© 2014 Andreas Harsono/Human Rights Watch 
 
 (Jakarta) – The Indonesian government subjects female applicants for Indonesia’s National Police to discriminatory and degrading “virginity tests,” Human Rights Watch said today. The organization said it had interviewed eight current and former female police officers and applicants in six cities, including two who said they had undergone virginity tests this year. “Still, she can pass the recruitment process.” 
 
 Local women’s and human rights groups counter that examining the hymen is not conclusive in determining virginity and have demanded an end to the practice. “Police authorities in Jakarta need to immediately and unequivocally abolish the test, and then make certain that all police recruiting stations nationwide stop administering it.” 
 
 The tests contravene National Police principles that recruitment must be both “nondiscriminatory” and “humane,” and violate the international human rights to equality, nondiscrimination, and privacy. Col. Dede Rahayu, who runs the Police Women’s School in Jakarta, which conducts a seven-month training program for new recruits out of high school, said she did not have a virginity test when she applied to join the force in 1991.  An activist has urged National Police chief Sutarman to immediately issue a regulation to abolish virginity tests for female police applicants. The virginity test is carried out based on National Police Regulation No.5/2009 on health examination guidelines for police candidates. Article 36 of the regulation stipulates that a female police officer cadet must undergo an obstetric and gynecology examination. During a mandatory physical examination, a doctor led her into a private room, asked her to disrobe and administered a so-called virginity test, inserting two fingers to determine whether her hymen was intact. Earlier, the National Police’s medical and health center head, Arthur Tampi, asserted that no female police applicant failed the recruitment process solely because she was no longer a virgin. “The test is associated with prejudices about women’s morality, has no medical benefit in determining the health of an individual and causes trauma for those who undergo it,” the National Commission on Violence Against Women, an independent state body, said in a statement. So all women who want to become policewomen should keep their virginity.” Married women are not eligible for the job. This measure will also protect women from discrimination,” National Commission on Violence against Women (Komnas Perempuan) chairperson Yuniyanti Chuzaifah said as quoted by Antara news agency in Semarang on Tuesday. “Similar tests are not carried out for men because of differences in anatomy, but also because sociologically, it is women who are considered the symbol of purity, not men.” 
 
 Men are not even asked about their virginity, women’s groups say. The policewomen “who said they had that test didn’t understand what a virginity test is,” she said, noting that all applicants do undergo a rectal exam and that they may have confused the two. Photo 
 
 JAKARTA, Indonesia — Col. Sri Rumiati made her career in the Indonesian National Police, but the day she was tested for it, in 1984, is one she would rather forget. The National Police chief, Gen. Sutarman, told journalists during a visit to West Java Province last month that female recruits did not undergo virginity tests. The argument has been, ‘We don’t want prostitutes in the police force.’ ” 
 
 Indonesia is a socially conservative country where official state doctrine still encourages women to be homemakers and caregivers to their children. High Commissioner Rumiati, the police psychologist now teaching at the Graduate School of Police Sciences in Jakarta, told Human Rights Watch: 
 
 
 
 I joined the police in 1984 via student military service. “It’s not about virginity.” 
 
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 Women who apply to be police officers in Indonesia have been subjected to virginity testing since at least 1965, when the police force was placed under the command of the military. I raised the issue again, asking all the police recruitment teams to stop the virginity test. Arthur said health and medical tests, including the virginity test, were required to make sure applicants could take part in all police educational activities. They said, “Do we want to have prostitutes joining the police?” 
 
 Is there scientific evidence that a woman who is not a virgin will be less productive than a virgin? “We don’t know how widespread the practice is, and we don’t know if it’s nationwide,” said Andreas Harsono, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Indonesia. The women’s rights activist went on to say many women had lost their virginity in sexual assault. Moreover, she said, the National Police had stated that such tests did not determine whether a female candidate would pass the National Police recruitment process.
– Women hoping to become police officers in Indonesia need to be strong, healthy—and should have an intact hymen, officials say, to determine whether or not they are moral. The revelation has sparked a new round of debates about women's rights in this highly conservative nation, the New York Times reports. "Similar tests are not carried out for men because of differences in anatomy, but also because sociologically, it is women who are considered the symbol of purity, not men," says an independent state body on violence against women. Critics also say that the tests (which involve a doctor inserting fingers inside a woman) are discriminatory, traumatic, and inconclusive considering that hymens can be damaged by other means, like horseback riding or contact sports. A Human Rights Watch report and video sparked the debate last month about such tests, which have been going on for 50 years or more under the radar. "We don’t know how widespread the practice is, and we don’t know if it’s nationwide," says an HRW researcher. "But it’s there. ... The argument has been, 'We don’t want prostitutes in the police force.'" A top police official tells the Jakarta Post that a failed virginity test only hurts a candidate's chances rather than disqualifying her, but a woman's rights activist says that's all the more reason to abolish the practice. Last year, an education official in Indonesia proposed giving high-school girls virginity tests to thwart prostitution and promiscuity, but the notion was scrapped after widespread outrage on social media sites.