| Résumé: | Sexual rights are one of the fundamental human rights citizens expect when they live in a well-functioning democracy. While Indonesia has been a democratic nation for more than two decades, there is limited access to sexual rights as might be understood in a global context. For instance, there is little legal protection for consenting adults who have sex outside heterosexual marriage, and even within marriage women find it hard to seek sexual justice, even when marital rape has occurred. This article explores Indonesia’s relationship with sexual rights and security, focusing on the years after 1998 when democratic reform was introduced. The article uses the notion of sexual rights to refer to the ability of consenting adults to have their sexual rights protected, including freedom from sexual coercion, ability to fulfil consenting sexual relationships, ability to access to quality sexual education, and free access to reproductive healthcare. The article charts changes in Indonesia’s relationship to sexuality, revealing the increasingly draconian measures used to literally police sexuality (e.g. police officers are lawfully able to enter private homes in some provinces to check the marriage certificates of couples). With a focus on police, the article makes clear that currently in Indonesia, sexual practices are not a private matter, but rather a matter for overt and often punitive state surveillance, often by police.
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