The women of Indonesia’s National Police are not seen as often as the men, and when they are it is often for PR purposes such as doing choreographed dance routines in front of angry protestors. But there is no doubt that these women work just as hard as their male counterparts, often toiling behind the scenes handling the difficult and sensitive tasks that policemen cannot.
That is what makes a new report by Human Rights Watch so shocking. The report provides conclusive evidence that Indonesia’s National Police administers “discriminatory and degrading” virginity tests to female police applicants, tests which traumitize the applicants physically and psychologically.
HRW interviewed female police applicants and former policewomen in six cities, including Jakarta, who had undergone the test. All of them described it as painful and traumatic. The report also includes testimony from police doctors, a police recruitment evaluator, a National Police Commission member, and women’s rights activists.
In the past, senior police officials have said the virginity tests were no longer administered, but the test is still listed as a requirement for female applicants on the official police recruitment website.
The HRW report found that this examination included the degrading “two-finger test” to determine whether the applicants’ hymens are intact, a test that medical experts worldwide have condemned as unreliable.
Almost all of the women who underwent the virginity test said they felt long-lasting psychological trauma as a result of it. As one woman told HRW: “Entering the virginity test examination room was really upsetting. I feared that after they performed the test I would not be a virgin anymore. It really hurt. My friend even fainted because … it really hurt, really hurt.”
High Commissioner Rumiati, a police psychologist now teaching at the Graduate School of Police Sciences in Jakarta, told HRW she became involved in the police recruitment process and protested internally against the virginity test for female cadets.
“I love my institution. I want the National Police to uphold the laws. Many Indonesian laws – the Constitution, the 1984 law to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the 1999 human rights law – ban discrimination against women. How can the National Police enforce Indonesian laws when they themselves are not obeying the laws of the land?
So how does the National Police continue to justify the use of virginity tests? In her testimony, Rumiati mentions a technical meeting regarding the recruitment of new police cadets in 2010 in which she “raised the issue again, asking all the police recruitment teams to stop the virginity test.”
“But my colleagues, including those working for the Medical and Health Center, opposed me on moral grounds. They said, “Do we want to have prostitutes joining the police?”
Rumiati responded to that line of thinking by saying, “Is there scientific evidence that a woman who is not a virgin will be less productive than a virgin? Is there scientific evidence that a woman who is not a virgin will be automatically worse than a virgin? The meeting concluded with General Sigit asking that the test be stopped. I don’t know why it’s still taking place.”
“The Indonesian National Police’s use of ‘virginity tests’ is a discriminatory practice that harms and humiliates women,” said Nisha Varia, associate women’s rights director at HRW. “Police authorities in Jakarta need to immediately and unequivocally abolish the test, and then make certain that all police recruiting stations nationwide stop administering it.”
The HRW report says the National Police are planning a 50 percent increase in the number of policewomen, to 21,000, by December of this year. With a force of about 400,000 police officers, the additional hiring will increase the percentage of women on the force from 3 percent to 5 percent. What kind of law enforcement agency will all of these new recruits be joining?
The other question that must be asked is, do men have to undergo any test of their virginity before entering the police force? The answer is, of course not. There is no denying that this is a thinly justified excuse for state-sponsored sexual violation. How can we ever expect our police force to administer justice when it cannot even treat its own applicants with honor and respect?
