We did not know what was wrong. We were not informed before."
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Seven Islamic websites lodged a protest and complaint over the blocking of their content by the Indonesian Ministry of Informatics and Communication on the request of the National Counter Terrorism Agency (BNPT).

Leaders and newsmen of aglislamiccenter.com, hidayatullah.com, kiblat.net, salam-online.com, panjimas.com, arrahmah.com, and gemaislam.com visited the ministrys office, on Tuesday, to meet Danrivanto Budhijanto, the expert staff for legal and strategic regulation affairs.

Mahladi, the chief editor of Hidayatullah, who acted as the speaker for the delegation, stated that their websites were blocked without being informed about what they had done wrong.

"It just happened. We did not know what was wrong. We were not informed before," he said.

He noted that no regulation regarding negative content had been violated.

In view of that, he remarked that they had lodged the protest and complaint as no content published on their websites had violated Ministerial Regulation Number 19/2014 regarding the handling of internet sites carrying negative content.

He said they had demanded normalization of their websites in line with Article 16 of the ministerial regulation and removal of their sites from the Trust Positif database.

"Thirdly, we would like to have an opportunity to hold a dialog with parties that have demanded the blocking of our sites," he noted.

In response, Danrivanto extended his apologies over the inconvenience caused due to the blocking of the websites.

He explained that his side had blocked the websites following the BNPTs request, and so, he would mediate a meeting between them and the BNPT.

The informatics and communication ministry has recently blocked 19 websites following the request of BNPT as it was believed that the sites were spreading radicalism.

(Reporting by Muhammad Arief Iskandar/Uu.H-YH/INE/KR-BSR/F001)

Editor: Priyambodo RH
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