik and other media outlets.
Currently @TweetParpol’s account is inaccessible and some believe the account’s owner was the spreader of hoaxes that was arrested by police last week (police have not yet identified the suspect).
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