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House drags feet on sexual violence bill
The House of Representatives has passed on an opportunity to endorse the sexual violence bill before the end of the year, further delaying its passage.
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pall of uncertainty has descended over the long-awaited sexual violence bill after the House of Representatives leadership declined to pass the legislation at the last plenary session of the year, even as an ongoing increase in reports of sexual violence in the country makes the bill’s supporters increasingly impatient.
The House reneged on a commitment to take on the legislation before Mother’s Day on Dec. 22, after lawmakers failed to confirm it at a meeting before Thursday’s plenary session.
Last week, the House Legislation Body (Baleg) agreed to endorse the passage of the sexual violence bill after at least nine rounds of negotiations. Then, it won majority support among House factions in the final round of talks on Dec. 8. Of the House’s nine party factions, seven voted to approve the bill, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) rejected it and the Golkar Party requested a delay so that it could be further refined.
But the bill had already missed the chance to be confirmed by the House Steering Committee (Bamus), which had convened on Dec. 6.
House Deputy Speaker Sufmi Dasco Ahmad of the Gerindra Party blamed the failure on a “technicality”.
“When the bill was approved [for endorsement], we had already finished the Bamus meeting, so the bill did not make it to that meeting,” Dasco said on Thursday.
House Speaker Puan Maharani of the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) said the bill had been delayed by “a matter of timing” and that the House simply wanted to ensure that the lawmaking process followed established procedure to prevent it from being questioned in the future.
“Insya Allah [God willing], the House leadership will make its decision at the start of the next sitting period,” Puan told reporters on Thursday.
The delay, the latest of many, has frustrated women’s rights activists and critics of the legislature alike, as well as members of House factions invested in the bill.
A disappointed Willy Aditya, the chairman of the bill’s working committee and a Nasdem Party member, said lawmakers could have simply convened last-minute talks to revise the steering committee’s decisions before the end of the current sitting period.
“A consultation meeting could have actually been held to replace the Bamus session, but the House speakers failed to reach a consensus to do so,” Willy said on Wednesday.
Luluk Hamidah of the National Awakening Party (PKB), another member of the bill’s working committee, interrupted Thursday’s plenary session to say, “So many people who have been waiting for the bill believe the House has failed them.”
She added that her colleagues were acting as if there were no “urgent need” for the bill.
Silent epidemic
The disappointment was palpable among women’s rights activists, including longtime advocates of the bill united under the Network of Women’s Rights Defenders for Victims of Violence.
Bivitri Susanti, a constitutional law expert and member of the network, said lawmakers' refusal to push the bill through demonstrated their indifference to the issue.
“It seems like there is no sense of urgency among lawmakers because the bill isn’t as ‘juicy’ as others like the domestic worker protection bill or the indigenous peoples bill. [The sexual violence bill] has no economic value to them,” Bivitri said in a press conference on Thursday.
The further delay comes amid a general increase in reports of sexual violence in the nation.
In its 2020 report, the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) noted that 431,471 cases of sexual violence against women had been reported in 2019.
Activists believe the actual number of cases is likely higher, as many are believed to go unreported as a result of stigma and fear.
Many perpetrators of sexual violence are people close to the victims or those responsible for protecting them, including family members, teachers, lecturers and even police officers.
Most recently, a teacher in Bandung, West Java, has been brought to trial for allegedly raping 13 students from three different Islamic boarding schools over the past five years.
The 36-year-old allegedly fathered nine children with the victims, all of whom were between 16 and 17 years old.
Actual progress?
Rights activists say the increase in reported cases indicates the urgent need for the bill to be passed, even if the current version has been watered down over the course of negotiations.
Diah Pitaloka, a PDI-P lawmaker, Baleg member and vocal proponent of the bill, said the latest draft would still be a milestone in transforming the legal approach to cases of sexual violence.
“It has offered a new paradigm and progressive legal framework to investigate and handle sexual violence cases, which are often hindered by difficulties in finding evidence or witnesses,” Diah told The Jakarta Post recently.
Maidina Rahmawati, a researcher at the Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (ICJR), acknowledged that while the bill still lacked comprehensive protection and rehabilitation options for victims, it was an improvement from the draft proposed in August.
“But provisions for the comprehensive recovery of the victim are still lacking,” Maidina said last week.
Sulisyowati Irianto, a professor of law at the University of Indonesia, said the recent renaming of the bill from the initial sexual violence eradication bill to the sexual violence crimes bill was due, in part, to a lack of victim-centered perspectives.
“The basic principle of the criminal [legal perspective] focuses only on ensuring the perpetrators receive proper punishment,” Sulistyowati told the Post on Saturday.
She also criticized the limited scope of the bill, which eschewed academic debate in favor of negotiations fueled by identity politics and sectarian mores.
The latest draft of the bill, a copy of which was obtained by the Post, acknowledges five forms of sexual violence: sexual harassment (both physical and nonphysical), cyber sexual harassment, forced use of contraceptives, forced sterilization and sexual exploitation.
This is a significant departure from the initial draft of the bill, which denoted 15 forms of sexual violence, including forced marriage, forced abortion and forced prostitution.
“Most lawmakers have disregarded the experience of the victims,” said Sulistyowati, “even though the initial draft is based on real world cases and includes surveys and qualitative data from the victims.”
Long road ahead
While the legislation has essentially secured the House’s endorsement, the path forward is still long.
After House lawmakers approve the draft bill themselves, the executive will need to be brought in for further deliberations, Willy said. “We also still need to wait for the President’s letter [to be delivered before we start these talks].”
Diah said the House would still be gathering input from experts and the public. “It will still take months [for the bill to be passed into law],” she said, adding that it would depend on politics and public opinion.
While awareness of issues surrounding sexual violence has grown in recent years, resistance has also persisted.
Political parties that espouse Islamic values have long opposed elements of the bill, including the PKS, which has criticized the use of the term “sexual violence” in the bill’s name and has proposed changing it into a “decency” bill.
Opposition has also comes from individual members of secular-nationalist parties with conservative views.
