WOMEN AND CHILDREN

AS VICTIMS OF CRIME IN INDONESIA

by: Purnianti

Dept. of Criminology

University of Indonesia

Introduction

The Republic of Indonesia consist of 26 provinces formed of 13.667 islands. In 1998, the population of Indonesia numbered 200 million, of which about 80% live in village, while only 20% live in town. More than 60% of the population live in Java.

Equal status is accorded to all Indonesian citizen without exceptions is the principle stated in the 1945 Constitution and other subsequent regulation and legislative acts. Bases on the above principle, violence against women is legal protected in the Penal Code.

The Penal Code provides protection of violence victims as well as punishment of offenders, women as well as men. Other subsequent regulations and legislative acts reinsure the full enforcement of the Penal Code.

However, obstacles are encountered in the enforcement process of the law, particularly from the prevailing traditional, social and cultural life attitudes which views women as being subordinate to men.

The victims, usually women and child, will conceal violence for a number of reasons, including fear of the consequences of revealing it or in response to direct threats.

Discrimination of legal information plays a big role in the effort to eliminate violence against women and child, which is considered to be contradictive to the essence of the equality principles.

From the international perspective, some instruments of international law that give protection for women have already been declared, among others: Beijing Declaration (1995).

The targets formulated by the Beijing Action Plan in order to deal with critical area of violence against women:

1. To take integrated steps to prevent and eliminate violence against women;
2. To study and learn the causes and impacts of violence against women;
3. To eliminate trafficking in women and girls and forced prostitution.

In order to reach the first and second targets, both the government and NGO’s have committed several actions ? except trafficking in women and children (some cases of these were exposed through the mass media).

　

Violence Against Women in the National Level

The year 1998 was filled with the disclosure of facts about violence against women. Many areas has stated the accidents and events filled with violence either in domestic and/or public spheres. From the government policies to the state apparatus involved and caused arm conflicts and violence along the military areas, e.g. Aceh, Irian, East Timor, Jakarta, etc. The Indonesian Society against Violence against Women supported by 5000 people was founded on June 16, 1998. The Indonesian Government pushed by the society to condemns and actively involve in the elimination of violence against women, i.e.:

• On July 23, 1998, the government established Fact Finding Team in order to investigate the events in May Riots (especially the events filled by sexual violence against women). The team consisted of government officers and activists of NGOs worked in 3 months.
• From November 20, 1998 - December 4, 1998 Radhika Coomaraswamy the Special Rapporteur of Violence against women from UN came to Indonesia in order to hear many kinds of information about the violent events happened in Indonesia.
• The police established Special Service Police Women’s Desk in Jakarta. It is intended to respond the need to enforce the law and to accommodate the needs of women’s victims of violence.

　

Problems faced and lessons learned

Gender in equality still exists in various fields of life and has an impact on the occurrence of women problems in all concerned area, either in the area of education, health, women's affair, children, phenomenon of life on women, the lack of women representation in the economic and policy structure and the low participation of women in the decision making in various fields. Violence against women in general and domestic violence in particular has, until now, not been brought up very often.

The above pictures, on the other hand, also illustrated that the limited role of women in the development is no longer by reason of biological difference between women and men, but also socio-cultural values which determine the roles of men and women in a community. Basically, the Indonesia government, through the concept of "equal partnership", has anticipated that women have equal opportunities to men, but the concept has not been comprehended by many parties, including women themselves.

Various policies were formulated in The Sixth five-year Development plan, among others covering the increase of women's equality as a resource for the development, the increase of equality and protection of women workers, the increase of women's double role in the family and community, the increase of socio-cultural climate conducive for the advancement of women and organisational training for women.

Based on Presidential Guidance, the Government has established "Women's Protection Team against Violence" chaired by state Minister for the Role of Women and Deputy Chairman is Minister of Social Affairs, and Madame Hasri Ainun Habibie (The President wife) as the Advisor. Team members consists of government officials, member of Parliament and Law Practician, academician, and all experts from communities. The short term protection is to follow up the response from "Kata Bunga" steps for the recovering victims social conditions or their families, such as trying to achieve security safety, giving service assistance and legal consultation, consultation service and psychological therapy, medical treatment and in stay at certain hospital as well self confidence of the victims or their families through our religious extensions.

The medium/long term programs from the above mentioned team, for instance are having co-operation steps and co-operation with related institutions, for:

1. Expediting the implementation of ratification on several international convention concerning violence, rapes and discrimination against women.
2. Completing and renewing several regulations of national acts which are still discriminative and constraining the women's progress.
3. Enhancing national stability, economics growth and equity, including families economic enhancement.
4. Developing research and study about the roots of the problem, the dissemination in communities with regards to rapes and violence against women.
5. Developing education and training for law enforcement, such as court, apparatus, policeman and lawyers and health professionals.
6. Enhancing qualities/quantities of Women's Human resources work in police department and others law enforcement.
7. Enhancing information activities, through media and electronic media and other mass media which have the efforts of protection development as well as the roles and status of women.
8. Widening efforts and co-operation in the framework to establish services post and consultation center and legal assistance, including development of crisis center institution.
9. Enhancing sectional co-ordination between government apparatus with communities for preventing and solving violence against women and rapes.
10. Stopping to send women to overseas forced to become sex workers.

To strengthen the government and Indonesia communities concerning concrete steps must be done with some efforts to prevent and protect women from the violence, sexual harassment and rapes and also in the framework to improve the implementation of women's Human Rights so the President on July 15, 1998, has instructed to establish “National Commission on Violence Against Women".

Prevention and Control Strategy

When discuss the system of laws, there are three components in them that need to be given notice of, that is, the content/formulation of the law (the legal substance), the apparatus of law/institution (the legal structure) and the culture/habit (legal culture) that live in the community in discussion. The three components are relation to each other, that a change in one component will affect the others. In reality content/formulation/regulation need quite time to change, as it has to pass through complicated political and bureaucratic processes. Therefor, there is a need for a systematic program to achieve a change in law, which in its turn can be expected to initiate social change.

In practice, despite existing regulations that are relatively good, however if they are not followed by improvement on the apparatus and its institution, they will never bring satisfying results.

The same goes with society's attitude and perception of the problems of violence, which is crucial in the implementation of the law. Attempt for change at the regulation level should also be followed by attempts to make law enforcers responsive and sensitive towards women's interest. Including gender issues and women's rights in education curricula, especially for law enforcers are something that must definitely be done.

--ooOOoo?