Dark ravio5/7/2023 Ravio’s arrest fits into a concerning trend line in Indonesia, which was once a rare bright spot in a region where digital freedoms are being persistently undermined. “I didn’t know what would happen, and it never crossed my mind that it would escalate as fast as it did.” “It sends shivers to my bones,” Ravio tells Rest of World. He spent 33 hours in detention but was never charged with a crime. Before he arrived at the meeting point, where someone sent by the foundation was waiting to look after him, a group of men - policemen, it later emerged - ambushed him on the street and forced him into a car. They instructed him to turn off his phone and find a safe house. It was a setup.Īt 19:00, he contacted the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation, a human rights organization. “CRISIS HAS ALREADY BURNED! LET’S UNITE AND BURN ON 30 APRIL FOR MASS LOOTING NATIONALLY, ALL STORES ARE FOR US TO LOOT,” the message read. There were dozens of angry messages from unknown numbers, one of which included a screenshot of a message purportedly sent from Ravio’s number. Ravio always suspected this was no ordinary scam. He contacted a friend who connected him to a WhatsApp executive in Singapore, who confirmed that his account had been compromised.Īround 18:40, WhatsApp managed to recover Ravio’s account. Between 13:19 and 14:05, he received a number of calls from unknown phone numbers. There was a text message containing three OTP codes at 12:11, 12:13, and 12:16, respectively. When he woke up after midday, he found that he couldn’t get into his WhatsApp account. He remembers feeling then that he was being watched, that cars were following him everywhere. High on adrenaline, Ravio had been unable to sleep afterward, and in the early hours of the morning, he stepped out of his rented room in Menteng, Jakarta, to feed the stray cats that gather in his neighborhood. Ravio had alleged that Mambrasar’s work with the government created a conflict of interest because the advisor’s firm, Papua Muda Inspiratif, worked on public projects. The previous night, he had confronted a member of the Indonesian president’s special staff, Billy Mambrasar, on WhatsApp and Twitter. Through his Twitter account, Ravio, a public policy researcher with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, a U.K.-based civil society organization, was a frequent critic of the Indonesian government. “Please DO NOT contact me on WhatsApp and if you are in a group where I am also a member, please remove me or if you can’t, exit the group immediately. I’m having trouble with my WhatsApp,” he wrote. About six hours before Ravio Patra disappeared on the evening of April 22, he posted an urgent message on Twitter.
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