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Jakarta Post

Women's rights workers remain under threat

Nina A. Loasana (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Tue, December 1, 2020

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Women's rights workers remain under threat

D

espite working courageously to defend their rights and those of others, female human rights activists still receive little protection and scant recognition for their work.

A recent report published by a coalition of women rights defenders found that female activists were prone to violence, both verbal and physical, threats and online intimidation, such as doxing.

“Various reports have shown that women's human rights defenders are prone to violence both on individual and organizational levels,” Damaris of the Ume Daya Nusantara Foundation, a member of the coalition, said on Friday during an event marking the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence.

In addition to receiving threats of violence, Damaris said, female activists often faced criminalization, intimidation and stigma, particularly because Indonesian laws did not specifically recognize their roles as rights defenders.

"They were labeled marriage destroyers or indecent women or bad mothers for always coming home late because of their work. Some of them were visited and threatened by unidentified people," she said. "They received death threats, rape threats and even experienced sexual abuse."

The abuse and intimidation, Damaris said, was not solely directed at women who fought for women's rights but also at those who advocated for other humanitarian causes.

One notable example was agrarian activist Eva Bande, who was sentenced to four years in prison in 2013 for defending farmers against a palm oil company that was allegedly exploiting their customary land in Luwuk, South Sulawesi. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo later granted her clemency. She won the prestigious Yap Thiam Hien human rights award for her work in agrarian conflicts in 2018.

“Recently, the Alliance of Independent Journalists [AJI] and the Legal Aid Institute for the Press [LBH Pers] reported that three female student journalists and a female journalist were allegedly harassed by police officers while reporting on a series of protests against the Job Creation Law in October,” Damaris said.

Institutions focusing on women’s rights advocacy are also subject to threats of violence. 

On Feb. 3, dozens of people, four of them claiming to be police officers, forcefully entered and threatened to damage the Indonesian Women’s Association for Justice (LBH APIK) office in East Jakarta. The raid was led by a man who accused LBH APIK of abducting and hiding his 21-year-old daughter. A week prior, she had left her parents’ home because of alleged domestic abuse and had sought legal assistance from the association.

In another incident, two online publications dedicated to women’s rights issues, konde.co and magdalene.co, were hacked after publishing articles discussing sexual violence against women, the coalition said.

In Indonesia, attacks against female activists are common, the government-sanctioned National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) has said.

The commission recorded 5 cases of violence against female human rights activists in 2020.

Komnas Perempuan commissioner Theresia Iswarini said a deep-rooted victim-blaming culture often prevented female activists from getting justice and that attacks against these women were often seen as inevitable risks of their jobs.

Theresia urged the Women's Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry to draft guidelines for the protection for female human rights defenders and asked the Health Ministry to provide affordable health insurance for them.

"We're also urging the government and the House of Representatives to include the sexual violence eradication bill in the 2021 National Legislation Program [Prolegnas] priority list," she said.

In July, the House Legislation Body (Baleg) dropped the bill from this year’s Prolegnas priority list, claiming it was “too complicated”. The deliberation of the bill began in 2014 but progressed at a snail’s pace despite mounting public demand for its passage. The bill was expected to prohibit the criminalization of victims and forbid law enforcement to blame or degrade victims or to saddle victims with the responsibility of searching for evidence in their own cases.

To mark this year's 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence, which lasts from Nov. 25 to Dec. 10, Komnas Perempuan and other entities concerned with women’s rights issues have organized campaigns demanding that the House resume the deliberation of the sexual violence eradication bill.

Trauma counseling foundation Yayasan Pulih, Magdalene and cosmetic brand The Body Shop Indonesia, placed 500 pairs of shoes in front of the House compound in Senayan, Central Jakarta, on Wednesday and staged a silent protest demanding the resumption of the bill’s deliberation.

On Thursday, Amnesty International Indonesia sent more than 3,000 letters, written by people throughout the archipelago, to the House to demand the same thing.

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