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AKARTA: Female activists from the Indonesia Women’s Front plan to march for women’s rights on Kartini Day in Jakarta on Thursday.

The march is expected to start at 10 a.m. near the Arjuna Wiwaha statue on Jl. Medan Merdeka Barat and end with a demonstration in front of the State Palace in Central Jakarta.

“During the rally, we will hold a ceremony to charge the state with telling lies about women’s rights,” the group’s spokesperson and a senior member of the Working People Association, Ruth Indiah Rahayu, told The Jakarta Post at the office of the Independent Journalist Alliance in Central Jakarta on Wednesday.

In a statement, the activists said the government had lied by claiming “tremendous improvement in women’s rights in Indonesia”.

“One of the examples is the Marriage Law, which still stipulates that men should be the sole breadwinner of a household and women should only act as housewives,” said Veronika from the APIK Legal Aid Foundation.

Kartini Day, which falls every April 21, marks the birthday of Raden Ajeng Kartini, a pioneer in the field of Indonesian women’s rights.

During her short lifetime — she died when she was 25 — Kartini established a school for women — the first ever in Indonesia, which at that time was under the rule of the Dutch. —JP