March 11, 2024
JAKARTA – Last year saw a shift in the types of gender-based violence reported, likely due to the 2022 Law on the Eradication of Sexual Violence, according to the latest annual report from the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) released on Thursday, the eve of International Women’s Day.
The report found that more people had reported sexual harassment in online and offline spaces in 2023, the year after the Sexual Violence Law was enacted.
Komnas Perempuan received almost 800 reports on online and physical sexual harassment last year, around four times the 200 reported rape cases it received over the same period.
Before 2023, rape cases had dominated the types of gender-based violence reported to Komnas Perempuan, its commissioner Andy Yentriyani said on Thursday.
The commission also noted a significant increase of 44 percent in cases of violence against women in public spaces, while the figure surged 176 percent in cases of state violence against women.
The latter category includes violence against women by police officers and military personnel, such as against female human rights activists and women in the custody of law enforcement agencies.
“State violence [against women] mainly revolve around conflicts related to natural resources [and] agrarian and spatial planning issues,” Andy said.
Komnas Perempuan attributed the increase in the types of reported gender-based violence to progressive regulations that aim to protect women and other gender minority groups, such as the Sexual Violence Law.
The law received wide public praise for several provisions, including one that mandates protection for victims of sexual violence and the imposition of a restraining order on the alleged perpetrator.
It also contains a broad criminal classification for acts of sexual violence, which covers forced contraception, forced sterilization, sexual exploitation and online sexual harassment.
Follow-up rules needed
Passage of the Sexual Violence Law had encouraged more victims to report incidents to the police, said Ina Irawati of the Dian Mutiara Women Crisis Centre, an anti-gender violence group in Malang, East Java.
“Some victims of revenge porn or sextortion waited for the law to be enacted before eventually filing police reports,” Ina told The Jakarta Post on Friday.
“Before then, they could have been arrested for simply appearing in indecent videos, even though they were victims.”
Revenge porn involves a former partner sharing intimate photos or videos without the consent or permission of the other partner, while sextortion is essentially a type of blackmail that uses the threat of distributing private and sensitive materials.
Ina said the 2022 law also stipulated the right to erasure for victims, meaning they could ask a court to permanently delete their personal data.
However, not all law enforcement personnel have a clear understanding of the law, with some police officers refusing to enforce the new law in cases of sextortion or revenge porn.
Participants of an International Women’s Day march hold placards on March 8, 2024 along a pedestrian crossing in Bandung, West Java.
Ina concurred with the recommendations put forth in the Komnas Perempuan report, saying she hoped authorities would educate all law enforcement personnel about the law.
She also called on President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to issue the law’s implementing regulations as soon as possible.
The government plans to issue seven implementing regulations for the Sexual Violence Law, including rules to provide access to safe houses for victims of gender-based violence as well as insurance schemes so they could continue to hold jobs or pursue education.
But President Jokowi has signed just one regulation to date, almost two years since the law was enacted.
Tip of iceberg
The 2023 Komnas Perempuan report also found that the total number of reported incidents of violence against women had decreased 12 percent to 289,100 cases, from 339,700 in 2022
Most of the reported cases occurred in private spaces, according to data from the Religious Courts Directorate General (Badilag) of the Supreme Court, which tracks cases of violence at the country’s religious courts that lead to divorce.
Among the recorded types of violence that occurred in private spaces are attempted rape, marital rape, forced abortion and incest.
The majority of victims were students aged between 18 and 24 years, while the majority of reported perpetrators were their former or current male partners. Almost all the victims were younger and had a lower level of education than their perpetrators, indicating that violence against women often involved a power imbalance.
Commissioner Andy suggested that Komnas Perempuan’s latest data represented the tip of the iceberg in gender-based violence.
“The data gathered were limited to only those cases where victims had filed a report, as well as the work of institutional partners that participated in collecting the data for this report,” she noted.