REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA – A viral video circulating in social media showed a group of people did an intimidation to a fifteen-year-old-child with the initial PMA. The 11:22 minute video immediately reaped the reaction because the incident was thought to have broken the law. 

Chairman of Indonesian Children Protection Agency (LPAI) Seto Mulyadi said, intimidation or vigilantism could not be justified although it was a respond to individual which was believed to break the law. “Even more, the individual who is considered to break the law is a child. All the Indonesian nationals should obey the positive law,” said Seto Mulyadi in a press release on Saturday (June 3).  

LPAI encouraged the police to take professional action against the people who intimidated the child. They had spread hostility and hatred to certain individual, group and religion through social media. 

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Seto said police action would be an important step to ensure the country was always in protecting all Indonesian children, including them who were rumored to have spread hate speech. 

On that side, Seto said LPAI seen the child as a victim. The right of the victim should be recovered both as citizen in general and specifically as a child. LPAI expected no more children experienced intimidation. 

According to Seto, law enforcement should be conducted to convince the people that there would be no more vigilantes. He urged all elements of societies not to overrule any legal violation to anybody. “On that side, LPAI saw the child who has been rumored to use social media to express hatred as a perpetrator of lawlessness,” he said. 

LPAI expressed its concern over the fact that young people had demonstrated their thought and hostile mind openly through social media. Seto was worried over the emergence of expression of hostility and hatred among children. 

For the child alleged to express hate speech, Seto advised the law enforcers to take action based on the Law on Juvenile Justice System. They should ensure that teenagers were not free from any responsibility. 

This also ensured that the country was not permissive against children who perform inappropriate behavior. It also counteracted a precondition for the children to imitate the similar misconduct. 

Seeing this fact, Seto stated that there was an urgent agenda to educate the children to be able to use social media appropriately and responsibly. Parents, educational institutions, and the society should cooperate to make virtual world a place to spread the spirit of unity in diversity to children and teenagers. 

“The material of education is clear. Whoever, including children, may not use social media to blaspheme, insult, and spew hatred and hostility, slander, and to conduct other disharmonic behaviors,” he said. 

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