Jakarta – Violence against women has steadily increased after nearly a decade of political reform, with state institutions both in central and regional governments among the main perpetrators through their discriminatory regulations, the National Commission for Women's Protection says.

Violence has risen despite the government having enacted 10 laws and signed three regional treaties, joined by 16 regional ordinances, to eliminate all forms of violence against women.

In a report on the state of women's protection, issued in conjunction with International Women's Day today (Saturday), the commission highlights 27 regional bylaws it says discriminate against women, either through the criminalization of women or seeking to control women's bodies.

"For example, there's a regulation that forbids women from going out at night or others that determine how women should dress," commissioner Arimbi Heroepoetri said Friday. She said that under these regulations women could easily be labeled, and punished, as "immoral" women simply because they went home late at night or wore tight clothes.

Tangerang municipality last year issued an ordinance banning women from going outside of their homes after 10 p.m. A housewife who was sentenced under the ordinance tried unsuccessfully last year to seek a judicial review of the ordinance with the Supreme Court.

"State institutions at the national level have proven to be unable to keep the harmony between the Constitution and regional ordinances," the commission report says.

Home Minister Mardiyanto has said the central government has no intention to review the local ordinances, which many say were inspired by sharia, or Islamic law.

Arimbi said the enforcement of the discriminatory regulations indicated the economy was no longer the dominant factor in violence against women.

The only bright spot in the situation of women and the law came in 2004, with the enforcement of Law No. 23 on the eradication of domestic violence. According to Arimbi, there has been a significant increase in the number of cases of domestic violence reported thanks to the law, which categorizes all acts of violence against women as criminal.

"Women are becoming more aware that violence against women is no longer a taboo topic but a public issue," she said, adding that public campaigns about the law had helped immensely.

She said the sharpest increase in the number of reported cases of domestic violence occurred in 2005, with 16,615 reported cases, or almost four times the 4,310 cases reported in 2004. "This was mainly caused by the issuance of the law," she said.

Vice chairwoman of the commission, Ninik Rahayu, said, however, that awareness among women alone was not enough. "It is a shame that many judges are still reluctant to accept domestic violence as a basis for divorce. Judges usually blame the divorce on quarreling between wives and husbands," she said.

She said many judges refused to allow professionals, such as psychologists and social workers, to accompany women during the legal process. "The judges usually only allow lawyers to accompany them," she said.

She said allowing psychologists or other counselors to accompany victims of domestic violence was important in order to give them a sense of security, especially when they have to face the people who violated them either sexually or physically. (ewd)