Indonesia's new child rape punishments a pyrrhic victory for women's advocates

Jakarta:  Indonesia's harsh new punishments for child sex offenders - including the death penalty and chemical castration - represent something of a pyrrhic victory for women's advocates in Jakarta.

When Yuyun, a schoolgirl from a remote village in Sumatra, was brutally gang-raped and murdered by 14 males in April, her death was delegated to a couple of paragraphs in the local media. Feminist activists were outraged by the silence.

Thirty-five women are victims of sexual violence in Indonesia every day according to the National Commission on Violence against Women.

However advocates argue the issue doesn't get the attention it deserves, in part because many of the perpetrators are family members, it is difficult to process sexual abuse cases and there is a culture of victim blaming.

In 2011, then Jakarta governor Fauzi Bowo suggested women shouldn't wear miniskirts on public transport "so that they don't provoke people to commit unwanted acts" after a woman was gang-raped by four men in a minivan in South Jakarta.

Indie singer and activist Kartika Jahja launched a social media campaign #NyalaUntukYuyun (Light a candle for Yuyun) and a candlelight vigil was held outside the presidential palace this month to push for legislative reform.

Activists compared Yuyun's case to the horrifying gang-rape of 23-year-old physiotherapy intern Jyoti Singh on a bus in India in 2012, which led to significant legal changes.

The campaign was a resounding success. Indonesian President Joko Widodo tweeted: "We all mourn the tragic death of [Yuyun]. Catch and severely punish the perpetrators. Women and children must be protected from violence."

But his response on Wednesday - to give judges discretion to sentence child rapists to death or order that they be chemically castrated - was not what activists had been hoping for.

The National Commission on Violence Against Women issued a statement deploring the move, especially at a time when Indonesia had ratified the Convention against Torture, which prohibits anything that degrades humanity.

"The death penalty and chemical castration is included in this form of punishment," the statement said.

However many people in both Indonesia and Australia have applauded the harsh new punishments. (Indonesia is a popular destination for Australian child sex tourists, to whom the new punishments would apply if they were convicted.)

"Good, kill these animals, hopefully every country will follow this law," a Fairfax reader comments.

It is one thing to argue "our boys" - reformed Australian drug dealers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran who spent much of the last years of their lives helping others behind bars - should have been spared the the death penalty.

But it is much harder to drum up sympathy for child rapists whose offending can scar their victims for life.

Then prime minister John Howard articulated a similar conundrum in 2007 when he said it would be a major injustice if the Bali bombers were not executed.

"I think that would be very, very bad, I accept that many people will think it is inconsistent of me to say and I've acknowledged this before ... I personally don't support capital punishment in Australia," he said.

But while Indonesia debates whether its latest crackdown on child sex offenders has gone too far, there is still hope Yuyun's death may accelerate the passing of a separate bill on sexual violence that has long languished in the list of bills to be deliberated by parliament. "(That would) be a big win," one activist tells me. "But yeah, I'm saddened by this. A lot. It feels like it's almost all been in vain."

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