[Nulgath]

It seems like the orientation of the Indonesian flag has become a super sensitive topic these days.

Not long after a teenaged Malaysian soccer player received death threats due to his use of an upside-down Indonesian flag (AKA the Polish flag) emoji, a part-time cleaner working at the Palopo City Education Board office committed the same flag faux pas recently, only this time, it involved an actual physical flag.

The cleaner, named Rahmat, was reportedly given the task of raising the flag at his office recently as the usual flag raiser was off duty that day. He unknowingly raised it upside down, and it only came to the attention of the office’s staff some three hours later, by which time photos of the upside-down flag have been taken by citizens and were posted online, inevitably becoming viral and drawing netizens’ outrage.

Palopo Education Board Head Akmal Hasan said the fault was Rahmat’s alone and he was given a pretty physically rigorous punishment — though thankfully no death threats were reported in this case.

“We gave him the sanction of having to salute the flag for half an hour, and we reminded him to be careful when raising the flag because it’s a national symbol. Next time, we won’t give him the task of raising the flag,” Akmal told Kompas today.

Rahmat himself admitted his error and said he had never raised the flag before in his life.

“Yes, I’m sorry, I was mistaken. I never raised a flag before so I didn’t pay attention to the fact that the white was above the red,” he said.