Bambi Eloriaga-Amago
Following a series of shocking sexual crimes perpetrated on children, Indonesia is moving to legalize chemical castration as an extra punishment on those convicted of these crimes.
The move was agreed upon during a recent cabinet meeting and is just awaiting the signature of President Joko Widodo. It would then become a presidential directive, turning the measure automatically into law without it going through deliberations at parliament.
Muhammad Prasetyo, Indonesia’s attorney general, voiced out the country’s shock and outrage over the recent spate of crimes.
“We are very concerned about child molestation abuse cases. This phenomenon has reached extraordinary levels,” he said at a press conference last October 20. “It has been agreed that there will be additional punishment in order to make people think a thousand times before doing this.”
The latest victim of such a crime was a nine-year-old girl named Putri Nur Fauziah whose body was found stuffed inside a cardboard box somewhere in the country’s capital city, Jakarta. Forensic examination showed that she had been subjected to repeated sexual abuse and that she was strangled and killed by what authorities believed to be a cellphone charger cable.
Meanwhile last year, a six-year-old student was gang-raped by janitors working at the Jakarta Intercultural School.
These and other such crimes had people clamoring for stricter punishment. Chemical castration involves injecting the perpetrator with female hormones to decrease libido or sexual urges.
After South Korea, Indonesia would be the second Asian country to approve the use of chemical castration as punishment. Other countries that allow the measure include Russia, Poland, and several US states.
