Unpublished article: Revise pornographic law, demand for privacy!

Sexual violence is a latent phenomenon. This is an urgent case that must be taken into national awareness since it is happened in almost every aspect in our life. Government must be aware to sexual violence, sexual harassment and sexual exploitation toward its citizens. This is the place where the government must take place and intervene strictly.

We have seen recently that government tries to regulate the body of its citizens, this can be seen in Ariel Peter Pan case and the proposal to test virginity toward high school student. Our country seems to forget that sexual violence is more urgent to be handled.

Rifka Annisa, an NGO based in Jogja released data that since 2000 up to 2010 there are 204 sexual harassment cases with 27 (13%) committed by children, and the rape cases are 370 with 34 (9,1%) children as the subject. The further data says that children age 15-18 are the most in numbers committing sexual violence followed by category age 12-15 and age 5-12.

Moreover, the national commission for women has revealed a study that since 1998 up to 2010 almost one third violence case toward women is sexual violence, there are 91.311 sexual violence cases from the total 295.836. This phenomenon happened almost in every aspect from the personal, public and country level.

These are urgent phenomenon faced by our country especially for women and children. Most of them life in insecurity toward this phenomenon and sadly they face it as a common. Unfortunately, pornographic law no. 44/2008 which have a spirit to protect its citizens from crime in regards seems to not solving these problem, instead of trying to protect our morality it violates the rights to privacy. This law has intervened and intruded too much toward citizens private life instead of protecting citizens life.

Pornographic law has been predicted would violate individual rights to privacy since it was arranged by the parliament from the very first time. This law has ever been proposed into judicial review at 2009, unfortunately it was rejected due its minimum of proof. This is a proof that this law will violate the right to privacy of its citizens. But now, the new proofs have been found and what is worried by civil society has been a reality.

One case of violation is punishment toward Indonesian’s pop singer Ariel Peterpan alias Nazriel Irham who has been sentenced 3 and a half years of prison and fined for 250 million rupiahs due to its private sex video with look-alike celebrity Luna Maya and Cut Tari.

This is a real threat to public. As we all know, the Ariel-alike talent in that video is made for private consumption that has been spread by some individuals out of the permission of the video maker. Ariel is a victim. As he is suspected as the video maker and get public embarrassment, he is sentenced for a crime that he even does not do.

Looking through the a lot of sex video made by Indonesian people a few years lately, we must be fair there many sex video made by Indonesian people. Particularly, there also video sex scandal involving parliament member a few years ago. However, they have never been sentenced as if Ariel get. However, this is more than Ariel and his scandal. This is a violation by the country into citizen’s private life.

A private made sex video is not a dangerous thing as long as it is used for private consumption and accessed only by adults. What is Ariel did is not intended to be a public consumption and just for private consumption.
Our country must not intrude into private life. Universal Declaration of Human Rights has guaranteed the right of privacy in article 12 mentioning that no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his/her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Furthermore, our government has ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and as the consequence, they have to follow this agreement. In a democratic society, right to privacy must be guaranteed since its protect us from the misuse of power from powerful people even if we are not guilty at all.

This case has been a prove that once privacy been ignored, a victim would be violated by the powerful side in this case the moralist. Any argument trying to intrude into private life based on moral argument must not been used in punishing someone’s privacy. This is more than just pornography. Today, Ariel has been sentenced and this is just a start of intervention from the country toward its citizens.

Rather than protecting, the government makes and adds its citizens to the list of victims of sexual violence, in this moment it is the government itself who commit violence against its citizens. Meanwhile, there are no real efforts to address sexual violence cases, as data from Rifka Annisa and the National Commission for Women as mentioned above.

We have to revise the pornographic law, since we have penal code regulating porn material. There’s nothing wrong with sexual desire in private place as long as can be controlled by the individual itself. What is look dirty by a dirty mind will always look dirty.

Rather than violating rights to privacy, pornographic law must focus on how to protect our country especially for women and children from sexual violence. These are our common enemy.