JAKARTA: The Coordinating Human Development and Culture Ministry revealed that Indonesia had been seeing a rising trend of divorce and domestic abuse is the top reason behind it, alongside other factors including financial problems and adultery.
According to the ministry's Children, Women and Youth Quality Improvement deputy, Woro Srihastuti, 54 per cent of divorcing couples last year cited constant conflict and arguing as the reason behind their separation, with around 1,400 reporting domestic abuse in their marriage.
Woro noted that a large majority of the abuse victims were women and children. The divorce rate has been rising, especially after COVID-19, when public services were put on hold.
“In 2021, the divorce cases stood at 447,743 (a sharp increase from 291,667 in 2020 during the pandemic) and grew to 516,334 cases in the following year,” Woro told journalists at her office on July 15, adding that the number shrank to 463,654 last year.
Separate data released by Statistics Indonesia in February also showed that divorces due to domestic abuse had been on the rise over the last three years.
Last year, the agency documented approximately 5,714 divorces linked to domestic abuse, marking a 4 per cent increase from the 2022 figure and an 8 per cent rise compared with the year prior.
The increasing trend is further reflected by more frequent reports of fatal abuse against wives.
Earlier this month, a 28-year-old woman from Purworejo, Central Java, was reportedly beaten to death by her husband while she was six months pregnant with their daughter.
She crawled to a relative’s house in the middle of the night to seek help, but passed away in hospital a few hours later.
Last month, an employee of state-owned railway company PT Kereta Api Indonesia’s (KAI), Andika Ahid Widianto, allegedly strangled and beat his wife to death in East Jakarta.
Prior to marrying the victim, Andika had been divorced by his first wife for allegedly committing domestic abuse, but she did not report the abuse to the police.
The Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry recorded 15,688 cases of domestic abuse experienced by women in 2023, an increase of around 4 per cent from the previous year’s 15,106 cases.
The ministry data also revealed that domestic abuse made up around 66 per cent of all cases of violence against women recorded by authorities last year.
Similarly, in its 2023 report, the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) stated that violence against wives was the most common type of gender-based violence reported to the institution, with a total of 674 cases.
Komnas Perempuan commissioner Andy Yentriyani said the figures reported by various institutions remained "the tip of the iceberg”, as a lot of incidents remained unreported due to stigma.
"Even if the victims decide to divorce their abusers, they tend not to report their cases to the police," Andy told The Jakarta Post recently.
Andy argued that, although there had already been a specific law in place in Indonesia to deal with domestic abuse for around two decades, the government needed to put more resources into addressing the issue.
"We need longer premarital classes for soon-to-be brides and grooms, particularly from religious leaders. Currently, soon-to-be-married couples only receive a two-hour premarital class from the Religious Affairs Ministry, which is far from enough," she said.
Police officers should also be given training on handling domestic abuse cases so that they can better identify victims who are at risk of experiencing escalating violence and who may hurt themselves.
Khotimun Susanti, who works at the Jakarta branch of the Legal Aid Foundation’s Association of Indonesian Women for Justice (LBH Apik) said that education remained the most crucial aspect to change the culture of silence surrounding domestic abuse.
"We need to educate the public to take domestic abuse seriously and to stop seeing it as a private matter. Not only that, we also need to teach children about equality in marriage and how to solve conflicts without violence," Khotimun told the Post.
She added that the government must also provide victims of domestic abuse with psychological counselling, financial aid and safe houses so that they were not afraid to leave their abusive households.
"Authorities need to establish some sort of victim trust fund so that victims of domestic abuse have enough resources to leave their abusers and they can support themselves and their children after their marriages end," she said. – The Jakarta Post/ANN
