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'Virginity test' for female police cadets slammed
Jakarta Globe - November 18, 2014
"They were then told to enter a room and told to lie down. The medical staffer, a female, then carried out the 'two-finger' test," Wina, not her real name, told Human Rights Watch in a video released on Tuesday.
The so-called virginity test is a discredited procedure to determine whether a woman's hymen is intact. The hymen can perforate for a wide variety of reasons other than sexual contact, such as strenuous physical exercise.
"I [was] humiliated and scared for having to do the virginity test. There were candidates who fainted due to the stress." The ordeal occurred just last year, the girl says, and the virginity test was part of a health examination as a prerequisite to enter the police force.
"I learned about the virginity test only when I was about to take the physical examination and [was told] that there is an 'internal examination.' At first I didn't know that it was the virginity test."
The selection committee, Wina says, told the applicants that they could resign from the selection process if the candidates did not want to go through with the virginity test. But most had gone through so much preparation for the requirements to apply that they all agreed.
"I felt I had no power to object because if I refused to undergo the virginity test, I would not be able to enter the police force," she says. Wina is just one of several female police and police applicants interviewed by the New York-based rights group between May and October this year. All of the women who had undergone the test told HRW that all the women in their police class were subjected to the virginity exam as well.
Applicants who had "failed" were not necessarily expelled from the force, but all of the women described the test as painful and traumatic.
Women on the force said they have raised the issue with senior police officials, who at times claimed the practice had been discontinued.
However, the test remains listed as a requirement for women applicants the National Police's official recruitment website: "Women who want to be policewomen must undergo virginity tests. So all women who want to become policewomen should keep their virginity. Married women are not eligible.
Rights activist and medical professionals say the practice of inserting two fingers into police recruits' vaginas to determine their virginity has no basis in medical science, and is furthermore intrusive, degrading and painful. HRW says the test is still being widely applied, despite its discriminatory and unscientific basis.
The Jakarta Globe spoke with one young woman on condition of anonymity, who said her former life ambition of becoming a National Police officer – inspired by a close family member who works as a police officer in a major Indonesian city – was scuttled by the virginity test.
The young woman told the Jakarta Globe that, in anticipation of the police exam's virginity test, she had saved about Rp 10 million ($820) to undergo a hymenoplasty that would reconstruct her hymen, by a doctor operating clandestinely in North Jakarta. The operation was a success – until the prospective young police recruit went horseback riding about a week later. She now works for a foreign police force.
Yefri Heriyani, director of the women's rights group Nurani Perempuan in Padang, West Sumatra, who has encountered numerous female police applicants over the past 12 years, said that the virginity tests had left many of those women traumatized.
"These policewomen experience trauma and stress while doing the virginity tests, yet [the National Police make] no clear attempt to help them recover. No effort is made to help them out of their stress and trauma. Consequently, it will affect their lives in the long term. Many of them blame themselves for taking the test," Yefri said.
A female police cadet who took the test this year in Pekanbaru, Riau, told the rights group that the test was "humiliating."
"My group of about 20 [applicants] was asked... to take off our clothes, including our bras and underpants," she told the group. "Only those who were menstruating could keep [wearing] underpants." The woman said she was asked to sit on a table while a female doctor did the "two-finger" test.
"I don't want to remember those bad experiences. It was humiliating. Why should we take off our clothes in front of strangers?" the woman said. "[The test] was discriminatory. It is not necessary. I think it should be stopped.
Officials say the "virginity tests" are authorized under Chief of Police's Regulation on Health Inspection Guidelines for Police Candidates. Article 36 requires female police academy applicants to undergo an "obstetrics and gynecology" examination.
Police officials acknowledged that such a test used to be administered, but denied that this was the case today. "There's no such thing anymore," Comr. Gen. Badrodin Haiti, the National Police's deputy chief, said on Tuesday as quoted by Detik.com. "Maybe a long time ago, for the female officers in the old days," he added.
While the regulation does not specify that a "virginity test" is to be administered as part of the exam, two senior policewomen told Human Rights Watch that it has long been the practice, adding that the test is given early in the recruitment process as part of the applicants' physical exam.
Insp. Gen. Ronny F. Sompie, a spokesman for the National Police, said new recruits, both male and female, were tested for reproductive health. "What we do during the selection is a thorough medical check-up [which includes a] test of the reproductive organs. So it's not a virginity test," Ronny said.
He said the reproductive health test was necessary to ensure that the applicants were healthy enough to undergo the arduous training regime in the police academy. He added it was also to minimize the spread of sexually transmitted infections between cadets during their time in the academy – an explanation that would seem to strain credulity, since cadets train in separate academies, both of which are highly gender-segregated environments.
There is little evidence that the National Police have taken steps to stop the tests, HRW said. Human Rights Watch has documented the use of abusive "virginity tests" by police in several other countries, including Egypt, India, and Afghanistan.
Several schools in Indonesia met with wide condemnation after announcing last year that they are considering virginity tests as part of their enrollment requirements.
"So-called virginity tests are discriminatory and a form of gender-based violence – not a measure of women's eligibility for a career in the police," said Nisha Varia, associate women's rights director at HRW.
"This pernicious practice not only keeps able women out of the police, but deprives all Indonesians of a police force with the most genuinely qualified officers."
"The Indonesian National Police's use of 'virginity tests' is a discriminatory practice that harms and humiliates women," Varia said. "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."
"Virginity tests" have been recognized internationally as a violation of human rights, particularly the prohibition against "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" under Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Article 16 of the Convention against Torture, both of which Indonesia has ratified.
HRW said the practice also violates the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and other human rights treaties because men are not subjected to virginity testing.
The practice constitutes discrimination against women because it has the effect or purpose of denying women an equal basis as men the right to work as police officers, the group said.
Coerced virginity testing compromises the dignity of women and violates their physical and mental integrity, HRW said. One retired police officer said her class of female recruits in 1965 had to undergo the test – and had lasting effects.
The National Police plans to increase the number of women on the force to 21,000 by December. With a total force of about 400,000 police officers, women are expected to constitute 5 percent of the force, up from 3 percent currently.
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