A Little Bit about Women’s Rights in Indonesia
Tags: Law, Discrimination, Women, Indonesia, Sexual Assault Awareness

A Little Bit about Women’s Rights in Indonesia

Maybe some of you think that women are safe in Indonesia, that we are diverse and tolerant people with laws in place to give equality towards women. Some even suggest that we are more accepting than other countries when it comes to women because we are one of the countries to have a female president from 2001–2004. But do women really have equal rights, if the laws are not implemented justly?

Indonesia signed and ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1980, an international treaty made by the United Nations as the bill of rights for women. Which is quite funny considering by 2012 there are about 282 policies in various jurisdictions across Indonesia that are discriminatory against women (the number went up to 421 policies in 2016).

Among those laws, there are 96 that impose criminal sanctions on women through regulations on prostitution and pornography, 60 that contain dress codes and religious standards, and 38 that place restrictions on women’s mobility. For example, in Aceh, they implemented full Sharia law since 1999 and lashed a woman for standing too close to her boyfriend.

Women and girls, especially those from poor and marginalised communities, are prevented from fully exercising their sexual and reproductive rights. There are cruel, inhumane, and degrading practices still in place for women’s bodies, including female genital mutilation, child marriages, and virginity tests if you want to work in some fields. Some local laws even enforce hijabs on women and girls in schools, government offices, and public spaces. There is also a local law that allows police to frisk and detain women who go out at night, just based on intuition or the women looking “slutty” as initial suspicion.

According to the 1974 Marriage Law, the minimum age of marriage for girls is set at 16 years and 19 years for men. Though this law has been updated in 2019 by raising the minimum age to 19 years for women to curb child brides, it’s still not enough and the damage has been done. In 2015, around 62.5 million households included housewives aged between 20 and 24 years, and were married before the age of 18. All because their families are afraid that their daughters wouldn’t find anyone and become spinsters.

On the other side of the spectrum, parents worry their children will commit adultery, especially when they are in relationships. Because of these taboos, the laws won’t stop families from forcing their daughters to marry. There are even families who sell their daughters to older men; as their 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th wife, due to economic factors.

Marital rape is even not a crime under the Indonesian Criminal Code. The Code defined rape, under Article 285, as an act of forced penetration that takes place outside of marriage, between a man and a woman who is not his wife. Yet they deemed RUU PKS (the draft bill concerning the elimination of sexual violence in Indonesia) to be too vague and pro-free sex and has kept it shelved; even dropping it from the priority list in 2020, while the real laws in place leaves so much room for loopholes and other interpretations.

If we were to help people who are being sexually violated, we have to take a video as evidence and it has to include penetration. Otherwise it will not be deemed a sexual offence. And this approach might not even guarantee that the law would proceed to convict the assailant, because the victim will have a chance of being criminalized for spreading content that may be deemed as pornography.

Other ways of obtaining evidence is by having a visum, which is a written report signed by a licensed doctor based on a check-up for victims of sexual, physical, or mental violence. In order to have a visum, victims of assault must report to the police first. However, over 90% of rape cases in Indonesia goes unreported, because they are afraid of being blamed and gaslighted.

There is a revenge porn case in Cirebon at the moment, a local news site covered it and blamed the victim for the video being shared. Despite knowing that the rapist is an 18 year old man and the victim is a 14 year old girl who is still in school.

Not only that, the news site exposed the victim’s name but kept the rapist anonymous by just writing his initials. The news site also reported that the relations between them was consensual because they were in a romantic relationship, even though the Indonesian Criminal Code stated under Article 290 that having any kind of sexual or romantic relations with a minor under 15 years old is a criminal act.

Sadly, society doesn’t care and continues to blame the girl. Some commenters of said news site even asked for the link to the video to “confirm” if it was rape, when in actuality they would use the video to masturbate, knowing fully well she is a 14 year old minor.

But let’s say victims do report to the police, what then? Due to the discriminatory nature of the police force, they have a higher tendency to blame the victim of assault with questions such as “why didn’t you stop him?” or “why did you walk alone at night?”. This hinders sexual assault survivors from having their case pursued. What if they believe the victim? Okay, for the sake of this argument, let’s say the victim’s report got processed. Visum is still not a good method to gather evidence, it might be an invasive procedure and the results are often inconclusive. For example, if the incident happened a while ago; either the DNA of the assailant was unavailable, some bruises would have healed, or some parts of the body that could lead to evidence might be cleaned from taking a shower, etc.

In 2018, a friend of a victim of sexual assault shared a telephone conversation between the victim and her boss, a concrete piece of evidence that her boss harassed her sexually. The Indonesian Supreme Court convicted the victim, Baiq Nuril, because she had recorded the telephone conversation with her boss. They sentenced her to six months in jail for breaking another law, yet left her boss free of any sentences.

Unfortunately, the discrimination towards women doesn’t stop there. Indonesia also has a problem with sex-trafficking, Indonesian and foreign women and minors have been forced into prostitution in brothels and homes and been physically and psychologically abused. By May 2020, it is estimated that approximately 100,000 children and women are trafficked each year in Indonesia — 30 percent are below the age of 18; 43.5 percent of trafficking victims are as young as 14 years old.

Poverty and lack of access to education can be the reason for sex-trafficking. But, it is also due to the weak implementation of the Child Protection Act, especially at the provincial level, the rise of child sex tourism, and girls being forced into prostitution. Yes, there are laws against these crimes, but there is little to no enforcement carried out by the Indonesian government on its legislation to act against widespread sex abuses.

Not to mention, the police received lack of training to punish those who commit crimes against women, as we have learned, making the situation more difficult. The Indonesian government and the police force continue to fail at protecting women, letting the perpetrators continue to profit and grow.

As of today, there weren’t even any legislations for sexual harassment in employment and education. Therefore, there were no criminal penalties for them or civil remedies for the victims. This country let men criminalize women for being, well, alive. Can you imagine? A whole entire gender is punished to be blamed and ignored, when all we need is help.

Why am I saying all of these horrible things? Because I love Indonesia, I was raised in this country, I grew up in this country. I and all of the women living here, should be able to live here.

Someone told me that in order to make a change, you should be able to teach, in order to teach you have to be able to understand, and to understand you have to be able to acknowledge.

So acknowledge this mistake, don’t close your eyes to this matter, don’t look away. Acknowledge that women are still in danger and understand that we need change. Us women love this country, it’s about time this country loves us back.