Indonesian lawmakers handed a sweeping new legal code on Tuesday that criminalizes intercourse outdoors marriage, as a part of a tranche of adjustments that critics say threaten human rights and freedoms within the Southeast Asian nation.
The brand new code additionally bans cohabitation earlier than marriage, apostasy, and supplies punishments for insulting the president or expressing views counter to the secular nationwide ideology.
The crime of blasphemy, already on Indonesia’s books, now carries a doable five-year jail time period.
Rights teams and critics have warned that the brand new code will “disproportionately impression girls” and additional curtail human rights and freedoms within the Muslim-majority nation.
A earlier draft of the code was set to be handed in 2019 however sparked nationwide protests.
Human Rights Watch Indonesia Researcher Andreas Harsono warned the legal guidelines had been open to exploitation.
“The hazard of oppressive legal guidelines just isn’t that they’ll be broadly utilized, it’s that they supply avenue for selective enforcement,” he mentioned.
Harsono referred to as the brand new legal guidelines “a setback for already declining non secular freedom in Indonesia,” warning that “non-believers could possibly be prosecuted and jailed.”
It is a growing story. Extra to come back.
