Page 6 - Harmonisation of Anti-Fake News Legislation in ASEAN Flip Book

Harmonisation of Anti-Fake News Legislation in ASEAN
available. Courts maintain basic records of previous cases on file at the courthouse”.3 The author relies on English language secondary sources such as news services and newspapers and their reporting of government press conferences, police press conferences and court decisions.
As will be seen, each of the three jurisdictions has its own unique issues. In Indonesia, the main concern is “hoax news” and hate speech which can lead to sectarian, racial and political conflict. In the Philippines the overriding concern is that of fake news which is rife within its political systems with fake news farming being a thriving industry which is also becoming an export industry. Of the three jurisdictions the most extensive literature on prosecution of fake news offences is from Thailand. It also provides vivid examples of how fairly authoritarian regimes use legislation to prosecute and even persecute their critics.
Each jurisdiction will be discussed separately with an anal- ysis of its relevant laws followed by examples of their application which essentially come from secondary sources. The discussion will draw together common themes across the jurisdictions and provide a platform for recommendations for harmonisation of their laws in Chapter 4. Indonesia will be discussed first, followed by the Philippines and finally Thailand.
Indonesia
In Indonesia, as at January 2020, there were 332.2 million mobile phone connections (124% of total population) and 175.4 million internet users (64% of the total population).4 This was an increase of 15 million in mobile phone connections and 25 million in internet users from January 2019.5 Social media users stood at 160 million,
3 Nandana Indananda, Suebsiri Taweepon and Alec Wheatley, ‘Copyright Litigation in Thailand: Overview (Law stated as at 01-Nov-2017)’ (2017) Thompson Reuters Practical Law, Question 39.
4 ‘Digital 2020: Indonesia’, Hootsuite and We Are Social (Blog Post, 18 February 2020) <https:// datareportal.com/reports/digital-2020-indonesia>.
5 Ibid.
42