JUST WAITING FOR A BUS: Women wait for buses in the evening, after leaving their workplaces in the Senayan City and Plaza Senayan malls, on Jl. Asia-Afrika in Central Jakarta recently. While more women enter the workforce in urban areas, some people still consider women staying out after dark as unwholesome. (JP/J. Adiguna)

Bylaws passed in Bekasi and Tangerang over the past few years banning prostitution may not be protecting residents and women as officials claim, but instead be making the regions less desirable to live in.

Under the bylaws, implemented by the Greater Jakarta authorities' to create safer living for residents and visitors, women risk arrest and imprisonment if they are considered to be displaying "suspicious behavior".

The first of these regulations was issued in Tangerang, capital of Banten province, where a smiling female governor welcomes you from a billboard just outside the international airport.

Since the enforcement of the 2005 ban on prostitution in Tangerang there have been a number of reports of women being arrested on their way home from work in the evening.

In 2006, restaurant employee Lilis Lindawati was arrested at 8 p.m. by public order officers on her way home from work.

Lilis was sentenced to eight days imprisonment and fined Rp 300,000. The court claimed she violated an article in the law which stated that anybody perceived as a prostitute or behaving suspiciously was forbidden to appear in "streets, fields, boarding houses, inns, lodgings, hotels, homes, rented houses, coffee stalls, entertainment spots, theater buildings, street corners and alleys."

Sri Wiyanti of the National Commission on Violence against Women said the bylaw "mainly created fear among women because of the right for public order officials to assume any woman on the street as a prostitute.

"Those officers also have the right to investigate, conduct a trial and prosecute women caught in the raids," Sri said.

Three female Tangerang residents requested a judicial review into the law last year but the Supreme Court rejected the call.

Sri said the bylaws tend to have "definitions for prostitutes which refer to all women engaging in sex outside marriage."

East of Jakarta, the Bekasi administration also enforced a 2004 bylaw against prostitution by targeting sex workers on the street. Officials said the majority of the time only women were caught because pimps and clients were difficult to track down.

Masruchah, secretary-general of the Indonesian Women's Coalition, said the councilors who passed the measure "put all the blame on women" when it came to prostitution and public order.

Street vendors, she said, were "only poor women trying to make a living" who now faced arrest under the laws.

At a national level, several calls to revoke the regulations have been ignored despite experts repeatedly stating that poverty is the root cause of prostitution and needs to be addressed.

The National Commission for Violence against Women last year listed 27 articles discriminating against women nationwide, from Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, West Sumatra to West Nusa Tenggara.

Masruchah said "policy makers create their regulations without paying any attention to the specific real needs of their own people."

In one particular law banning prostitution in Indramayu, West Java, almost anybody seen in public at night could face arrest, with those on foot, in vehicles or seen "wandering up and down" being legally suspicious of engaging in prostitution.

So if you get lost in these areas, it's maybe best not to show it ...

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