JAKARTA: Indonesian women are livid after prosecutors and the police announced they would not investigate allegations of rape by a police officer. A 19-year-old woman has accused a policeman of forcing her to take methamphetamine and then have sex with him, but Indonesian police said that the drug use of mutual as was the sexual intercourse. Women in the country are crying foul. “This is simply wrong,” said Jakarta-based social worker Emani Hassan, who told Bikyanews.com that “women in Indonesia continue to face this kind of hardship. They are coerced into situations by those in power positions and then assaulted. But the police continue to show they are unwilling to investigate their own.” The woman was allegedly made to take methamphetamine and then have sex with the police officer last Thursday while two other officers, who had also consumed the drug, watched. Police on Simeulue, an island in Aceh province, 150km off the west coast of Sumatra, confirmed that all three officers tested positive for the drug before one of them had sex with the woman. They have refused however, to describe the incident as rape, claiming that the officers paid the woman afterwards and that she “enjoyed it", according to reports in the local press. “The three officers admitted to violating this girl and paying her 200,000 rupiah (615 baht) for the enjoyment," Simeulue Police chief Adj Sr Comr Parluatan Siregar told the Indonesian language Serambi Indonesia newspaper. “So it wasn't a rape. If she claims she was really raped by the officers, why didn't she get a medical check-up done when she was in the hospital?" Hassan argued that “it should not matter if the woman consented to the drugs, because she has made it clear that she did not consent to sex with the officer. It is unfortunate and shows how far we have to go as a society before women's rights are protected.” Parluatan added that the woman consented to have sex with the officers. The three police officers were arrested only for drug use, he said. “All three tested positive for using meth," he said. “They all agreed to use meth before [having sex] so that they would enjoy it more. That's what they claimed." BN
