First there was RI. An 11-year-old from a family of
Jakarta scavengers discovered with injuries to her genitals and a sexually
transmitted disease. RI’s 55-year-old father, Sunoto, who has the same
disease, reportedly confessed to raping her. The girl passed away on Jan. 6
from an inflammation of the brain.
Then there was NWJ, impregnated by a 39-year-old construction worker when
she was 13. NWJ and the married father of two wed on Jan. 26 in a Balinese
Hindu ceremony witnessed by both parties’ families and officiated by the
customary village chief. The 7-months-pregnant teenager went into labor on
Feb. 4 and the infant did not survive.
And then there was FO, the 17-year-old who married Garut regent Aceng Fikri
in a nikah siri or unregistered Muslim marriage last year. The father of
three divorced FO three days after their wedding via text message, claiming
she was not a virgin.
Identified only by their initials, RI, NWJ and FO are mere droplets in a
vast ocean of similar yet unreported cases.
And what unites them is not religion, nor class, nor locale. It is men. And
it is the specter of rape and sexual coercion.
As an American woman living in Indonesia, these cases are upsetting both
because of the local systems of patriarchy that allow them to occur and
because of their distressing universality, with all too many women,
including recent headline-grabbing gang rape cases in India, South Africa
and Ohio in the US, tormented at the hands of men.
It is clear what RI suffered was rape. In NWJ’s case, she reportedly told
police she accepted the man’s sexual advances and was in love with him. And
FO’s parents consented to her marriage, Aceng giving the family Rp 250
million (US$26,000) as a dowry.
But NWJ was 13 and FO 17 at the time of their encounters with the two
married adult males, and sexual relations with women under the age of 18,
according to Article 81(2) of Law No. 23/2002 on child protection, is
illegal.
In the US this is termed statutory rape. It is definitely an act of
dominance over someone with no power or authority, someone who is legally
still a child.
Perhaps Banjarmasin High Court judge Muhammad Daming Sunusi can shed light
on the issue. During a hearing for Supreme Court justice candidates at the
House of Representatives on Jan. 14, Daming said in response to a question
about rapists and capital punishment, “Both the victims of rape and the
rapist might have enjoyed their intercourse together, so we should think
twice before handing down the death penalty.”
While Daming has been widely condemned and has
apologized, the fact that he expressed such an opinion in public is deeply,
deeply troubling, as is the fact that his statement was greeted with
laughter by the roomful of legislators at the hearing.
But January’s affronts to women were not over yet. On Jan. 21, in response
to a United Nations resolution in December urging member states to ban
female genital mutilation (FGM), Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI)
deputy-secretary-general Amirsyah Tambunan said at a press conference that
the Indonesian government should continue to allow what both the MUI and
the government term “female circumcision”.
The terminology shift in the country is lamentable. A 2010 Health Ministry
regulation condones female circumcision, describing the procedure as
“scraping [menggores] the skin that covers the front part of the clitoris,
without harming the clitoris”.
The ministry claims on its website that female circumcision is not FGM.
According to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) definition, it is.
In fact, practices in the country vary widely and are not restricted to
what is described in the ministry’s definition.
The procedure can range from the symbolic, like a tap with a bamboo stick,
to scrapes or incisions using a razor blade, to slicing part of the
clitoris off with a penknife. A study conducted throughout the country by
the Population Council in 2003 found that 28 percent of the 1,307 cases they
looked at were symbolic, while 49 percent involved incisions and 22 percent
excisions, meaning part of the clitoris or labia was removed.
Huzaemah, a member of the MUI’s fatwa commission, says the practice is a
religious obligation that should be done to control women’s sexual desires,
as has Lukman Hakim, chair of social services at the Assalaam Foundation,
which offers the procedure for free at mass annual events for girls in
Bandung. They are not alone in sharing that viewpoint.
The government has made no steps to address the UN resolution or repeal the
Health Ministry regulation, which stipulates female circumcision be
performed by licensed doctors, nurses or midwives. The WHO firmly opposes
institutionalizing or medicalizing the procedure, which is exactly what the
ministry’s regulation does.
Yet a physician from the Indonesian General Practitioners Association says
medical schools do not train doctors in the practice, and the Population
Council study found that when midwives were at the helm, 57 percent of the
procedures involved excision, their preferred instrument — scissors.
So what can we learn from this dire news of rape, teenage pregnancy and
genital mutilation?
RI, NWJ, FO and other victims of rape and sexual coercion throughout the
world — and the women and girls whose genitals have been incised or excised
in the name of suppressing their sexuality — have all been oppressed and
controlled by men. Yet, their stories suggest it is rather the men involved
who need to be controlled and contained.
It is men who cannot stop themselves from acting on their sexual desires.
And it is men who simultaneously strive to control those same desires in
women, in the case of FGM, quite literally.
They somehow want it both ways, and they should not continue to be allowed
to have it. ●
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