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'Only parents can report cohabitation': Govt plans to soften several articles in Criminal Code bill
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Illustration of the Indonesian Criminal Code (KUHP). (kompas.com/Palupi Annisa Auliani)
T
he government has opted to keep the majority of the controversial Criminal Code (KUHP) bill in tact, stating it will only review a small fraction of the articles, including articles on cohabitation and abortion.
Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly said on Monday that the government would not give neighborhood unit heads the authority to report cohabitation, as is stated in Article 418 of the bill. Only parents will be given the authority to report cohabitation.
“We will allow only the parents to report cohabitation. We don’t want to create possibilities for blackmail,” Yasonna said after a meeting with the House's legislative body in Central Jakarta.
A proposal to give neighborhood unit heads the authority to report cohabitation in their neighborhoods was initiated by lawmaker Arsul Sani of the Islamic-based United Development Party (PPP), on the grounds cohabitation would cause "social damage" to the community, as according to Islamic teaching, “angels will not bless the 40 houses around the place where an unmarried couples live together”.
Yasonna said the government would only review 14 of the 628 articles in the bill, as previously mentioned by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.
The articles cover a range of issues, including consensual premarital sex, cohabitation, abortion, the promotion of contraception and corruption, as well as bans on insulting the president, which had previously been repealed by the Constitutional Court, and abandoning chickens.
“If we unpacked the whole bill and started all over again, we won’t finish it until lebaran kuda,” he said, referring to an old Betawi expression similar to the phrase “when pigs fly”.
