The government justified these amendments with a desire to protect the institution of marriage
The Indonesian parliament on Tuesday approved, by a majority of lawmakers, legislative amendments that criminalize sex before marriage and sex outside marriage and introduce other sweeping changes to the penal code.
“We have done our best to accommodate important issues and differing opinions. However, the time has come for us to take a historic decision on amending the Penal Code and abandoning the colonial criminal law that we inherited.” said Yasuna Lawley, Minister for Law and Human Rights, in a speech to Parliament. Indonesia’s penal code dates back to the country’s Dutch colonial era, and the issue of changing it has been debated for decades.
Among the most controversial articles of the new law are those that criminalize premarital sex, extramarital sex and cohabitation between an unmarried man and woman.
Human rights organizations have criticized the amendments, denouncing the suppression of civil liberties and the slide towards fundamentalism in the largest Muslim-majority country in the world. They expressed concern that these amendments would lay the legal foundations for the establishment of a moral police and the repression of civil and political liberties. Human rights organizations fear that these amendments will also affect the LGBT community in Indonesia.
The government defended the new bill before it was passed, underscoring its desire to protect the institution of marriage. He clarified, however, that the denunciation of any violation of the provisions of the articles relating to legally penalized sexual relations would be limited to one of the spouses, one of the parents or one of the children, which limits the scope of these amendments.
