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Revised Criminal Code bill ‘death sentence’ for women
It seems that women’s rights and women’s lives simply don’t matter anymore in Indonesia, to the point that we have to choose between lifelong suffering, death or imprisonment in the unforeseeable event that we become victims of rape or are diagnosed with medical complications during pregnancy.
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Students protest against the planned revision Criminal Code and the revision to Corruption Eradication Commission law in front of the House of Representatives building in Senayan, Jakarta on Sept. 24. (JP/Narabeto Korohama)
W
hile other countries aspire to advance their human rights situation, Indonesia seems only to be going backward. The draft revision of the Criminal Code (KUHP) — the deliberation of which President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has just asked to be delayed following public pressure — clearly epitomizes that retrogression. The bill’s controversial clauses include criminalization of sex outside marriage, further restrictions on freedom of expression and a blatant violation of privacy.
Among these is the criminalization of abortion, without provisions that exclude cases of rape or medical purposes.
This simply means that rape victims are forced to carry their rapist’s child to term, notwithstanding their mental and financial conditions, and pregnant women are forced to choose between death from pregnancy complications or imprisonment from violating the abortion clause.
The 2009 Health Law carries exceptions to the illegality of abortion in the case of rape and for medical reasons. Now, it is unclear what will happen with the contradictory laws if the KUHP bill is passed.
Regardless, it is undoubtedly inhumane to force rape victims and women to carry their pregnancies to term in the face of very real risks to their mental health and their lives.
It is incomprehensible that it must be explained to our educated lawmakers that rape victims are already devastated from their experience, and that this upcoming law, if passed, would condemn them to reliving their horror virtually every second of their waking lives for the next nine months.
Rape victims are also forced to go through the pain of labor and risk their lives for something that they never asked for, as if being raped is insufficient and that the biological product of that painful experience must be added to their suffering.
