JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – Indonesia’s parliament on Tuesday voted unanimously to ban sex outside of marriage and insulting the president and state institutions.
Once the bans come into effect, they will affect both foreign visitors and citizens. They are part of an overhaul of the country’s penal code that has been in the works for years. The new law also extends an existing blasphemy law and maintains a five-year prison sentence for deviating from the core tenets of Indonesia’s six recognized religions: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. The code has yet to be approved by the president, and the government says it will not be fully implemented for several years.
The amended law states that sex outside of marriage is punishable by a year in prison and cohabitation by six months, but charges of adultery must be based on police reports filed by a spouse, parent or child.
Citizens could also face a 10-year prison sentence for association with organizations following Marxist-Leninist ideology and a four-year prison sentence for spreading communism.
Human rights groups have criticized some of the revisions for being too broad or vague, and warned that adding them to the code could penalize normal activities and threaten freedom of expression and privacy rights.
However, some advocates hailed the passage as a victory for the country’s LGBTQ community. After much deliberation, lawmakers finally agreed to remove an article proposed by Islamic groups that would have made gay sex illegal.
The revised law also retains the death penalty, despite calls from the National Human Rights Commission and other groups for the death penalty to be abolished. But the new law adds a 10-year probationary period to the death penalty. If the convict behaves well during this period, his sentence is reduced to life imprisonment or 20 years imprisonment.
The code maintains a previous abortion ban but updates it to add exceptions, already provided for in a 2004 Physician Practices Act, for women with life-threatening medical conditions and for rape, provided the fetus is less than 12 weeks old.
According to Indonesian law, laws passed by Parliament become law after being signed by the President. But even without the President’s signature, it will automatically take effect after 30 days, unless the President issues an executive order repealing it.
President Joko Widodo is widely expected to sign the revised code in light of the extended approval process in Parliament. However, the law is expected to come into force gradually over a period of up to three years, according to Deputy Law and Human Rights Minister Edward Hiariej.
“A lot of implementing rules need to be worked out, so it’s impossible in a year,” he said.
The code restores a ban on insulting an incumbent president or vice president, state institutions, and national ideology. Insults against an incumbent president must be reported by the president and are punishable by up to three years in prison.
Hiariej said the government had “provided the strictest possible explanation, distinguishing between insults and criticism”.
The penal code in force is a legacy of the Dutch colonial administration. Updates have been at hand for decades as lawmakers in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation debated how to adapt the code to their traditional cultures and norms. Indonesia declared its independence on August 17, 1945.
A previously revised code was close to passage in 2019, but President Widodo urged lawmakers to postpone a vote amid mounting public criticism that led to nationwide protests that drew tens of thousands of people. Opponents said it contained articles that discriminated against minorities and that the legislative process lacked transparency. Widodo instructed Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly to seek input from various groups while lawmakers debated the articles.
A parliamentary taskforce finalized the law in November and lawmakers unanimously approved it Tuesday, in what Laoly hailed as a “historic step.”
“It turns out that although this nation no longer wants to use colonial products, it is not easy for us to break away from the colonial living legacy,” Laoly said in a news conference.
“The completion of this process shows that even 76 years after the Dutch penal code was adopted as the Indonesian penal code, it is never too late to legislate,” said Laoly. “The penal code is a reflection of a nation’s civilization.”
Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that laws criminalizing criticism of political leaders violate international law and that the fact that some expressions are considered offensive is not enough to justify restrictions or penalties.
“The danger of repressive laws is not that they are widely applied, but that they provide a venue for selective enforcement,” said Andreas Harsono, a senior Indonesia researcher with the group.
Many hotels, even in tourism areas like Bali and metropolitan Jakarta, are at risk of losing visitors, he added.
“These laws allow the police to extort bribes, for example to have officials imprison political enemies with the blasphemy law,” Harsono said.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price said the US would “closely monitor” its Democratic partner’s revised criminal code.
“We are concerned about how these changes could affect the exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Indonesia,” Price said at a news conference in Washington on Tuesday. “We are also concerned about how the law may affect U.S. citizens visiting and residing in Indonesia and the investment climate for U.S. companies.”
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AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed from Washington.