Tantri Yuliandini, Jakarta – Activists and community groups plan to file a request for judicial review with the Supreme Court next week on a 2005 Tangerang mayoralty bylaw on prostitution, which they deem tramples on the rights of women.
The Antidiscriminative Bylaw Coalition demanded Friday that the bylaw – which its proponents say was designed to eradicate prostitution by stopping people from acting "suspiciously" in public areas – be revoked.
Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association director Dedi Ali Ahmad, who is the coordinator of the coalition, said articles in the bylaw were vague and open to interpretation, leaving all women vulnerable to the accusation of soliciting.
Article 4 (1) of the bylaw states that "every person who acts and behaves suspiciously, and comes across as being a sex worker, is prohibited from being on the streets, on playing fields, in hotels or dormitories, in residential areas or coffee shops, at amusement centers or theaters, on street corners or under bridges, or in any other public place".
The Jakarta Legal Aid Institute's Hermawanto said the article was dangerously ambiguous. "Everyone could be deemed suspicious if law enforcers are presumptuous," he said.
The imprecise definition led public order officers to take a 36-year-old pregnant woman, who was waiting for public transportation, into custody during the first raid conducted under the bylaw.
She was sentenced on Feb. 27 to 80 days in prison and fined Rp 300,000 (US$32.8). She was only released four days later after her schoolteacher husband paid the fine.
According to the coalition, the stipulations in the bylaw run counter to the 2004 Law on Formulation of Regulations. In that law, all regulations have to fulfill the principle of clarity and of ease of implementation.
Astuti Listianingrum of the Legal Aid Institute of the Indonesian Women's Association for Justice said that although men were also subject to the bylaw, women were most vulnerable to suspicions of being a sex worker.
Astuti, who said the bylaw contravened a 1984 law on the eradication of discrimination against women, noted that people detained in the first crackdown, were denied their right to legal counsel.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people grouped in the Tangerang City People's Alliance (Almakta) demonstrated Friday outside the offices of Kompas daily, charging it with unfair reporting on the implementation of the bylaw on prostitution and another on the sale of alcoholic.
The group – comprising representatives of the Indonesian teachers Union and student groups affiliated to the Muslim organizations Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah – cited several articles, published between March 2 and 8, which they claimed were unfair, antagonistic and out of proportion.
"Kompas' reports made it seem that a very scary environment prevailed in Tangerang because of the bylaws and that's not true," the coordinator of the demonstration, Tb. H. Mahdi Adiansyah, said after Friday prayers.
Kompas spokesman Saliman acknowledged the newspaper had so far reported on the concerns about the repercussions of the bylaw, but it had also tried to provide responses of the administration and the bylaws' proponents.