Jakarta – The Draft Criminal Code (RKUHP) will further increase discrimination against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) people.
This is because Article 421 (1) on indecent acts (pencabulan) explicitly cites indecent acts between people of the same sex.
“Anyone who carries out indecent acts with another person who is of a different or the same sex in public shall be punished with a maximum jail sentence of 1 year and six months in jail or a maximum fine of Category III”, reads the article.
Meanwhile if the indecent act is carried out using force through violence or the threat of violence the punishment is a maximum jail sentence of nine years. Likewise if the indecent act is published as pornographic content.
Institute for Criminal Justice (ICJR) Director Anggara believes that the criminal stipulations on indecency do not need to specify the sex of a person.
“The conditions for criminalising indecency are already fulfilled so in editorial terms the reference to different or same sex is unnecessary”, he said.
Aside from triggering discrimination, Anggara is also concerned that these articles will give rise to derivative regulations which will not be friendly to LGBT groups.
“At the level of [derivative] regulations this will clearly trigger greater vulnerability for groups with a different sexual orientation to be discriminated against and stigmatised for their associations in social life”, he said.
According to data from the Community Legal Aid Institute (LBH Masyarakat), in 2017 there were 973 cases of violence against minority sexual communities (LGBT) or same sex communities across Indonesia.
This figure is expected to rise if the government and the House of Representatives (DPR) forces through these discriminative formulations in the RKUHP. Because of this therefore, the ICJR explicitly rejects them.
“In order to avoid space for arbitrary actions by the state intruding into the private lives of citizens and discrimination against minority sexual groups”, concluded Anggara.
On Wednesday September 18, the DPR’s Commission III and the government agreed to take the text of the RKUHP to a plenary meeting for agreement. (ika/arh)
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was “RKUHP Dinilai Akan Perparah Diskriminasi terhadap LGBT”.]
