In a move that opponents deemed to be a significant setback for rights in the most populous Muslim nation in the world, Indonesia’s parliament on Tuesday adopted legislation that would make having sex outside of marriage illegal.
Sufmi Dasco Ahmad, the deputy speaker of the house, slammed the gavel to indicate the text’s approval and yelled “legal” after the new criminal code was adopted by all nine parties in a comprehensive reform of the legal code.
For decades, there has been discussion about updating Indonesia’s outdated penal code, which dates back to the Dutch colonial era.
Rights organizations had protested against the amendments, warning of a crackdown on civil liberties and political freedoms as well as a move towards fundamentalism in Indonesia, a country with a majority of Muslims and a constitution that upholds secularism.
“We have tried our best to accommodate the important issues and different opinions which were debated,” Yasonna Laoly, Minister of Law and Human Rights, told parliament.
“However, it is time for us to make a historical decision on the penal code amendment and to leave the colonial criminal code we inherited behind.”
The new criminal code will go into effect in three years, according to a clause in the legislation that the president still needs to sign.
The recently enacted code’s most contentious clauses make extramarital sex and unmarried couples’ cohabitation illegal.
According to the text seen by AFP, sex outside of marriage will result in a potential punishment of one year in prison and illegal cohabitation will have a maximum sentence of six months.
Additionally, there are worries that these laws, which forbid same-sex unions in Indonesia, could have a significant negative effect on the LGBTQ community there.
Before the voting, Albert Aries, a spokesman for the team responsible for disseminating the criminal code reform, defended the changes and asserted that they would protect marriage institutions.
He claimed that the amendment was only applicable to extramarital sex that was reported by a spouse, parent, or child.
Though authorities insisted that foreign visitors to Bali wouldn’t be impacted, business organizations in Indonesia have criticized the article on extramarital sex as being harmful to tourism.
Sung Yong Kim, the US ambassador to Indonesia, expressed his concern about “morality clauses” in the criminal code that could have a “bad” effect on enterprises at a business conference on Tuesday before the vote.
A shouting match broke out between the deputy house speaker and a PKS (Prosperous Justice Party) lawmaker prior to the vote.
“Don’t be a dictator”, shouted Iskan Qolba Lubis, the lawmaker from the Islamist party, after he was prevented from speaking.
Bambang Wuryanto, head of the commission that oversaw deliberations on the text, acknowledged “this is a product by humans and hence it will never be perfect”.
But he invited critics to “file a judicial review to the constitutional court” instead of demonstrating.
Rights groups slammed the legislation as morality policing.
“We are going backward… repressive laws should have been abolished but the bill shows that the arguments of scholars abroad are true, that our democracy is indisputably in decline,” Amnesty International Indonesia director Usman Hamid told AFP.
On Monday, about a hundred people demonstrated against the bill, some of whom dropped flower petals on the yellow banner that read, “reject the passing of the criminal code revision.”
On Tuesday, there was supposed to be another protest in front of the parliament building to oppose the new law.