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Child rape victim or fornicator? Under Aceh’s sharia law, it could be both
It's not easy to bring justice to rape cases in Aceh. Law enforcement officers discourage families of child rape victims from pressing charges, saying their children could end up being charged with zina.
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Illustration of child abuse (Shutterstock/File)
On Dec. 15, 2017, a 17-year-old girl from Nagan Raya, Aceh, who will be referred to as Mira, says she was raped.
According to a court document of her account, the girl said her 18-year-old boyfriend had asked to meet her at a quiet location to exchange mobile phones, and when they met, he made sexual advances toward her. She told him, “Don’t, don’t,” but the boyfriend ignored her pleas and threatened to put a curse on her family if she resisted, before pushing her down and raping her.
Mira suffered excessive bleeding and was hospitalized for two days before her family reported the incident to the local authorities, who charged the boyfriend with child rape and brought him to sharia court.
She testified in court, and her attacker was punished – not for rape, but for the crime of zina (fornication) with a child under Aceh’s sharia code, which exists alongside the state legal system in the province. The Meulaboh District Sharia Court reached the verdict despite Mira’s testimony and a medical examination that concluded that her hymen had been broken as a result of the incident.
In the verdict, the court contended that the sexual intercourse between them had been consensual as they were dating at the time and had had sexual intercourse before. The defendant, they ruled, was not guilty of the primary charge of child rape and was guilty instead of zina with a child, a charge akin to statutory rape in other legal systems, implying that the victim was complicit in the crime.
The prosecutors appealed the verdict, contending that the court had not appropriately taken the victim’s testimony into account. The Aceh Sharia High Court, however, rejected the appeal.
There is no record of Mira being charged with zina, but that does not mean it could not happen to others, said activist and researcher Waskito Jati, who recently conducted a study on the enforcement of the sharia in Aceh.
