Curtailing Free Expression, Opinion and Information Online in Southeast Asia identity-based political polarization. In 2017, prior to Jakarta’s gubernatorial elections, then governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, an ethnic Chinese Christian, was convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment after a doctored video circulated online which misrepresented comments that he made suggesting that certain Quranic verses had been inappropriately invoked to discourage Muslims from voting for him.14 The maker of the video was only held accountable after Purnama lost the elections and completed his prison term.15 Prior to Indonesia’s 2019 general elections, the spread of disinformation again posed serious problems. Between December 2018 and January 2019, the civil society organization MAFINDO reported that online disinformation had increased by 61 percent, with nearly half of such false information being shared on Facebook.16 In Singapore, breaches of cybersecurity exposed confidential information which infringed upon the privacy rights of individuals and heightened potential risks of violation of other rights. Between June and July 2018, a cyber-attack on Singapore’s largest group of healthcare institutions led to breach of privacy and stealing of confidential data from some oneand-a-half million patients.17 In January 2019, the Ministry of Health’s HIV Registry was hacked and the confidential information of 14,200 HIV-positive individuals was leaked – exposing a vulnerable community to increased risk of discrimination, particularly with respect to the exercise of their rights to health, work and social security.18 The threat of cyber-attacks and the proliferation of disinformation and hate speech online are real problems, requiring urgent policy solutions. The ICJ believes that such policies will be greatly improved if they are human rights-compliant, frame these issues as human rights concerns, and employ analytical tools and accountability mechanisms that an international law 14 15 16 17 18 Asian Correspondent, ‘Ahok release an uncomfortable reminder of the power of blasphemy laws’, 24 January 2019, Available at: https://asiancorrespondent.com/2019/01/ahoks-release-anuncomfortable-reminder-of-the-power-of-blasphemy-laws/ Ibid. Kate Lamb, ‘Fake news spikes in Indonesia ahead of elections’, The Guardian, 20 March 2019, Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/20/fake-news-spikes-in-indonesiaahead-of-elections. MAFINDO – Masyarakat Anti Fitnah Indonesia – began as a grassroots movement, leading efforts to combat fake news online. See https://www.mafindo.or.id/about/. Irene Tham, ‘Top-secret report on SingHealth attack submitted to Minister-in-charge of Cyber Security’, Straits Times, 31 December 2018, Available at: https://www.straitstimes.com/ singapore/top-secret-report-on-singhealth-attack-submitted-to-minister-in-charge-of-cybersecurity Salma Khalik, ‘Data of 14,200 people with HIV leaked online by US fraudster who was deported from Singapore’, Straits Times, 28 January 2019, Available at: https://www.straitstimes.com/ singapore/data-of-14200-singapore-patients-with-hiv-leaked-online-by-american-fraudster-whowas; Sharanjit Leyl, ‘Singapore HIV data leak shakes a vulnerable community’, BBC, 22 February 2019, Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47288219 11