Ministry calls on Indonesian House to pass sexual violence bill immediately

THE Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection has urged lawmakers to pass the sexual violence eradication bill into law to fill the country’s legal gaps on sexual violence prevention and mitigation.

“We need a regulation to fulfil the legal needs of sexual violence victims as they are prone to stigmatisation and re-victimisation,” Minister Bintang Puspayoga said on Tuesday as quoted by kompas.com.

The bill, which has been under deliberation at the House of Representatives since 2016, consists of the element of prevention, treatment, protection and counselling for victims, as well as punishment for perpetrators.

It also expands the definition of sexual violence into nine categories, namely sexual harassment, exploitation, contraception coercion, abortion coercion, rape, forced marriage, forced prostitution, sexual slavery and torture.

Indonesia’s prevailing regulations do not recognise the complex definition of sexual violence. The Criminal Code, for example, only recognises forcible penile penetration of a woman’s private part as rape. It does not recognise sexual harassment.

Bintang deplored the sluggish progress of the bill’s deliberation at the house, emphasising that the country urgently needed a regulation that specifically regulates victims’ rights for physical and mental rehabilitation.

The House has officially dropped the bill from this year’s National Legislation Programme (Prolegnas) priority list, citing “complicated deliberations”.

The bill has faced strong opposition from members of Islamic political parties such as the National Awakening Party (PKB) and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), who argued that the bill supported the legalisation of adultery and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) behaviour.