22 January, 2014
Legal News & Analysis – Asia Pacific – Indonesia – Dispute Resolution
Indonesia’s Constitutional Court recently struck the phrase “unpleasant treatment” from Article 335 of the Indonesian Criminal Code (“ICC”), declaring the vague wording unconstitutional.
Prior to the court ruling, Article 335 of the ICC read: “By imprisonment of one year maximum or a fine of 4,500 Rupiah maximum shall be punished: first, any person who unlawfully coerces another person through force, through any other act of violence, or through unpleasant treatment or through threat of force, with any other acts of violence, or also with unpleasant treatment, directed either toward that other person or toward a third party, to do, not to do, or to tolerate something.”
It is hoped that this decision will avoid any misuse of Article 335 of the ICC by the public, the police, and prosecutors.
The Jakarta Globe newspaper quoted Ahmad Fadlil Sumadi, a Constitutional Court justice, as saying that the struck-down phrase was impossible to approach objectively.
“All crimes of course are offensive and there’s no pleasant impact of crime,” he said. “Therefore, it was not clearly distinct from other crimes.”
The paper also quoted a University of Indonesia law professor, Harkristuti Harkrisnowo, as comparing the article to a trash can.
“You can categorize any treatment as offensive depending on the person’s view,” Harkristuti told the paper. “Indeed, it can be misused for various purposes.
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