A court in Indonesia has sentenced a trans woman to almost three years in prison for an online comment on Jesus Christ’s haircut.
Ratu Thalisa, a Muslim woman with over 442,000 TikTok followers, was found guilty by a court in Medan city, Sumatra, on Monday for spreading hatred under the online hate-speech law.
Ms Thalisa, known online as Ratu Entok, was livestreaming on 2 October 2024 on TikTok, when a viewer asked her to cut her hair like a man. She responded by holding up a picture of Jesus Christ and addressing it: "You should not look like a woman. You should cut your hair so that you will look like his father".
She was arrested in October after five Christian groups filed a complaint to the police for blasphemy. Ms Thalisa was charged and indicted with blasphemy and hate speech against a particular religion.
The district court said her comments could disrupt "public order" and "religious harmony" as the judges sentenced her to two years and 10 months in prison and ordered her to pay 100,000,000 IDR (£4,711) in fine for the offence.
Rights groups have condemned the sentence for an attack on Ms Thalisa's "freedom of expression" and the misuse of Indonesia's Electronic Information and Transactions (EIT) law.
“While Indonesia should prohibit the advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence, Ratu Thalisa’s speech act does not reach that threshold," Usman Hamid, executive director of Amnesty International Indonesia, said in a statement.
“This sentence highlights the increasingly arbitrary and repressive application of Indonesia’s EIT law to violate freedom of expression," he said, urging the government to quash Ms Thalisa’s conviction.
Prosecutors immediately appealed Monday’s verdict, which was less than their demand for a sentence for more than four years, BBC reported.
Mr Hamid urged the authorities to repeal or make revisions to "problematic provisions" in the EIT law, which was amended in 2016 to address online defamation. Critics of the law have raised concerns about the possible abuse of the law "to suppress human rights defenders and opposition figures".
At least 421 people were charged and convicted with alleged violations under the law while exercising their freedom of expression between 2019 and 2024, Amnesty International said.
Social media influencers have been targeted for blasphemy, including a Muslim woman, who was jailed for two years in September 2023 after posting a TikTok video of her saying an Islamic prayer before eating pork.
