Indonesian Criminal Code

After Indonesian independence from the Dutch in 1945, the Criminal Code is retained and are enforced by an alignment of conditions in the form of revocation of articles that were no longer relevant.

The enactment of the Criminal Code throughout the territory of the Republic of Indonesia was only carried out on 20 September 1958, with the promulgation of Law no.

Everyone who declares himself to have supernatural powers, expresses hope, offers or provides assistance to other people that because of his actions can cause illness, death, mental or physical suffering of a person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a maximum of 5 (five) years or at most a category IV fine.

If the perpetrator of the crime referred to in paragraph (1) commits the act to seek profit or make it a livelihood or habit, then the sentence can be increased by 1/3 (one third).Criminal law expert Barda Nawawi Arief, who took part in drafting the policy, said that this article is an extension of Article 162 of the Criminal Code which regulates the prohibition of assisting in criminal acts, which reads "Anyone who publicly orally or in writing offers to provide information, opportunity, or means to commit a criminal act, shall be punished with imprisonment for a maximum of 9 months or a fine of up to Rp.

"[6] Although political figure Eva Sundari of the PDI-P party thinks that the law will find it difficult to prove someone has the power of witchcraft, so much so that this article is prone to criminalization,[7] criminal law expert from the University of Indonesia, Andi Hamzah, says that the proof does not require the pleader to bring a supernatural experts or priest, but to only bring witnesses who hear that someone claims to be capable of practicing witchcraft.

[9] Because of this, to deepened the understanding of the article on witchcraft, the People's Representative Council (DPR) conducted a comparative study to the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, and Russia.

Initially, the new code was supposed to pass in 2019, yet amid a mass street demonstration across the country, the process was ultimately halted as the Indonesian President Joko Widodo had asked Parliament to revise problematic clauses.