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Legislators nix ‘consent’ from sexual violence bill
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Students and activists from the Women's Movement against Violence Alliance (Gerak Perempuan) participate in a rally in front of Education and Culture Ministry on Feb. 10, 2020. They demanded the end of sexual violence in educational institutions. (JP/Seto Wardhana)
T
he House of Representatives is likely to pass a watered-down version of the sexual violence eradication bill after members of the working committee tasked with deliberating the bill agreed to remove any words supporting the concept of sexual consent.
The move was apparently taken after the controversy that emerged over a regulation issued by Education, Culture, Research and Technology Minister Nadiem Makarim to combat campus sexual violence.
The regulation cites a lack of consent from victims as a critical factor that defines sexual assault, triggering protests from certain Islamic groups who interpreted the said provisions as tacit approval by the state of consensual extramarital sex.
Willy Aditya, the deputy chairman of the House Legislation Body (Baleg), argued that the bill was unlike the controversial Permendikbud, saying that it would not incorporate the notion of sexual consent in the definition of sexual violence.
“The bill is different from the Permendikbud. The public need not to worry. We’ve drafted this bill carefully by considering the social and cultural [factors]. So the phrase sexual consent is not included in the bill,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
Read also: Ministerial decree against sexual violence faces pushback from Islamic groups
The phrase “consent” in the context of sexual consent was previously mentioned in Articles 5, 6 and 7 of the bill. Articles 5 and 6, for example, would criminalize anyone who commits sexual violence using the “threat of violence, manipulation, fraud and the exploitation of a condition of powerlessness that prevents a person from giving their consent freely.”
