(Jakarta) Indonesia’s parliament on Tuesday approved legislative amendments banning sex outside of marriage and making other significant changes to the country’s penal code.
The vice-president of the Parliament, Sufmi Dasco Ahmad, declared approved this text which received the majority of the votes in plenary session.
The project has sparked outrage from human rights groups, who denounce an attack on civil liberties and a shift towards fundamentalism in the most populous Muslim-majority country in the world.
“We have done our best to take into account the important issues and the different opinions that have been discussed. However, it is time for us to take a historic decision on the amendment of the penal code, and to leave behind us the colonial penal code which we inherited”, declared before the Parliament the Minister of Justice, Yasonna Laoly.
Among the most controversial articles of the newly adopted code are the criminalization of extramarital sexual relations, as well as the cohabitation of unmarried couples.
These rules could also, according to human rights organizations, have a major impact on the LGBTQ+ community in Indonesia, where same-sex marriage is not allowed.
Project committee spokesman Albert Aries defended the amendments ahead of the vote, saying the law will protect the institution of marriage.
He added that pre-marital and extra-marital sexual acts will only be able to be reported by the spouse, parents or children, which de facto limits the scope of the text. But critics of the new law have denounced it as establishing an attack on freedom of morals.
Indonesia’s current penal code dates back to Dutch colonial times, and its revision has been under debate for decades.
According to rights groups, the new amendments underscore a growing slide towards fundamentalism in a country long hailed for its religious tolerance, with secularism enshrined in its constitution.
“We are backing down… the repressive laws should have been abolished. But the bill shows that the arguments of foreign scholars are true, that our democracy is unquestionably in decline,” Usman Hamid, director of Amnesty International Indonesia, told AFP.