JAKARTA – Sex offenders in Indonesia will be chemically castrated or executed under tough new laws passed by the Indonesian parliament, prompted by the shocking gang rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl earlier this year.
Repeat offenders and those who abuse family members face 10 to 20 years jail and courts can also order their chemical castration and tagging with a microchip. Those who murder their victims or leave them with permanent physical or psychological trauma, or give them a sexually transmitted disease, can be executed, the Mail Online reported.
Indonesia allows death penalty, chemical castration for child rapists
The harsher penalties were prompted by the shocking rape and murder of 14-year-old girl Yuyun in Sumatra by a gang of 12 men and boys in May.
Her battered body was found three days later in woods, tied up and naked. Seven teenagers, aged 16 and 17, were jailed soon after for their part in the incident.
Indonesia is a hotspot for Western paedophiles, with more than 100 sex criminals caught travelling to the country since 2014 from Australia alone.
Australian man Robert Andrew Fiddes Ellis, who is on trial for the alleged sexual abuse of at least 11 girls between the ages of eight and 17 in Bali, will be spared as the laws are not retroactive. He instead faces 16 years jail if convicted in the Denpasar District Court next Tuesday, according to The Australian.
Indonesia is the first Southeast Asian country to use chemical castration on sex offenders. Others include Russia, Poland, South Korea and some U.S. states.
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The new laws were welcomed by child protection advocates, but doctors and human rights activists have questioned its effectiveness.
National Commission for Child Protection chairman Arist Merdeka Sirait said the law would put a smile on the faces of children across Indonesia.
Indonesian Child Protection Agency commissioner Asrorun Niam said sexual abuse against minors was become increasingly rampant across Indonesia and harsher penalties would help.
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The Indonesian Doctors Association said chemical castration would do nothing to prevent child rape and barred its members from administering it.
“Numerous studies have shown that castration is not an effective deterrent, because sex crimes are not caused by hormonal impulses but by behavioural disorders,” chairman Daeng Muhammad Faqih said. “It would be unethical for doctors to be the ones executing the sentences. A doctor’s job is to save lives.”
