Men forge documents to marry other women: LBH APIK

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, Jakarta

Men who decide to practice polygamy must guarantee they can treat their wives equally, and indeed, a survey found they equally deceived their wives and future second or third wives in their attempt to remarry.

Abuse and neglect were also aspects of 86 polygamous marriages surveyed by a women's legal aid institute here, leading the researchers to demand a revision of the 1974 marriage law, which they said treat women as "sexual objects."

Most of the men surveyed did not ask permission to remarry from their previous wives, as is required by the marriage law, the report of the Association of the Indonesian's Women for Justice Legal Aid Office (LBH APIK), which was presented on Thursday, said.

Worse, almost one third of the men lied to their new wives-to- be, saying they were single. One third of them admitted they had forged the documents required for remarriage.

Muhammad Rezfah Omar of the legal aid office said it was "quite disturbing" that most of the men remarried without registering the marriages with the state.

Although the marriage might be recognized under respective religious authorities, Omar said, the women would face legal difficulties in securing their rights in the event of divorce.

The legal aid office recorded 19 polygamy cases in 2000, 23 in 2001, 25 in 2002 and 19 up to the middle of 2003.

The marriage law is largely influenced by the fact that the country is the world's largest Muslim nation. It permits men to marry more than once but also rules that marriages are legitimate when recognized by the respective religions and faiths of those involved.

The court can grant permission for a man to remarry "if so requested by the involved parties", the 1974 law says. The conditions in which this can be done are: If the wife can no longer "fulfill her obligations as a wife," if the wife becomes an invalid or contracts an incurable disease, or if the wife cannot produce children.

Apart from permission from the first or previous wives the husband must also guarantee that he can provide for all the wives and children, and treat them equally.

Of the male respondents in the survey, 47 of them claimed "no reason" for remarrying. The others cited their first wife's illness or inability to have children, or that their wives were "too busy". "The men's main reason was sexual", Omar said.

Islam allows a man to marry up to four women, under conditions similar to those in the law. Some high-ranking officials publicly admit that they are polygamous.

The current open atmosphere toward polygamy emboldened one polygamous man, restaurant owner Puspo Wardoyo, to issue the controversial "polygamy award" last year to men who appear to live up to the legal and Islamic conditions.

Omar said the survey also found that many of the women in the above marriages reported "mental abuse, physical abuse, negligence to the previous wife and children, intimidation and negligence to the wives' sexual rights."

Forty-seven of the women reported that their husbands stopped financing their families soon after they remarried.

"We also recorded 23 women left by their husbands and 21 who suffered mental abuse by their respective husbands," said Omar.

In some cases "children were forced to stop school after their fathers remarried and stopped financing them," Omar said. LBH APIK's clients are mostly of the middle- to low-income brackets.

"It is unfortunate that our marriage law, which claims to have a spirit of monogamy, basically permits polygamy," Ruth said.

Omar advised women who were in polygamous marriages to report any potential crimes in their marriage to the police -- which is punishable with up to five years in jail -- or ask the court to cancel their respective husbands' marriages.