Popular video blogger whose image of the menu went viral now faces police inquiry

Kate Lamb
@_KateLamb
Wed 17 Jul 2019 23.45 EDT
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Indonesia’s national airline has come under fire for banning the taking of in-flight images after a popular video blogger posted a photo online showing a handwritten menu he was handed in business class.

The travel v-logger Rius Vernandes was also reported to police after the post, which led to the airline Garuda Indonesia being widely mocked online. The photo was uploaded with the caption: “The menu is still being printed sir.”

The post originated on a flight from Sydney to Denpasar on Saturday, and came a week after the airline was ridiculed for serving in-flight meals in business class from the Japanese fast food chain HokBen.

Rius and his partner, who was travelling with him, have since been reported to police and could face defamation charges under Indonesia’s strict electronic transactions law.

In a video posted on YouTube the day after, entitled “What really happened, behind Garuda’s business class handwritten menu”, Rius defended himself, saying he did not intend to harm the airline’s reputation, and often reviewed the services of other airlines as well.

On Wednesday afternoon he posted another picture on his Instagram of two brown envelopes from the police, calling him for questioning.

In the accompanying post he appealed for support, especially from “fellow influencers”.

“I hope you can help share and support me through this problem because I don’t want to see that, in the future, whenever we review something as is, whenever we give constructive criticism, we can be criminalised,” he wrote.

Garuda announced it was banning passengers and flight crew from taking in-flight photos and videos, according to an internal memo circulated on 14 July.

But by Tuesday the airline had backtracked, after more public backlash.

The policy, said Garuda’s corporate secretary, Ikhsan Rosan, had “not yet been finalised, and should not have been shared to the public”.

“People can still take pictures [on board our flights] for their own use,” he said, “as long as they don’t disturb the other passengers”.

Indonesia’s electronic transactions law refers to any material posted online and has been increasingly used in the past two years to prosecute opposition figures and government critics.

Last month a court in Surabaya sentenced well-known musician and opposition supporter, Ahmad Dhani, to one year in jail for calling his rivals “idiots” in his vlog, while this month another opposition figure and playwright, was sentenced to two years behind bars for lying about bruises on her face - pictures of which went viral online - injuries she said were the result of being beaten up, when instead she had undergone cosmetic surgery.

Critics says the use of the law is becoming increasingly problematic and in some cases has resulted in victims, rather than perpetrators facing jail time.

One case that has stirred national attention is that of Baiq Nuril, who was prosecuted under the ITE law after she recorded a lewd phone call from her boss, audio of which was later distributed online.

The woman, from Lombok, was sentenced to six months in jail while her boss, a principal at a local school, was not prosecuted. After exhausting all avenues of appeal, this week she applied for amnesty from the president.

Sumur: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/18/indonesian-airline-bans-in-flight-photos-after-being-mocked-for-handwritten-menu

Viral deh.