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.
Lawmakers pass revised Criminal Code despite protests
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Yasonna Laoly, Minister of Law and Human Rights, receives the new criminal code report from Bambang Wuryanto, head of the House of Representatives commission overseeing the revision, during a parliamentary plenary meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, December 6, 2022. (Reuters/Willy Kurniawan)
L
awmakers passed a revised Criminal Code on Tuesday morning that critics say dilutes antigraft rules and civil liberties, after insisting that they had taken public opinion into account despite civil society protests to the contrary.
At the House of Representatives’ plenary session where the bill was passed, lawmakers claimed provisions widely deemed draconian had been softened, such as those criminalizing insulting a sitting president and outlawing cohabitation before marriage, as well articles governing the death penalty.
Representing the government at the session was Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly, who also used a similar argument.
"We have tried our best to accommodate the important issues and different opinions that were debated. However, it is time for us to make a historic decision on the [revised] Criminal Code and leave the colonial penal code we inherited behind," Yasonna said.
Nonetheless, the bill retains a number of contentious articles.
Activists belonging to a coalition of some 40 civil society groups that have been keeping tabs on the bill had demanded that lawmakers postpone the passage of the bill until the contentious provisions could be properly and publicly addressed, arguing that the bill as it stood would curb civil liberties even further amid a current of democratic backsliding in the country.
