Indonesia criminalizes sex outside marriage

One year in prison for sex outside marriage and six months for cohabitation of unmarried couples. The Indonesian Parliament approved on Tuesday a text strongly denounced by human rights defenders as a decline in freedoms and a shift towards fundamentalism in the most populous Muslim-majority country in the world.

This reform of the Penal Code, which dates from the Dutch colonial era, was adopted by a majority of the deputies. The text, which still needs to be signed by President Joko Widodo, will enter into force in three years.

The government believes it is protecting the institution of marriage

“We have done our best to take into account the important issues and the different opinions that have been debated,” Justice Minister Yasonna Laoly told parliament. However, it is time for us to make a historic decision on amending the Penal Code, and leaving behind the colonial Penal Code that we inherited” upon the country’s independence in 1949.

A spokesman for the committee responsible for drawing up the bill at the Ministry of Justice, Albert Aries, said the reform will protect the institution of marriage. He stressed that premarital and extramarital sexual relations can only be denounced by the spouse, parents or children, which will de facto limit the scope of the text.

But the reform has been criticized by human rights defenders and the Indonesian business community. The latter believe that it will harm tourism, although the authorities have assured that foreigners visiting the island of Bali will not be affected.

The United States spoke of a backsliding on human rights and warned of the possible economic consequences in Indonesia. “We are concerned about how these changes could affect human rights and (the principle of) fundamental freedom in Indonesia,” US foreign affairs spokesman Ned Price told reporters, before also issuing warnings. concerns about the impact that this decision of the Indonesian Parliament could have on “American citizens living in the country or visiting, and business investments”.

“A setback in the protection of civil rights”

Early versions of the bill intended to make homosexuality illegal, but this provision disappeared from the final text. For Andreas Harsono, of the organization Human Rights Watch, the prohibition of sex outside marriage and concubinage could however be used to “criminalize” the LGBTQ + community, in a country which does not authorize marriage between people of the same sex.

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According to human rights groups, the new amendments also underscore a growing slide towards fundamentalism, in a country long hailed for its tolerance and which recognizes five official religions alongside majority Islam. “The adoption of the draft law on the Penal Code clearly constitutes a step backwards in the protection of civil rights (…) in particular freedom of expression and freedom of the press”, affirmed to AFP Usman Hamid, director of ‘Amnesty International Indonesia.

In 2019, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest a similar bill, forcing the government to back down.

Blasphemy, a crime

The new code contains several new articles on blasphemy, already a crime in Indonesia, which broaden its definition. Now, encouraging or forcing others to renounce their religion, apostasy, is also a crime punishable by imprisonment. The dissemination of an ideology “contrary to the Pancasila” – the official Indonesian ideology, which emphasizes unity and respect for ethnic and religious minorities – will also be punished with a sentence of up to 4 years in prison.

Another reform approved on Tuesday: the death penalty, often imposed in Indonesia for drug-related crimes, will now be accompanied by a period of probation of 10 years, at the end of which it can be commuted to life in prison if the convict showed exemplary behavior.

Demonstrations against the reform

A dozen people gathered in central Jakarta on Tuesday holding signs against the new Penal Code, accusing it of “reinstating the law of the colonial era”. Bambang Wuryanto, the head of the parliamentary committee that oversaw deliberations on the text, acknowledged that “it is a human product and therefore will never be perfect”. But he urged critics to “file a legal appeal with the constitutional court” instead of protesting.

Adultery is a crime in several countries, especially those that apply Islamic law, with particularly heavy sentences in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, but also in the Phillipines, a country with a Catholic majority.

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