TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
'Virginity test' is discriminatory, degrading: HRW
âVirginity testsâ applied on female applicants to the National Police are discriminatory and degrading, a New York-based human rights advocacy group has said
Change Size
'Virginity tests' applied on female applicants to the National Police are discriminatory and degrading, a New York-based human rights advocacy group has said.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday that based on its documented research, applicants who 'failed' were not necessarily expelled from the force, but all of the women described the test as painful and traumatic. The finding was revealed during interviews with female police and police applicants in six Indonesian cities who had undergone the test, two of them in 2014.
The HRW said policewomen had raised the issue with senior police officials, who had at times claimed the practice had been discontinued. The test is listed as a requirement for female applicants on the official police recruitment website, however, and HRW interviews suggest that it is still being widely applied.
'The Indonesian National Police's use of 'virginity tests' is a discriminatory practice that harms and humiliates women,' HRW associate women's rights director, Nisha Varia, said in a release made available to The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
'Police authorities in Jakarta need to immediately and unequivocally abolish the test and then make certain that all police recruiting stations nationwide stop administering it,' she went on.
It was said the tests contravened National Police principles that recruitment must be both 'non-discriminatory' and 'humane' and that they violate international human rights of equality, non-discrimination and privacy.
'Coerced 'virginity tests' can also constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment prohibited under international law,' said Varia.
The HRW interviewed eight current and former policewomen and applicants, as well as police doctors, a police recruitment evaluator, a National Police Commission member and women's rights activists between May and October 2014.
The interviews took place in six cities: Bandung, Jakarta, Makassar, Medan, Padang and Pekanbaru. All of the women who underwent the test said it was applied to all other women in their police class as well.
The 'virginity tests' are conducted under the National Police Chief Regulation No.5/2009 on Health Examination Guidelines for Police Candidates.
'The examination has included a discredited and degrading 'two-finger test' to determine whether female applicants' hymens are intact,' said HRW. (ebf)(+++)
