The Indonesian parliament is this month expected to pass a new criminal code that would penalize sex outside marriage with a punishment of up to one year in jail, officials have said.
The legislative overhaul would also ban insulting the Indonesian president or state institutions, and expressing any views counter to the country’s state ideology.
Cohabitation before marriage is also banned.
Photo: AP
Decades in the making, the new criminal code is expected to be passed on Dec. 15, Indonesian Deputy Minister of Justice Edward Omar Sharif Hiariej said.
“We’re proud to have a criminal code that’s in line with Indonesian values,” he told Reuters in an interview.
Bambang Wuryanto, a lawmaker involved in the draft, said the new code could be passed by as early as next week.
Photo: REUTERS
The code, if passed, would apply to Indonesian citizens and foreigners alike, with business groups expressing concern about what damage the rules might have on Indonesia’s image as a holiday and investment destination.
The draft has the support of some Islamic groups in a country where conservatism is on the rise, although opponents say that it reverses liberal reforms enacted after former Indonesian president Suharto in 1998 stepped down after leading the country for 31 years.
A previous draft of the code was set to be passed in 2019, but sparked nationwide protests. Tens of thousands of people at the time demonstrated against a raft of laws, especially those seen to regulate morality and free speech, which they said would curtail civil liberties.
Critics say that minimal changes to the code have been made since then, although the government has in the past few months held public consultations to provide information about the changes.
Some changes that have been made include a provision that could allow the death penalty to be commuted to life imprisonment after 10 years of good behavior.
The criminalization of abortion, with the exception of rape victims, and imprisonment for “black magic,” remain in the code.
According to the latest draft dated Thursday last week, sex outside marriage, which can only be reported by limited parties such as close relatives, carries a maximum one-year prison sentence.
Insulting the president, a charge that can only be reported by the president, carries a maximum of sentence of three years.
Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, has hundreds of regulations at the local level that discriminate against women, religious minorities and LGBT people.
Just weeks after Indonesia chaired a G20 meeting that saw its position elevated on the global stage, business sector representatives say the draft code sends the wrong message about Southeast Asia’s largest economy.
“For the business sector, the implementation of this customary law shall create legal uncertainty and make investors re-consider investing in Indonesia,” Indonesian Employers Association deputy chairperson Shinta Widjaja Sukamdani said.
Clauses related to morality would “do more harm than good,” especially for businesses engaged in the tourism and hospitality sectors, she said.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant