Indonesian law enforcement have jailed and fined a trans TikToker under the country’s strict blasphemy laws. Her crime: suggesting that Jesus should consider a haircut.
Ratu Thalisa is a trans woman known as Ratu Entok to her over 440,000 TikTok followers. During a livestream on October 2, a viewer commented that she should cut her hair to avoid looking like a man. In response, she held up a picture of Jesus and said, “You should not look like a woman. You should cut your hair so that you will look like his father,” meaning the father of the commenter.
According to Amnesty International, five Christian groups filed complaints to Indonesian police and Thalisa was arrested four days later. On March 10, she was brought before a district court in North Sumatra, who accused her of disturbing “public order” and “religious harmony” and charged her with spreading hate speech against Christianity. She was sentenced to 2 years and 10 months in prison and ordered to pay 100,000,000 IDR ($6,200).
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Thalisa was indicted under Indonesia’s Electronic Information and Transactions (EIT) law, which has been used to prosecute people for comments made on social media. Although the EIT is nominally meant to protect consumers from online fraud, Amnesty International has registered 560 people who’ve had their free speech curtailed under the EIT, of whom 421 received convictions.
In 2023, a Muslim woman was given a two year sentence for filming a TikTok video of herself saying an Islamic prayer before eating pork. In 2024, another TikToker was charged with blasphemy for posting a video that asked children which animals can read the Koran.
“This prison sentence is a shocking attack on Ratu Thalisa’s freedom of expression,” Amnesty International Indonesia executive director Usman Hamid said in a statement. “The Indonesian authorities should not use the country’s EIT law to punish people for comments made on social media.
“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.
“This sentence highlights the increasingly arbitrary and repressive application of Indonesia’s EIT law to violate freedom of expression. The authorities must quash Ratu Thalisa’s conviction, ensure her immediate and unconditional release and repeal or make substantial revisions of problematic provisions in the law criminalising ‘immorality,’ defamation and hate speech.”
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