Female soldiers from the Indonesian Military (TNI) rehearsing for Kartini
Day celebrations in Jakarta
Here’s
an item missing from the agenda of this week’s meeting of the International Committee of
Military Medicine (ICMM) in Bali: The Indonesian military’s so-called “virginity tests.”
The opening ceremony of the
inter-governmental organization’s biennial world conference taking place from
Sunday till Friday at the Bali Nusa Dua Convention Center reaped
platitudes from Indonesia’s Vice President Jusuf Kalla. Kalla praised the ICMM
conference as an opportunity to maintain “the relationship of brotherhood and
neutrality” between military doctors. That relationship between the
representatives of the ICMM’s 110 member states appears
to exclude any willingness to condemn the discrimination and suffering the
Indonesian Military (TNI) imposes on female recruits and
fiancees of military officers through painful and humiliating “virginity
testing.”
The ICMM can’t claim ignorance of this abhorrent practice. In March,
Human Rights Watch wrote to the
ICMM and 16 key members including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and the
United States to share with them research that indicated that the TNI had
for decades compelled female recruits and fiancees of military officers to
undergo the invasive “two-finger test” to
determine whether female applicants’ hymens are intact. Only those women with
resources to either bribe military doctors or to tap powerful connections
within the military or the government are spared that painful indignity. Human
Rights Watch urged the ICMM
to press the Indonesian military to abandon the practice. The ICMM has yet
to respond to that request.
Why should the ICMM care that its Indonesian military hosts impose such
“tests” as a condition of admission for female recruits and for fiancees of
military officers?
Respect for international human rights standards, for starters.
Virginity tests are a discriminatory form of gender-based violence against
women. They have been recognized internationally as a violation of the
prohibition against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment under Article 7 of
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 16 of the
Convention against Torture, both of which Indonesia has ratified, as have most
conference attendees.
As a medical organization, the ICMM should also respect the weight of
evidence that has thoroughly discredited any claims that “virginity tests” do
any more than inflict unneeded pain and trauma on women compelled to undergo
them. That evidence includes World Health Organization guidelines issued
in November 2014 that state: “There is no place for virginity (or ‘two-finger’)
testing; it has no scientific validity.” If the military doctors and nurses at
the ICMM conference would find unacceptable such abuses in their own countries’
militaries, they should make it clear to their hosts that such violations have
no place in the Indonesian armed forces.
The ICMM should also be dismayed by the Indonesian armed forces’
response to criticism of the “virginity tests.” Although the TNI’s surgeon
general, Maj. Gen. Daniel Tjen, recently stated that the
military was reviewing its recruitment procedures, including the “virginity
test” requirement for female recruits, he declined to provide any timetable for
possible elimination of the procedure. That’s likely because two of his
colleagues are enthusiastic supporters of “virginity tests” as a metric for
evaluating the suitability of female recruits. Military spokesman Faud Basya on
May 14 defended “virginity
tests” as a means of screening-out inappropriate female recruits. “If they are
no longer virgins, if they are naughty, it means their mentality is not good,”
Basya told The Guardian.
TNI Commander Gen. Moeldoko on May 16 praised “virginity
tests” as an indispensable “measure of morality” of female recruits.
Those statements are more than an appalling defense of the indefensible.
They highlight deep contempt for international human rights standards and
accepted medical practice at the very highest levels of the Indonesian
military. Such statements also display a profound lack of sensitivity to the
physical and psychological suffering that these “virginity tests” inflict on
untold numbers of women.
The ICMM national military delegations gathered in Bali this week have a
choice. They can maintain their feigned ignorance about the pain, trauma and
humiliation that the Indonesian military inflicts on women through its
“virginity tests.” Or the ICMM can stand on the side of non-discrimination,
basic decency and the promotion of professionalism in the armed forces, and
demand that these “tests” stop. For the Indonesian women who suffer these
abuses, the ICMM’s silence is deafening.
Phelim Kine is deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division. (JG Photo/Yudhi Sukma Wijaya)
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