Indonesian police slammed for 'virginity tests'

By Rochimawati

JAKARTA

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has slammed Indonesia's police force for subjecting female recruits to what it calls “virginity tests” - a practice police claim has been discontinued, yet the humanitarian organization says is still being widely carried out. 

The organization said in a statement Tuesday that despite women raising the issue with senior officials - who at times have claimed it no longer happens - the test remains listed on the police website as a requirement for female applicants.

A police psychologist - who has said she underwent the test on joining the police - told HRW that she has been campaigning for its elimination, but colleagues had opposed her on moral grounds.

“Do we want to have prostitutes joining the police?” National Police High Commissioner Sri Rumiati said they had responded.

Women are forced to take the tests to prove they are single and of seeming good character. Married women are not eligible to join the Indonesia's police force.

"I love my institution. I want the National Police to uphold the laws," said Rumiati, "[but] how can the national police enforce Indonesian laws when they themselves are not obeying the laws of the land?"

A female activist told The Anadolu Agency on Tuesday that the tests have violated human rights, and should be abolished.

"It is strange that this still occurs in the era of a government that supports human rights and the rights of women," said Budi Mulyani, the director of the Legal Aid Institute (LBH) at the Indonesian Women's Association for Justice in Yogyakarta.

"The police continues to establish itself not to protect the rights of women," she claimed.

In the HRW statement, Nisha Varia, associate women’s rights director at the organization, called the use of the tests "a discriminatory practice that harms and humiliates women."

“Police authorities in Jakarta need to immediately and unequivocally abolish the test, and then make certain that all police recruiting stations nationwide stop administering it,” she added.

HRW said it had interviewed female officers and applicants who had undergone the procedure - two of them in 2014 - and all had described it as painful and traumatic. 

It quoted an 18-year-old woman, who said she had taken the test on applying for the force in 2013 and was only told about an "internal examination” as she was about to take her physical.

She said that she "had no power to object because if I refused to undergo the virginity test, I would not be able to enter the police force."

The woman told HRW that candidates were told to enter a room and lie down, but after what happened next she felt humiliated and scared.

"There were candidates who fainted due to the stress," she added.

A memo produced in 2012 by an international organization that has assisted with police reform training quotes a July 2008 letter by a senior police official to an elite police academy in which he describes the need to inspect female candidates to ensure their virginity.

But LBH lawyer Mulyani underlined that there is no connection whatsoever between achievement and a piece of skin.

"[It] is no an indicator of a person's morals," she said. It can be lost "in a variety of ways - through sexual violence or even accidents in childhood."

Human Rights Watch said it had also documented the use of abusive “virginity tests” by police in several other countries, including Egypt, India, and Afghanistan. 

The organization has previously also criticized calls for the tests for schoolgirls in Indonesia - as both a human rights violation and for being subjective and unscientific.

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