“Sex is a private matter, not only for heterosexuals but also for homosexuals,” Bahrain, director of the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute (YLBHI), said during a hearing at the Constitutional Court.

Bahrain was referring to a legal challenge filed with the court by a hard-line Islamic group called the Family Love Association (AILA) to make extramarital and gay sex crimes. AILA is concerned about what it sees as moral decadence resulting from casual sex.

The UN Declaration of Human Rights also stipulates that no one shall be subject to arbitrary interference with their privacy, family, home, or correspondence, nor be subject to attacks upon his or her honor and reputation, he added. 

Voicing similar opinions, Anugerah Rizki Akbari of the Indonesian Judicial Watch Society of the University of Indonesia (MaPPI UI), said that criminalization should be the last option for solving social problems.

“We live in a nation that has a knack for punishing its citizens instead of finding a prevention strategy,” Anugerah said after the hearing. 

His research found that of the 1,601 crimes he recorded between1998 and 2014, 716 were processed under new regulations; this shows that over the past 10 years the government had overly focused on criminalization.  

Anugerah added that the government resorted to punishment as the easiest way to show the state was dealing with any problem. (wnd)

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