This sickening news came from Jambi, a city in Sumatra, Indonesia. The logic of Bambang Bayu Suseno, a local legislator, is that:

The idea is simple. Parents are obviously afraid of their daughters being deflowered before the time comes, so before they continue their studies, they can undergo the virginity test and automatically protect their dignity,” said Jambi legislative councilor Bambang Bayu Suseno.

He is proposing that female students undergo virginity tests before they can be admitted into public schools and existing students may be forced out if they were found to be no longer virgins. According to him, non-virgin girls are not worthy of education simply because they gave in to peer pressure. Note that he did not say anything about non-virgin boys.

While the province’s secretary spokesman rejected the idea, it is still astounding that someone at the legislative level even has this idea cross his mind. Education is a basic human right and to refuse anyone, virgin or not, is a violation and the law does not discriminate based on a person’s moral judgment.

The country has been drawn into the morality debate. The Minister for Communication and Information wants to block pornography to protect children and the eastern values of society and prosecute those who seek porn. Advocates of freedom of expression are being labeled as pro porn despite debating the principles of censorship rather than the content. An Aceh district chief wants to enact a bylaw making it compulsory for women to dress in a certain way to avoid inciting impure thoughts by men which may lead to rape.

This is Indonesia now. A country anchored in morality issues.

Update: The proposal has been rejected.

Apparently school is only for virgins

A well thought out piece on why the Indonesian government is hell bent on pushing through the decisions that it has set out to do. Two examples are:

• Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring’s crusade against porn on the internet to the point where he’s threatening to block BlackBerry services unless RIM filters out access to pornography from its channels.
• Religon Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali’s war against the Ahmadis, an officially unrecognized Islamic sect declared to be illegal due to difference in teachings from the widely accepted variety of Islam in Indonesia.

Both ministers and everything they stand for are highly unpopular among the opinionated, critical and well informed group. Unfortunately, this group isn’t strong enough to force a change yet.

These decisions are being made because human and individual rights as well as supposed common sense are largely irrelevant or inconsequential to the rest of the people who just wish that these things were never brought up in the first place.

Why does our government seem so frakkin stupid?