Indonesia's parliament passed a far-reaching law on Tuesday punishing sexual violence after a recent case in which the director of an Islamic boarding school raped and impregnated several students prompted him to take action.
Legislation languished for years amid arguments that it has a liberal feminist ideology that contravenes religious and cultural values in the largest Muslim-majority nation in the world.
The law recognizes that men and boys may be victims of sexual violence. The Indonesian Penal Code, a legacy of the Dutch colonial era, recognizes only rape and lascivious crimes committed by men against women and does not have provisions on restitution or other remedies for victims and survivors.
The law recognizes nine forms of sexual violence: physical and non-physical sexual harassment, sexual torture, forced contraception, forced sterilization, forced marriage, sexual slavery, sexual exploitation and sexual cyberbullying.
In addition to recognizing sexual violence as punishable offences, the law provides provisions for the protection and recovery of victims.
Of the nine political parties in the House, only the conservative Muslim-based Prosperous Justice Party, known as PKS, rejected it because it wanted the bill to ban extramarital and homosexual sexual relations.
The law was passed a week after a high court in Indonesia sentenced the director of an Islamic boarding school to death for raping at least 13 students for five years and impregnating some of them. Several girls were 11 and 14 years old and were raped for several years, prompting a public outcry over how they didn't catch him earlier.
President Joko Widodo in January called on the House of Representatives to accelerate deliberation on the sexual violence bill, as it has languished in the legislature since 2016 as critics criticize lawmakers for “making no sense of the crisis.”
“The protection of victims of sexual violence must be our common concern and must be addressed urgently,” Widodo said.
Under the new law, perpetrators of sexual violence based on electronic media could face up to 4 years in prison and a fine of 200 million rupees ($13,920), and up to 6 years and 300 million rupees ($20,880) if it is carried out with the aim of extorting, coercing and even deceiving victims. Perpetrators of sexual exploitation face up to 15 years in prison and a fine of 1 billion rupees ($69,600).
The law also requires the government to establish and regulate a trust fund and recovery services to assist victims.
The bill was initiated by the National Commission on Violence Against Women in 2012 and calls for it to be accelerated following the shocking gang rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl by 14 drunken men in Bengkulu in 2016.
The latest draft gained the support of the majority when the provisions on rape and forced abortion were removed from the bill to avoid overlap with proposals to amend the Penal Code.
Government data showed that at least 797 children became victims of sexual violence in January alone, or 9.13% of total child victims in 2021, which reached 8730, 25% more than in 2020. As of 2020, it recorded 45,069 cases of sexual violence against girls and women since the draft law was drafted in 2012.
(With information from AP)
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