JAKARTA: Indonesia is battling a wave of fake news and online hate speech ahead of presidential elections in 2019, as a string of arrests underscore fears it could crack open social and religious fault lines in the world鈥檚 largest Muslim-majority country.
The pluralist nation鈥檚 reputation as a bastion of tolerance has been tested in recent months, as conservative groups exploit social media to spread lies and target minorities.
Police have cracked down, rounding up members of the Muslim Cyber Army (MCA), a cluster of loosely connected groups accused of using Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to attack the government and stoke religious extremism.
Two of the group鈥檚 most high-profile falsehoods were claims that dozens of Islamic clerics had been assaulted by leftists and that Indonesia鈥檚 outlawed communist party was on the rise, according to police.
Communism 鈥� and its hallmark atheist beliefs 鈥� remains a taboo subject in Indonesia, where bloody purges under the Suharto dictatorship in the mid-1960s killed half a million suspected leftists.
Gatot Eddy Pramono, the National Police鈥檚 head of social affairs, has said the group wants to destabilize government and 鈥渃reate social conflict.鈥�
Although the Southeast Asian nation has seen Internet hoaxes before 鈥� including smear campaigns against President Joko Widodo during the 2014 presidential elections 鈥� the recent clampdown reflects authorities鈥� mounting unease about their possible impact on election campaigning.
Indonesia will hold simultaneous regional elections in June, ahead of a presidential ballot in 2019.
Last month, the communications ministry announced it was deploying new software to identify fake news websites, while Widodo 鈥� who has battled false Internet claims that he is a communist 鈥� inaugurated a new cybersecurity agency in January.
Indonesia鈥檚 problem with Internet hoaxes and misinformation campaigns reached fever pitch in the lead up to elections in Jakarta in late 2016 and early 2017, with incumbent governor Basuki TjaHajja Purnama, nicknamed Ahok, bearing the brunt of it.
Ahok 鈥� the city鈥檚 first Christian and ethnically Chinese leader 鈥� was lambasted by Islamic hard-liners after an edited video appeared to show him insulting the Koran.
The allegations drew hundreds of thousands of conservative Muslims onto the streets of Jakarta in major protests, and led to the once-popular Ahok 鈥� an ally of Widodo 鈥� being jailed for blasphemy after losing the election to a Muslim challenger.
The Muslim Cyber Army played a pivotal role in disseminating content attacking Ahok and non-Muslims.
鈥淢CA was organizing and agitating with this case,鈥� said Savic Ali, director of the media department at Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Indonesia鈥檚 largest moderate Muslim organization.
鈥淭here was a clear sentiment about religion in many of its accounts.鈥�
The group has at least four ideologically driven clusters that spread inflammatory material with the help of bots 鈥� software programs that run repetitive tasks 鈥� or by hacking into opponents鈥� online accounts, said Damar Juniarto, Indonesia coordinator for digital rights group SAFENET.
One cluster pushed radical Islam and the establishment of a caliphate, while others supported conservative political and military figures opposed to Widodo.
鈥淭hey pose a threat to the national election in 2019,鈥� Juniarto said.
鈥淲hat they want to do now, in 2018, is copy what happened in Jakarta in other parts of the country.鈥�
Police have pledged to be on high alert for hoaxes, but they have their work cut out.
Some 130 million Indonesians 鈥� about half the population 鈥� spend an average of nearly three-and-a-half hours a day on social media, one of the highest rates in the world, according to data from London-based creative agency We Are Social and social media management platform Hootsuite.
The country was also late to introduce digital literacy programs, experts say.
鈥淢any Indonesian people maybe think that every article and video on the Internet is right,鈥� Ali said.
鈥淭hey don鈥檛 know it is false.鈥�
Indonesia has long been praised for its moderate, inclusive brand of Islam, and it officially guarantees freedom of worship for six religions.
But minorities 鈥� including Non-Muslims and LGBT people 鈥� have been increasingly targeted in recent years and fake news is adding fuel to the fire, SAFENET鈥檚 Juniarto said.
鈥淭his can easily become real segregation and conflict if nobody does anything about it,鈥� he added.