A leading Indonesian university’s initial response to a recent sexual assault case allegedly involving two of its students has angered thousands of people, who have signed a petition demanding that the Yogyakarta institution punish the student perpetrator and the campus officials who had penalised the student victim.

In less than 24 hours, the online petition protesting against the 70-year-old Gadjah Mada University (UGM) on change.org had garnered more than 55,000 signatories by Wednesday morning, with more people signing every minute to reach more than 167,000 signatories by mid-afternoon today.

“We demand that the UGM rector, the advisory board and the Research, Technology and Higher Education Ministry to strengthen regulations on preventing sexual assault and law enforcement against sex offenders,” the petition states as one of its demands.

READ MORE: An alumna at UGM appeals to the university to be a pioneer against sexual abuse

A separate call to a rally on Thursday has been circulating on social media to demand that the university thoroughly investigate the case and create a safe campus environment.

The call says that UGM is facing “a sexual violence emergency”, pointing out that the latest case was not the university’s first and that UGM has not been siding with victims.

On November 5, Balairung published an investigative report based on the testimony of a female student under the pseudonym Agni, who gave the UGM student magazine permission to publish the full details of her account.

Agni said that a fellow student had assaulted her during a community service project (KKN) at a Maluku village on June 30, 2017. The KKN is a kind of field school programme that lasts several months, during which the students live with local families in the target village.

Homestay lodging
Agni said she was visiting a villager until late evening at their home where fellow KKN student “HS” was staying, so she decided to spend the night at HS’ homestay and return to her own lodging in the morning.

They had to share a single room that night, Agni said, but that they were separated by some distance in the room. She also said she slept fully clothed and still in her headscarf.

Early the following morning, she said she felt HS groping her, opening her top, kissing her breasts and inserting his fingers in her genitalia. She froze in momentary shock until she felt pain that prompted her to yell at HS, “What are you doing!”

Agni said she immediately reported the incident to the KKN supervisor and the UGM Community Service Department (DKPM), which managed the programme. The university officials cut short HS’ programme and sent him back to Yogyakarta, but Agni said they also blamed her for the incident, with one official telling her to “repent”, reported Balairung.

Agni said that after the assault, she often felt scared at night and ended up staying awake all night. She also had suicidal thoughts, she said as quoted by Balairung.

In November 2017, Agni learned that she received a C for her KKN assignment, while her peers on the same programme received an A or a B. Agni said she asked about the reason for her low grade, and that the KKN management responded that she had to share the blame for the incident that “embarrassed UGM” in front of the local villagers.

In the Balairung article, a university official who declined to be named said that the student press should not be in a rush to call Agni a victim. “Like a cat given salted fish, it will at least sniff it and might even eat the fish, right?” Balairung quoted the official as saying in reference to Agni.

Low grade reported
In December 2017, Agni reported the C she received for her KKN assignment and the circumstances surrounding it to her academic department, the Social and Political Sciences Faculty (Fisipol).

The Fisipol’s cooperation, alumni and research deputy dean, Poppy Sulistyaning Winanti, and the deputy dean for academics and student affairs, Wawan Mas’udi, followed up on her case to the top administrative level.

An inter-departmental independent investigation team was formed that recommended Agni’s KKN grade be revise from C to A/B. The team also recommended that the perpetrator write an apology and attend a mandatory counseling session for sexual abusers.

On Tuesday, in response to the Balairung article, Fisipol UGM posted a statement on its Instagram account, @fisipolugm, reiterating its commitment to “side with victim”.

“With this, Fisipol UGM states that we side with the survivor to find justice and a thorough solution to the problem,” the statement said.

It also said that steps had been taken to deal with “Agni’s” case, including a letter it sent to the rector on December 22, 2017, that asked the university to manage the case thoroughly.

Fisipol said that the rector arranged a closed meeting with relevant parties in response to its letter, and agreed during the meeting to set up an investigation team that involved several departments. The rector also agreed to sanction the DKPM officials for their “ignorance” in their initial handling of the incident until “the survivor” reported the case to Fisipol.

Trauma counselling
During the same meeting, Fisipol said it agreed to engage psychologists to provide trauma counseling for “the survivor”.

The statement continued that, after an intensive investigation, the team submitted its recommendations to the rector on July 20, 2018, which included punishment for the perpetrator, protection and support for the victim and improvements to managing the KKN programme.

“This is why Fisipol UGM is pushing for a thorough and speedy management of the case by implementing the follow-up measures as recommended by the investigation team,” the statement said, ending with a call to all parties to create a campus that was free from sexual abuse.

Separately, UGM public relations and protocol head Ariani said the university would continue its work to make sure that the victim received protection and justice.

“Next, UGM will soon take the necessary real steps to take the case to the legal domain,” Ariana said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

Other UGM cases
In 2016, a sexual abuse case that involved several female victims among Fisipol students rocked the university. The perpetrator, EH, was a respected lecturer and the head of the international relations department at the time of the incident.

EH was stripped of his positions, but is still officially employed as a UGM lecturer.

The investigative report in the Balairung student magazine also cited other unresolved sexual assault cases at UGM.

Sexual assault at universities

Many commentators believe that the incidents of sexual assault at universities that have emerged in the public eye are a mere tip of the iceberg.

In 2008, the University of Indonesia (UI) Law School received sexual assault reports from several students on a lecturer, TN.

As in the case of UGM’s EH, TN also sexually assaulted his students during one-on-one thesis consultations. TN was later dismissed from UI but he was still being interviewed by the media.

Women’s empowerment and rights activist Damairia Pakpahan said she had represented a sexual assault victim of a humanities lecturer at UGM, but that the case did not go anywhere.

The reporters are Jakarta Post journalists.

#kitaAGNI

• Antisexual assault movement #kitaAGNI gains traction

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

News media need to empower people over climate change and to encourage them to take action in their communities and press governments to do more, says a New Zealand environmental journalist and advocate.

Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology, told researchers at a recent seminar at Indonesia’s Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta that journalists in the Asia-Pacific region needed to step up to the mark.

“We are rapidly running out of time,” he said in an interview with UGM’s Centre for Southeast Asia Social Studies (CESASS).

“The news media itself is not terribly good when it comes to long term planning, and long-term issues. It tends to respond to immediate issues and consequences. It lacks the attention span for longer term challenges.”

Climate change was not just a simple “news round” but an issue of planetary survival.

There were examples in some countries of where the media was working quite well to empower people.

“The micro states in the Pacific have taken a lead in this way.”

He spoke about the achievements in the Pacific – especially Fiji leading up to COP23 in Bonn – and also about the PMC’s award-winning Bearing Witness climate journalism project in partnership with the University of the South Pacific.

• Bearing Witness project wins DART award

How Indonesian society manages in the face of natural disasters is the focus of a global research collaboration as part of the Indonesian government’s World Class Professor programme.

Spearheaded by the Universitas Gadjah Mada’s Centre for Southeast Asian Social Studies (CESASS), the WCP collaboration centres on ecological communication.

“We tried to find a topic which would facilitate us working together, and two other universities have specifications in tsunami mitigation and focus on maritime coastal disasters,” said CESASS director Dr Hermin Indah Wahyuni.

These are the Universitas Syiah Kuala’s (Unsyiah) Tsunami Disaster Mitigation Research Centre (TDMRC) and Universitas Diponegoro’s Centre for Coastal Rehabilitation and Disaster Mitigation Studies (COREM).

The Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre and its director, Professor David Robie, are also part of the maritime disaster issues research project.

Speaking to Asia Pacific Report, Dr Wahyuni said CESASS and its partners wanted to highlight the “social aspect of maritime disasters” and were interested in three aspects of ecological communication.

“We would first like to know how the society communicates about disasters; understanding about the environment and why media is important in constructing reality and making disasters important; and how infrastructure has developed.

Environment ‘unimportant issue’
“We have the feeling society does not categorise what is happening around a disaster,” she said.

Dr Wahyuni said the problem may lie in people’s perceptions and the mentality surrounding natural disasters.

“It’s unlucky, as as a society we don’t think the environment is an important issue.

“We never discuss about why, for example, the fish are dying. It’s happening, but it’s out of focus for us.”

In an attempt to understand Indonesia’s thinking and hopefully turn the tide on Indonesia’s poor environmental record, Dr Wahyuni and her team are in the midst of investigating the social, political and economic impacts of natural disasters.

The team revealed the findings of their early research at a PMC hosted seminar series while in New Zealand earlier this month.

The focus of CESASS’ Dr Budi Irawanto’s research is how the stories of natural disaster survivors are told by Indonesian media.

Focus on survivors
“The focus of my research is how the media deals with tragedy through the narratives of survivors,” he said.

Although venturing into a “new kind of territory”, Dr Irawanto said his research interest came about after discovering there were a lack of studies on the relationship between natural disasters and the media.

Focusing on weekly magazine Tempo and using the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the 2006 earthquake in Yogyakarta and 2010 Mount Merapi eruption as case studies, Dr Irawanto’s early research revealed survivor narratives are underrepresented in the media due to a focus on the economic impacts of natural disasters.

The suffering of survivors was brought closer, he said, but “compassion fatigue” existed. 

Dr Wahyuni reflected such a focus on economics may be due to the makeup of Indonesian society.

“The dynamic of our society is mostly in the political system…Business interests are more important than how we conserve our environment.

“With this research we would like to more deeply explore this problem from many perspectives – media, anthropology, economy.”

‘We need journalists’
However, Dr Wahyuni acknowledged the media had a large role to play in bringing environmental issues into focus.

“We need journalists that can translate, for example, climate change. It is very difficult to translate the concept to ordinary people as climate change is very hard to understand,” she said.

Further research by CESASS academics has provided insight into the communication of natural disasters in Indonesia.

Analysing over 45,000 tweets between 2014 and 2015, Dr Bevaola Kusumasari’s research focused on how people use social media platform Twitter during disasters.

Focusing on the Asia-Pacific region, Dr Kusumasari’s research revealed how different sectors of society – government, non-governmental organisations, media and celebrities – use Twitter.

Dr Kusumasari discovered NGOs use Twitter for relief coordination, while media and government participate in second-hand reporting and celebrities encourage the public to donate to relief efforts.

Although tweets came from outside the disaster zone, Dr Kusumasari found Twitter’s speed of reach could mean it is the ideal platform for relief coordination.

Future collaboration hope
Dr Wahyuni said she hoped the research collaboration marked the beginning of an ongoing academic relationship between CESASS and its partners, and that the research has real-world effects.

“We are starting with the academic, the university, the student awareness about what we can do to attempt to change this situation.

“We will support the effort to look after the environment better.”

PMC director Dr Robie, who has specialised in environmental journalism and launched the Bearing Witness climate project in 2016, heads to Indonesia next week as part of the WCP programme.

• PMC’s monographs launched on Tuwhera in ‘exciting initiative’ 
• ‘Asia-Pacific uniting, working together’ – Gadjah Mada team arrives in NZ
• More Indonesia stories

The Pacific Media Centre’s peer-reviewed research monographs have been launched on the Auckland University of Technology Library’s open access publishing platform Tuwhera.

Pacific Journalism Monographs, first published in 2012, is now freely available on Tuwhera in a move described by PMC director Professor David Robie as a “tremendous step forward”.

“Tuwhera is one of the most exciting initiatives in the university,” he said as the platform celebrated its one-year anniversary.

Pacific Journalism Monographs serve as a research companion to Pacific Journalism Review, publishing longer research projects in an online and booklet format.

Since its launch in 2012, the monographs have covered a diverse range of journalism research, from media freedom and human rights in the Asia-Pacific region to climate change.

The latest edition was a report about self-censorship in Fiji researched and written by prominent Suva journalist Ricardo Morris.

Luqman Hayes, AUT Library’s scholarly communications team leader, also spoke at the launch and reflected on the Tuwhera platform’s significance.

He told visiting academics from the Universitas Gadjah Mada’s Centre for Southeast Asian Social Studies (CESASS) Tuwhera meant “be open” in te reo Māori and sought to share knowledge and promote scholarship through an “indigenous set of lenses”.

Such Māori knowledge paradigms and perspectives as mātauranga (knowledge) and whenua were central to the open access platform’s principals, Hayes said.

“Tuwhera’s not just a publisher, but an incubator which has seen philosophical realignment.

“It’s opening up communication in isolated parts of the world,” he said.

CESASS director Dr Hermin Indah Wahyuni spoke about the centre’s journal IKAT and how happy she was that the research centre would be collaborating with the PMC’s Pacific Journalism Review and Tuwhera on a major project involving ecological communication and maritime disasters in the Asia-Pacific region.

“We are really happy and welcome the collaboration,” she said.

Although described by Dr Wahyuni as “a young journal”, IKAT’s first volume was published in July and two further volumes are planned for 2018. Each volume of the journal also comprises six thematic articles, she said.

It is hoped the July 2018 volume on environmental issues in Southeast Asia would align with the collaboration with the PMC, Dr Wahyuni said.

“We hope we can make this journal ready and fulfill international journal standards to become an international journal.”

IKAT also has an international advisory board, which comprises several academics from the US, Japan, Germany, Australia and the Republic of Korea.

PMC director Dr Robie is also a member.

“We are also very happy we have international advisers, including David Robie,” Dr Wahyuni said.

“We are here to read, discuss, write and be productive,” she added.

Dr Wahyuni and her CESASS team teach up to 11 different subjects with classes of over 40 students, along with fulfilling research responsibilities and supervising community service.

This hard work and dedication, however, has earnt them the title of a centre of excellence, the only one in social sciences, by the Ministry of Higher Education.

Dr Wahyuni said the centre was “blessed”.

The CESASS team also gifted the PMC with several Indonesian cultural artefacts.

Proudly on display in the PMC is a handcrafted, silver phinisi model, received on behalf of the research centre by Dr Robie.

The phinisi, or pinisi, is a traditional two-masted sailing ship from South Sulawesi, originally built by the Konjo tribe.

The Gadjah Mada team are in New Zealand from October 2-13 and will be presenting research on the relationship between the media and natural disasters in Indonesia, attending workshops and professional exchanges.

• ‘Asia-Pacific uniting, working together’ – Gadjah Mada team arrive in NZ
• Pacific Journalism Monographs go live on Tuwhera digital platform
• Pacific Journalism Monographs at Tuwhera

Academics from the Universitas Gadjah Mada in Indonesia have arrived in New Zealand in a major research initiative.

In the first communication and research publication collaboration of its kind in the country, the “advance guard” – Dr Bevaola Kusumasari, Dr Budi Irawanto and Dr Muhamad Sulhan – have been welcomed by staff of Auckland University of Technology’s School of Communication Studies and Pacific Media Centre.

The team of six academics from Gadjah Mada’s Centre for Southeast Asia Social Studies (CESASS) – including director Dr Hermin Indah Wahyuni, Andi Awaluddin Fitrah and Apriline Widani, who arrived today – are being hosted by AUT’s communications school and the PMC for a two-week exchange which is part of the Indonesian government’s World Class Professor (WCP) programme.

“Welcome to the visitors from afar,” said Tui O’Sullivan, acting PMC Advisory Board chair, as she opened the exchange with a mihi.

“It’s great to see this collaboration and the Asia-Pacific uniting and working together. It’s great and I hope you enjoy your stay,” said associate professor Tony Clear, associate dean (research) for AUT’s Design and Creative Technologies Faculty.

PMC director Professor David Robie said the centre was “delighted” to host the delegates.

“It’s a real delight for us to have the opportunity for you to visit us here. It’s going to be a really exciting two weeks. Thanks very much for making the journey to join us,” he said.

Dr Robie is going to Indonesia at the end of this month for two weeks as a WCP visiting professor.

Those gathered also expressed their hope that the exchange would mark the beginning of a promising, rewarding and long partnership between the universities.

“We’re also very much looking forward to having some conversations on the way in which we can work together,” said Professor Geoffrey Craig, head of research for the School of Communication Studies.

The school’s head, Professor Berrin Yanikkaya, also gave a strong message of encouragement for the collaboration.

The significance of the exchange was also echoed by Gadjah Mada’s Dr Budi Irawanto: “On behalf of my colleagues from CESASS, Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, we really thank you for the warm welcome. We really want to collaborate and also do some research, probably a joint publication with the Pacific Media Centre and other colleagues from AUT.

“This really is a good opportunity to bring closer the relationship between Asia and the Pacific. It’s a good start to work and collaborate with AUT,” he said.

Dr Kusumasari, Dr Sulhan and Dr Irawanto then joined Pacific Media Watch freedom project editor Kendall Hutt and senior communication studies lecturer Khairiah Rahman on a tour of AUT’s media facilities.

The Gadjah Mada team also explored the television studios and student radio station Static 88.1 on the tour.

The spirit of the academic exchange was also reflected on PMC’s weekly radio programme Southern Cross, broadcast live on 95bFM at the University of Auckland.

LISTEN: PMC’s 95BFM Southern Cross podcast on Monday

“We see this is a really great collaboration to conduct research and, in the future joint publication about media, climate change and the environment,” Dr Irawanto said.

The Gadjah Mada team are in New Zealand from October 1-13 and will be presenting research on the relationship between the media and natural disasters in Indonesia, attending workshops and professional exchanges.

• Gadjah Mada University academic talks to Southern Cross about NZ visit 
• The CESSAS academic team from Indonesia coming to AUT’s PMC
• PMC’s Professor Robie and Gadjah Mada team in Indonesian academic exchange