A plan to make female high school students undergo mandatory virginity tests has been met with outrage from activists, who argue that it discriminates against women and violates their human rights. Education chief Muhammad Rasyid, of Prabumulih district in south Sumatra put forward the idea, describing it as "an accurate way to protect children from prostitution and free sex".
He said he would use the city budget to begin tests early next year if MPs approved the proposal. The test would require female senior school students aged 16 to 19 to have their hymen examined every year until graduation.
Boys, however, would undergo no investigation into whether they had had sex. The plan has met with some support from local politicians, who said the test would help cut down on "rampant" promiscuity in the district.
The proposal seems to be in response to increasing cases of premarital sex, local website Kompas reported , including the recent arrest of six senior high school students for alleged prostitution.
It is the third plan of its kind in Muslim-majority Indonesia , where similar drafts were proposed in West Java in , and again in Sumatra in , but dropped after a public outcry. Local and national MPs, activists, rights groups and even the local Islamic advisory council have all denounced Rasyid's plan as potentially denying female students the universal right to education, in addition to targeting girls for an act that may not have even been consensual, such as sexual assault.
