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Group says women at more risk of abuse
Jakarta Post - March 8, 2006
Jakarta – Cases of violence against women sharply increased last year and it is feared they will soar in the future with more regions introducing shariah bylaws, which trample on women's rights, a report says.
The National Commission on Violence Against Women, in conjunction with International Women's Day which falls Wednesday, released a report Tuesday on violence against women in 2005.
Commission chief Kamala Chandrakirana reported a 45 percent increase in reported cases of violence against women, from 14,020 cases in 2004 to 20,391 cases in 2005. Some 82 percent of the cases were domestic abuse.
She said the increase showed an iceberg phenomenon, a situation in which the complete picture is hidden beneath the surface, but later revealed. This indicates the number of reported cases in 2005 represents the actual extent of violence against women in Indonesia, she said.
Kamala said women had been gaining confidence about reporting the violence they suffered or witnessed since the Domestic Abuse Law came into effect in 2004.
However, Kamala said the problem was not entirely a domestic issue. She said the state was also perpetrating violence against women with the deliberation of the pornography bill.
Local administrations are also at fault for producing bylaws attacking women's rights on the basis of morality or decency and even religion, she said.
Kamala said there were at least 16 policies, at both national and regional levels, restricting women's space in the public sphere, as well as controlling their dress and behavior.
She said the pornography bill was not actually about pornography, but rather a systematic discrimination by the state against women. "The bill is discriminative against women and it runs against human rights," Kamala said. She said that about eight articles in the bill stopped women from wearing revealing garments or dancing in a suggestive manner.
Violators of the pornography bill could face up to 10 years' prison or a fine of between Rp 200 million and Rp 1 billion. If the bill is passed into law, the government will have to establish a special body to enforce it, Kamala said. She said the state, through that special body, would be a perpetrator of systematic discrimination against its citizens.
Seven cities and regencies – Cianjur, Garut, and Tasikmalaya in West Java; Tangerang in Banten; and Enrekang, Maros, and Bulukumba in South Sulawesi – through the authority given to them by regional autonomy, already have bylaws on how women should dress and act.
A recent case in Tangerang – which has a bylaw outlawing prostitution – outraged women's rights groups. A pregnant elementary school teacher, who was waiting on the side of the road for her husband to pick her up, was taken for a sex worker by public order officers and promptly arrested. Kamala said the bylaw left a lot of room for error.
The bylaw bans people, either in public places or locations visible from public places, from soliciting, either by words or signals.
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