T

he Central Jakarta District Court sentenced each of the four defendants in a case surrounding an incident of sexual assault in a Transjakarta shelter to 18 months'€™ imprisonment on Tuesday, a verdict that many have said was too lenient and would not have a deterrent effect on similar cases.

The panel of judges, presided over by Arif Waluyo, declared that Edwin Kurniawan Lingga, Dharman Sitorus, Ifan Lufti Akbar and M. Kurniawan were guilty of violating Article 290 of the Criminal Code on acts of obscenity toward
the powerless, like unconscious persons or children below 15 years of age.

The four men, all of whom have been dismissed from Transjakarta, were tried on charges of sexually assaulting a bus passenger who suffered an asthma attack while traveling on a Transjakarta bus from Cempaka Putih to Harmoni, both in Central Jakarta, on Jan. 21.

'€œThe defendants are proven guilty and I sentence each of them to 1 year and six months'€™ prison time,'€ said Arif on Tuesday.

The sentence matched the prosecutor'€™s demand of 18 months for each offender, which was considered too lenient by activists. Article 290 carries a maximum sentence of seven years.

The verdict was met with yells from people who attended the hearing, most of whom activists women'€™s issues who had followed the case from the beginning. Some of the activists accompanied the victim, YF, and provided support.

They went further by standing in line outside the courtroom to '€œgreet'€ the defendants, prosecutor and judges in the case, who were reluctant to leave the courtroom, in order to show their dissatisfaction.

'€œProsecutor Sinta Dewi, come out now! Show us the face of a woman who did not care about another woman'€™s misery,'€ Uli Pangaribuan, the executive of an NGO that focuses on women'€™s issues, LBH APIK, shouted after the trial.

After waiting inside for half an hour, Sinta left the courtroom escorted by a police officer and other prosecutors, and was met with boos and curses from around 50 people who had waited outside.

Before the trial, Sinta told the The Jakarta Post that she did not agree that 18 months was a light sentence. '€œIt is light for the victim, but for the defendants it was quite harsh I think,'€ she said.

Uli said that she was very upset about the court process, especially with the prosecutor, who from the beginning had shown her incapability to represent the victim during the trial.

Another activist, Kartika Jahja, who accompanied YF, burst into tears when she said that although the defendants could return to their normal lives in only 18 months, the memory of the sexual assault would stay with the victim forever.

'€œNow I will help the victim to heal from her trauma, as the judges and prosecutor have failed to do their jobs today,'€ she said. (idb)