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DENPASAR, Indonesia — The editor of Indonesia’s defunct version of Playboy magazine surrendered himself to authorities on Saturday to serve a two-year jail term for indecency.
Erwin Arnada was taken into custody by dozens of police on arrival from Bali to Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta airport, the local news media reported, after nearly two months of avoiding summonses and hiding from Islamist vigilantes who had vowed to arrest him. A third and final summons for Mr. Arnada to hand himself in expired on Friday.
“I’ve been treated like a criminal, put in a prison car,” Mr. Arnada said by BlackBerry message after being taken.
“I don’t yet believe there’s democracy in Indonesia; at least my case makes me think that,” he said. “If there was democracy in Indonesia, then freedom of the press would be guaranteed and valued. The press and journalists shouldn’t be criminalized as I have.”
Mr. Arnada edited the Indonesian edition of Playboy — which contained no nudity and was far less risqué than many other titles legally on sale in Indonesia — from its debut in 2006 until 2007, when it was closed after riots by Islamist groups, including the Islamic Defenders Front, or F.P.I., had forced the magazine to move to Bali.
Political pressure from Islamists was also widely believed to be behind indecency charges brought against Mr. Arnada, which were successfully defeated in two lower courts. In 2009, in an unpublicized decision, the Supreme Court convicted Mr. Arnada, but neither he nor his conservative adversaries were aware of it until prosecutors received a copy of the verdict in August. The FPI said it would hunt Mr. Arnada to hand him in to serve his sentence.
Mr. Arnada’s lawyers are seeking a case review in the Supreme Court. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono did not reply to a request from lawyers and Indonesia’s Press Council to intervene to stop Mr. Arnada’s detention while the review was pending.
The apparently arbitrary nature of Mr. Arnada’s conviction has been widely seen as a victory for Islamic conservatives intent on imposing their vision on Indonesia, a Muslim-majority country long known for its religious tolerance. President Yudhoyono and authorities have come under criticism for repeatedly bowing to pressure from groups such as the FPI, which has been blamed for a string of violent protests and inciting attacks against religious minorities and secularists (the newyork times)
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