Yahoo – AFP,
14 May 2015
Jakarta (AFP) - Indonesia faced calls Thursday to stop virginity tests for women seeking to join the military, with a leading rights group calling the practice "cruel, inhuman and degrading".
Women joining the military in Indonesia must undergo an intrusive test to see if their hymen is intact (AFP Photo/Bay Ismoyo) |
Jakarta (AFP) - Indonesia faced calls Thursday to stop virginity tests for women seeking to join the military, with a leading rights group calling the practice "cruel, inhuman and degrading".
Human
Rights Watch said interviews with female members of the military showed that
the examination, normally conducted through a "two-finger test" to
ensure the hymen is intact, was required of women joining the armed forces or
planning to marry military officers.
The armed
forces defended checking female applicants' virginity, saying that people of
low morals could "damage the military", but denied that those
planning to marry officers were also subject to the checks.
This is
just the latest controversy around virginity tests in conservative,
Muslim-majority Indonesia, with the national police facing criticism last year
for forcing female applicants to undergo the examinations.
In a
statement, HRW said the military "should immediately end the use of
so-called virginity tests, which violate the prohibition of cruel, inhuman, and
degrading treatment under international human rights law".
The group
described the practice as gender-based violence and said it was
"scientifically baseless" as a method of proving that a woman was a
virgin.
HRW
interviewed 11 recruits and officers' fiancees who had undergone the tests at
military hospitals in several cities on the main island of Java. They also
spoke to people involved in conducting the examinations.
Those
tested described the practice as painful, embarrassing and traumatic.
"I
felt humiliated. It was very tense," said one applicant tested in 2013,
cited anonymously in HRW's report. She added that she was "shocked"
that the doctor performing the test was a man.
"It’s
against the rights of every woman," she said.
The test
has been standard for decades and one retired air force officer, also cited
anonymously, recalled having it done in 1984.
She said
four years later she got married but could not make love to her husband for
months "because of the trauma that I had with that 'virginity test'."
Military
spokesman Fuad Basya defended the tests, saying they stop immoral women from
entering the armed forces.
If a person
has low morals, "then she cannot join the military. Because if she joins
the military it will damage the military, which must handle a huge duty. They
are responsible for the country's sovereignty, the unity of the territory, the safety
of the nation," he told AFP.
The HRW
report was timed to coincide with a meeting next week on the Indonesian island
of Bali organised by the International Committee of Military Medicine, a body
that fosters cooperation between medical services of armed forces worldwide.
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