Author: Warief Djajanto Basorie

“Call me BTP.”

Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, freed from prison on 24 January, has asked his supporters to call him just by his initials. For many, this is a symbol of the former Jakarta governor’s attempt to put the past behind him.

“I leave this place with the hope that you call me BTP and not Ahok,” he wrote in a two-page handwritten letter that was published 17 January, a week before he left the Mako Brimob mobile police detention center in Depok, a city 20km south of Jakarta. He’d served a two-year sentence after being found guilty of blasphemy for defaming the Islamic holy book, the Quran.

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Warief Djajanto Basorie reported for the domestic KNI News Service in Jakarta from 1971 to 1991 and concurrently was Indonesia correspondent for the Manila-based DEPTHnews Asia (DNA, 1974-1991). In 1991, Warief joined the Dr. Soetomo Press Institute (LPDS, Lembaga Pers Dr. Soetomo), a journalism school in Jakarta, as an instructor and convenor in thematic journalism workshops. He was project manager for three cycles of workshops on covering climate change from 2012 to 2017. More than 600 journalists in provinces in Sumatra, Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo), Sulawesi and Papua that are prone to carbon-emitting forest and peat fires have participated.