Adopting the Act to Strengthen the Punishment of Sexual Violence for a 10-Year Delay in the Shocking

Indonesia's parliament approved a bill on the 12th to significantly strengthen punishment for sexual violence, spurred by a recent incident in which a principal of an Islamic boarding school sexually assaulted and conceived several students.

In Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-populated country, a bill to strengthen the punishment of sexual violence has been stalled for years amid claims that progressive feminist ideology is contrary to Islamic religious and cultural values.

The new law recognizes that men and children can also be victims of sexual violence. Indonesian criminal law, enacted during the Dutch colonial period, only recognizes sexual assault and obscene crimes committed by men against women, and there are no regulations on compensation or other treatments for victims.

The new law, however, recognizes nine forms of sexual violence, including physical and non-physical sexual harassment, sexual torture, forced contraception, forced infertility, forced marriage, sexual slavery, sexual exploitation and cyber sexual harassment.

In addition to recognizing sexual violence as a punishable criminal act, the new law also provides for protection and recovery of victims.

Of the nine parties in the House of Representatives, only the conservative Islamic-based Party for Prosperity and Justice (PKS), which wants to ban extramarital sex and homosexual relations, rejected the new bill.

Earlier on the 4th, an Indonesian high court sentenced the head of an Islamic boarding school to death on charges of sexually assaulting at least 13 girls aged 11 to 14 and impregnating nine of them for five years.

Under the new law, perpetrators of electronic equipment-based sexual violence can face up to four years in prison and a fine of 200 million rupiah (KRW 17.18 million). In addition, if sexual violence is committed with the purpose of extorting, forcing, and deceiving the victim, he can be sentenced to six years in prison and fined 300 million rupiah (25.77 million won). The perpetrators of sexual exploitation face up to 15 years in prison and a fine of 1 billion rupiah (85.9 million won).

The law also requires the government to establish and regulate trust funds and recovery services to help victims recover.

Indonesia's new legislation to strengthen punishment for sexual violence was passed 10 years after it was first proposed in 2012.

According to government data, at least 797 children suffered sexual violence in January alone, which was 9.13% of the total 8,730 victims of child sexual violence in 2021, up 25% from January 2020. Since the first bill to strengthen sexual violence punishment was proposed in 2012, a total of 46,069 girls and women have suffered sexual violence until 2020.

Date: 2021-07-22

Reporter: 서화목