Violence against Women in Indonesia

This post is a follow-up to the V-Day: One Million Rising post from a couple of weeks ago. In that post, I talked a bit about violence against women and how I have become more familiar with the topic. I mentioned that there are a number of ways women experience violence, one of which is rape.

There was a recent editorial written in the Jakarta Post Newspaper by an American woman living in Indonesia. She was highlighting several recent incidents in Indonesia that had happened to young women (really just girls) living there.

• First, was an 11-year-old from a family of Jakarta whose father confessed to raping her. She was found to have the same sexually transmitted disease as her father. The girl passed away from an inflammation of the brain.

• Second came the report of a 13-year-old who had been married to a 39-year-old in a Balinese Hindu ceremony. She became pregnant but the baby was born premature and died. 

• Then there was an incident in the fall of last year where Facebook was used to lure a 14-year-old. She was gang-raped and they planned to traffic her but due to media attention she was released. You can read more of the story here. 

Incidents like this occur across Indonesia on a regular basis. They happen across islands and people groups. One of the biggest risk factor is poverty. For some poverty drives families to marry off their young daughters. Sometimes they are sent away to work where they are risk for human trafficking and abuse. Others are lured by promises of cell phones, new clothes, or fees for school into a trap.

I recently came across this video on YouTube which highlights the risk young women are at and simple interventions that can help save them. I thought it was worth sharing...

V-Day: One Billion Rising

Did you know that 1 in 3 women will experience violence in their lifetime? That means over 1 billion women will be impacted by violence. That statistic shocks me but does not surprise me.

I remember when I first visited Indonesia in 2000 and I went on a village health day trip. While were were there doing prenatal care, giving immunizations to the kids etc and a young woman was brought to us. She had wounds around her wrists and ankles. She was catatonic - awake but unresponsive to us and the world around us. We were asked to bring her back to the hospital and see if we could help her. I didn't really understand what was going on until it was explained to me. The young woman had gone to work as a house maid in neighboring Malaysia. While there she had been kept captive and abused. That was really the first time I heard about human trafficking. Since then I have become much more familiar with violence against women, whether that is human trafficking, rape, domestic abuse etc.

For the last 15 years Valentine's Day has also been called V-Day. V-Day's mission is simple. It demands that violence against women and girls must end. So today, February 14th, 2013, V-Day's 15th Anniversary, they are inviting one billion women and those who love them to walk out, DANCE, RISE UP, AND DEMAND an end to this violence. They are events happening around the world in person and throughout social media like Facebook and Twitter. You can find a lot more information here. You can also watch this YouTube video.