'Uproar over rape no cause for optimism'

JAKARTA (JP): The public uproar seen over recently-reported rape cases does not guarantee that there will be fewer rapes in future, say two feminists.

According to criminologist Syarifah Sabarudin, the only hope for a reduction in rape and other forms of violence against women lies in people coming to see rape as an extreme case of unequal relations between the two sexes.

"The implication would be that women would not be considered as sex objects," Syarifah said on Saturday.

Advertisements would not show women as objects, nor would women use themselves as objects, she added.

The public response to recent reports of individual and gang rapes, she said, has been merely a rejection of moral violations and an expression of shock over the cruel incidents.

"The reaction would not have been as strong if the victim had been a single woman who was walking alone on the street at night," Syarifah said.

Separately, Sita Aripurnami of the non-government organization Kalyanamitra said that rape, particularly of a prostitute, is considered a sanction against women challenging the notions that women are defenseless and modest.

The most publicized recent case was that of a Bekasi woman and her two teenage daughters, all three of whom were raped by a gang of youths in front of their husband and father.

Public outrage over the case has been so great as to extend to the lawyers defending the men who stand accused of the crime. Last week, the defense lawyers were attacked by a mob during a pre-trial hearing of a complaint filed against the police for unlawful arrest of their clients. The lawyers subsequently dropped the complaints against the police.

Other individual and gang rapes have also been reported in South and Central Jakarta, West and East Java, Tangerang and South Sulawesi, in which most of the victims have been minors.

Sita lamented certain remarks that have been made about some of the rape victims, such as the comment that they were pretty.

"Press reports and even (Minister for Women's Affairs) Mien Sugandhi said the rape victims in Bekasi were pretty," she said. In making such remarks people implied that they were not surprised that the women were raped, Sita added.

"This contradicts the fact that girls are raised under the societal expectation that they should be beautiful," she said.

Sita criticized the hiring of prostitutes to play the roles of the victims in the courtroom reconstruction of the Bekasi gang rape.

"Police women could have played the roles but, apparently, they were considered too 'holy,' to do so" she said. She added that, according to another theory, the trauma of the re-enactment of the crime was too great for a policewoman to bear, but that a prostitute would not have difficulty coping with it.

Syarifah criticized the view of some experts that there is no need to establish crisis centers for rape victims in Indonesia because the functions of such a center can be fulfilled by the victims' extended families.

"It is actually the extended family structure which offers protection for the rapist, if he happens to be in the family," said Syarifah. (anr)