Bearded Spies Need Not Apply and Other Hoaxes This Week

Welcome to Can't Handle the Truth, VICE Indonesia's weekly column on the latest fake news and hoaxes to hit your WhatsApp groups.

The news this week was downright… apocalyptic. North Korea tested another missile, some 150 countries were hit with ransomeware attacks. And the ongoing crisis in Venezuela just keeps getting worse.

But none of this seemed to matter much in Indonesia, where other people's private lives were grabbing all the headlines. The most-popular story of last week was developments in the ongoing investigation into the Habib Rizieq Shihab-Firza Husein sex scandal.

So, of course, this week's fake news and hoaxes were about the scandal, but we had some other downright bizarre claims of new dress codes for Indonesian spies, hactivists, and international manhunts.

Confused as to what you can believe? Don't worry, we're here with this week's edition of "Can't Handle the Truth."

Word on the street was that the hactivist collective Anonymous was going to leak new sexually explicit images of Firza Husein as the case continued to captivate the nation. But why would they do this?

Seems Anonymous is wondering the same thing. On social media an anonymous person who claims to be a representative of Anonymous (confusing, right?) denied any involvement in the Rizieq-Firza sex scandal. The hactivist group instead thinks they were pulled into the fray by angry supporters of Basuki Tjahaja Purnama who wanted to use their name to throw some fuel on the fire.

"Don't ever use our name in your conflicts," the alleged spokesman said.

But how do we even know this Anonymous spokesman is legit? And who said Anonymous was involved in this in the first place? No one apparently.

Jakarta Police Spokesman Sr. Comr. Argo Yuwono told reporters that investigators were having trouble tracking the source of the sexually charged texts and graphic images. Their facial recognition software determined that the nude woman in the texts is indeed Firza, police said, but they still don't know who leaked the screenshots in the first place.

And this is where the miscommunication comes in. The police spokesman said "theres' no address, [the account] is anonymous. We've tried to trace it."

So someone saw anonymous and thought it was Anonymous, with a capital A. And like that an international hactivist group gets pulled into an Indonesian sex scandal.

But the reality is that with, or without, Anonymous, this sex scandal is already absurd enough. The police have already named Firza a suspect in the case, claiming she violated the country's incredibly harsh anti-pornography laws. She now faces up to 15 years behind bars. Rizieq has so far ignored two summons for questioning and remains abroad.

The law itself is supposed to punish whoever distributed the pornographic images, not the people in the photos, if they weren't responsible for its dissemination. But we've seen this story before. Peterpan's Ariel Irham was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in his own leaked sex tape scandal. He returned with a new name (NOAH) and a fresh set of endorsements. But Firza's also been charged with attempting to overthrow the government. So her comeback might not be as rosy.

Indonesians want to know when Rizieq is coming home. The leader of the hardline Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) has been abroad since the Jakarta Police intensified their investigation into the sex scandal. The hashtag #RizieqPulang was trending on Twitter this week, but it was an Interpol Red Notice that really caught people's attention. But the Red Notice, which would've declared Rizieq an international fugitive, was actually a hoax.

"A Red Notice is for suspects," Argo said. "Habib Rizieq is still a witness."

But the weirdest hoax of the week was a bizarre claim that Indonesia's State Intelligence Agency (BIN) had banned beards and short pants. You might think, beards and short pants? Don't you mean shorts? No. I mean short pants. The kind usually associated with Salafis.

The fake story was circulating last week, garnering some negative press from the country's conservative types, who took the story to signify a wider crackdown on religious conservatism. Asrorun Niam Sholeh, of the Indonesian Council of Ulema (MUI), asked "what's with the urgency of this prohibition? It has nothing to do with aesthetics. Growing a beard shouldn't be a problem as long as it's trimmed neatly."

But BIN said the whole thing was a hoax. The spy agency sent an internal memo around concerning workplace attire, but it never banned beards, one official explained. "The letter didn't say at all that employees couldn't grow a beard, long hair, or wear pants above their ankles."

So Indonesia's conservative spies need not worry. Their jobs (and their beards) are safe. Maybe James Bond could take some cues from BIN's more religious spies. "Shaken? Stirred? Oh, sorry, I don't drink alcohol."