Sri Mulyani, who uploaded a video of two brothers she accused of showing affection in public while riding a motorcycle, met with the brothers' family and apologized publicly for her behavior.

“I am sorry for making a fuss on social media,” she said on Tuesday night on her Facebook page.

Sri said she had met with a relative of the brothers on Monday. The relative showed that the two men were brothers by showing copies of their ID cards to Sri.

Sri used her Facebook account on Saturday to post a video of the brothers she accused of publicly displaying their affection.

In the video, Sri said: “Hey sir, please don’t do that — respect my people,” and a man who drove the motorcycle replied by saying the other was his brother.

The video was picked up by various social media accounts, as well as gossip fan page Mak Lambe Turah and news outlet tribunnews.com

Sri has since deleted the video.

Robertus Robet, a sociologist from Jakarta State University, said in the age of information, there is a tendency for people to transgress others’ right to privacy.

"Because the right to privacy is not [well-]respected in Indonesia, public display of affection between family members could easily be misunderstood,” Robert told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

He said people took advantage by exposing private videos on social media and using a moral pretext to justify their actions.

"Communitarianism is very strong in our society, which is evident in gossip, public judgment and mass persecution,” he added.

Mamik Sri Supatmi, a criminologist at the University of Indonesia, said there was no justification for anyone who bullied people for  showing affection in public to each other.

"Public display of affection is not a crime,” she said.

Mamik added that if what was seen was violence, then it was the responsibility of witnesses to intervene to protect the victim and end the violence.

“It is dangerous if a member of society feels that he [or she] has the right to be the moral police,” she said.

On her Facebook account, Sri said it was a lesson for her to be more careful when using social media and urged everyone who shared the video to delete it. (ami/ipa)

Source:
courtesy of THE JAKARTA POST

by The Jakarta Post

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