There is No Such Thing as a Virginity Test

Host: This episode includes discussions of rape and sexual violence.

When the world feels dark, history is a light, 

Sri Rumiati: Hello. Good evening. 

Ngofeen: Good evening. Sri. How are you?

Host: If not an overhead light, at least like a spelunking light, the kind you strap to your forehead and it doesn't fit quite right, super tight but illuminates just enough so you can see a few feet in front of you. 

Montage of Archival News Footage: 

Archival/NPR: “More than a year of war in Sudan has devastated...”//

Archival/Al Jazeera: “To Bangladesh now where stick-wielding students...”//

Archival/BBC: “Demonstrates being held across Venezuela....”// 

Host: We live in the wake of certain changes from history that were once so big that now they seem inevitable.  The end of transatlantic slave trade, for example. At the same time, we live in the face of certain horrors that are immovable. Turn on the news and pick your poison. One part of our brain, I think, grieves, and we do all the things of grief: denial, bargaining.

One part of us wants to know how, strategically how, do you make this bad thing one of those things that can change? That's what today's episode is all about. And it takes place during my lifetime in the middle of a military dictatorship in Indonesia. 

Sri Rumiati: I was born in 1958. Uh, the selection test was 1984. I was 26 years old. 

Host: So, imagine being 26, graduated from college, psychology major, and you get a summons from the state telling you that you have to enroll in the military or the police. You report for the required medical examinations and find out that you have to take a “virginity test.” This is what happened to General Sri Rumiati.

Sri Rumiati: There was no notice. There was no notification. We were all just asked to come and we were required to pass all of the selection criteria. There was no notice at all. I didn’t know what they are going to do with me. 

Host: You take a test about your heart rate. You take a test for your blood pressure. You take a whole bunch of tests. Next test, “virginity test.”

Sri Rumiati: We are all required to enter a room, and we are required to sit inside the maternity ward. We are asked to climb the maternity chair. We need to take off our panties. We were asked to open our legs. That's how they did it. A doctor did the so-called examination.

You should know that it was under the military dictatorship, military regime. It was very harsh. We cannot question it. Thus, I become a policewoman.

Host: I'm Ngofeen Mputubwele, and you're listening to Rights and Wrongs, a podcast from Human Rights Watch. I am a writer, a lawyer, and a radio producer. Human Rights Watch asked me to look at human rights hotspots around the world through the eyes and ears of the people on the front lines of history.

Andreas Harsono: The word virgin in Indonesian is dara, D A R A.

Meanwhile, the word blood is D. A. R. A. H. One character different. So that helped to create the myth: a woman who has sex for the first time will bleed. 

Host: Who are you and what do you do at Human Rights Watch? 

Andreas Harsono: My name is Andreas Harsono. I am a researcher on Indonesia . I'm based in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. 

Host: So to join the Indonesian Military, at the time Sri Rumiati went to join, women had to pass the “virginity test”. And soo you might be wondering, okay, so, but what does that have to do with joining the Indonesian military? Like, why was this a test women had to pass to join? Can you tell me what their justification was? 

Andreas Harsono: The justification is... they said... we want to have a morally fit women to join our forces. We don't want sex workers. What will the public say if we have former sex workers joining the police force? That is the justification. 

Host: But as Andreas pointed out:   

Andreas Harsono: According to the World Health Organization, there is no scientific evidence that we can examine someone never having sex, by examining the genitalia. There is no way, there is no scientific evidence about that. 

Host: Human Rights Watch faced a similar issue in India. It no longer happens there, but does happen elsewhere, so it’s worth listening to and hearing about. In cases of sexual violence, the so called “two finger test” would be used as the basis for a medical legal document.

Meenaskhi: What used to happen, and often in some places continues to happen, is that the doctors would write and detail about the presence of the hymen or the size of the vagina and that finding was used by defense lawyers to suggest that the sexual act was either consensual, based on consent, or much worse, this survivor was of loose moral character. 

Host: Meenakshi Ganguly, of Human Rights Watch, who supervisors the region Andreas works in.

Meenaskhi: This attachment, between virginity, or between actively sexual, and morality, is something that came up when my colleagues were speaking to people in Indonesia. 

Host: Okay. So now we have a thing that, you know, in Andreas's case and in General Sri Rumiati’s case, they want to change and it's at a governmental level, like even cultural level. 

Host: So, how, like, how do you go about the research for this? That's like, one of the first things in all these, all these interviews I've done is that typically, the researcher finds out about some situation and then they have to start interviewing people, or looking up documents, or something like that. In this case, like, how do you start researching for that? 

Andreas: My first handicap is I am a man. I believe that for interview on sexual violence, this is a sexual violence, man can ignite the trauma from the victims because most perpetrators, including in this practice, the doctors are mostly men. And of course, the high-ranking officers who order this practice are all, almost all, are men.

Host: Andreas hires the female consultant … 

Andreas: To do the interviews, both of us travel. We usually approach woman NGOs. We travel to 18 cities all over Indonesia from Medan, Pekanbaru, Padang, Gorontalo, Makassar, Bali, etc. We usually approach a local NGO first, woman NGOs, and they will give us one or two names. We interview the first or the second woman. And after that snowballing, they will give us more sources.

{Overlapping tape of testimonies}

Andreas: The one who interview is the female consultant, the woman consultant. Although, in some cases, with the older woman, mostly retired officers, they say that ‘you can do the interview yourself’. 

Host: I remember hearing that because you weren't doing the interviews, sometimes you were outside the room. 

Andreas: Yeah. Usually, I introduce myself and introduce the consultant. I told the source, the sources about the methodology, the purpose, et cetera. After that, I excuse myself and going outside, sitting outside. Although sometime, because the room was not too big, I can still hear the woman crying. This interview is so emotional, and the sobbing can be heard from the outside.

I was initially ignorant as an Indonesian man, I was ignorant. But the more I listened to the sobbing, especially, and of course the audio recording later, I learned that this is traumatizing. This is degrading. This is not fair. And of course, the more interviews that we did, the more similarities that I heard from.

I remember one retired Air-Force officer. She told me directly, because I did the interview myself. She told me that after getting married, she had a honeymoon in Bali. The first night, when, you know, new couple, they wanted to make love, she was traumatized. She cannot open her leg to, to make love with, with her new husband. 

Some, some other women, they said they are afraid of seeing bright light. And having really bright light reminded them of the maternity ward when they had the, the so-called “virginity testing”. Some of them already 20 years, 30 years from seeing that bright light, but still they are traumatized by the bright light.

Host: That bright light, that's what General Sri Rumiati saw in the maternity ward when she was being tested for virginity as a recruit. 

Ngofeen: I have to imagine that many, many people went through that test before you. I am wondering what made you sort of say to yourself, ‘I want this to change.’ 

Sri Rumiati: One of my first jobs as a policewoman was facing a five-year-old girl who was raped. And it was terrible, of course. But in the process, because I'm a psychologist, I was often involved in the recruitment of new policewomen in the police. And I saw the form. I saw that it is being practiced. I said it is not fair for girls, for women who used to be raped, if they have to undergo this kind of test. 

Host: General Rumiati asks if she can be interviewed too. Andreas goes to interview her. 

Andreas: Because it was a video interview, she said, I want to wear my uniform. So look, this is an active  police general. She refused to be interviewed in her civilian clothing. She would like to put on her full uniform, standing in front of her institution, her office, with the billboard behind her. And I interviewed her. And she said, ‘This is wrong’. Right in front of that very police institution billboard behind her. She was then a lecturer at the police academy. 

Host: So, as a psychologist, how did that shape your perspective?

Sri Rumiati: So there is no study to say that women who are not, quote unquote, “virgins” are not productive. Or women who, quote unquote, “lost their virginity” are not productive. There is no such study. And there is also no study that says that women who are not virgins are morally unfit. There is no such study with that kind of conclusion.

Host: So, you do these interviews when you do many of them, you described going to many cities across the country. Did you say that the territory of Indonesia spreads like geographically... it's as far as London to where? 

Andreas: Baghdad, Iraq. 

Host: No, that's how big Indonesia is? 

Andreas: It's big. 

Host: Wow.

Andreas: This is big.  

Host: Okay. I mean, I knew it was big. I didn't know it was like big, big. Um, okay. What's the next step? Now you've talked to everybody, then what do you have to do? 

Andreas: We published the first report in 2014, late 2014, about the police. Massive media coverage. All hell broke loose. 

Archival/Jakarta Globe/CGTN/KABB: Virginity test for female police officers, a long standing practice in Indonesia… A human rights watchdog has condemned the police force's traumatic practice... In Indonesia, joining the police force springs within a sense of pride. 

Andreas: You name them. National media like Kompas, Tempo, CNN International, BBC, Al Jazeera. You name all of them. The Telegraph in the UK, ABC Australia.

Archival/CGTN: As CCTV’s Andy Sapucha reports, human rights groups are demanding a hault to this kind of recruitment process.

HRW Ad/Belkis Wille: My Name is Belkis Wille and I’m an associate director in the Crisis, Conflict and Arms division at Human Rights Watch. Recently, a colleague and I traveled to the remote Nuba Mountains in Sudan. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled there to escape fighting between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces. It was only by visiting camps there, where no other international organization is present, that we were able to collect the stories of people who were subjected to and who witnessed horrific attacks, killings, rape and torture by the warring parties. My colleague and I are now urgently writing up our findings, and we will use our report to press countries with influence in and over Sudan to protect civilians and send desperately needed aid. We can’t do work like this without your support. Please go to our website, hrw.org/podcast/donate. Thank you. 

Host: Back to Andreas’s supervisor at Human Rights Watch, Meenaskshi Ganguly. We talked about the many ways in which human rights advocates get this type of work done...

Meenakshi: Our partners, our partners on the ground are crucial. Because when we, when we are face confronted with a, with a state or with an issue that seems like, you know, no one's going to shift on it, we already know that there are people who are working on this. And if we are able to determine that we can contribute, then the fact that we are able to produce written material, which has been reviewed and assessed, uh, worked on by our policy people, by our legal team, and often that is where to a point where there is a very strong argument set in international law, gives all of us, not just Human Rights Watch, but also our partners, a way to begin a conversation

Host: I feel like I never noticed this point and it gets overlooked. How does Human Rights Watch get attention? By publishing a report yes – but it is a meticulously documented and reviewed piece of research. The sort of documentary nature of the work is a model to anyone engaged in advocacy or human rights work. It doesn’t just say, “here’s what’s going on.” It says, “here are my citations, here are my sources” But then beyond that, the plea for change is specific. It isn’t just “Change this thing, it’s bad.” It's “change this thing because there is a right enshrined in law that is being violated.” And finally, the advocacy is super strategic.

Meenakshi: The other thing that we work on is to try and often find a little chink in a wall of what appears to be insurmountable. 

Andreas: I went to the police headquarters with some women, including a politician, including a female journalist. 

Host: Andreas again, after issuing the report. 

Andreas: The police, of course, were upset with our report. They looked very bad because of the international media coverage. I went into a room with maybe, more than a dozen generals and some colonel, three of us, me and two other, two women. And there were like 15, 18 police officers sitting around the table. And one by one they questioned me. They challenged me. It was like an hour. I guess I answered all the questions correctly, that this is proper research methodologically solid. I travel here, there, you know, and, and then I started to sense that they're agreeing with me when one of them said that ‘I saw that.”

Host: This general begins to explain what he saw. 

Andreas: Once I was involved in the recruitment, in the test, in Pontianak, in western Borneo. And one of the women, after being tested, she returned to the waiting room and told the other female applicants. All of them left the room. 

That's when I thought, “Wow, it means that I am totally right, I am on a much stronger position now.” 

Host: There was the chink in the wall that Andreas needed.

Andreas: But then one general who was very pissed off, the most senior of them all: ‘Why you did that only to us, the police? What is your motivation? Why you don't do it toward the military?’ 

Host: At that point, General Rumiati is part of a push to stop the police, to stop its practice.

Sri Rumiati: The National Police Chief at the time agreed with me, and he issued an instruction to end this practice. 

Host: Andreas works to get even the military to do it as well. 

Andreas: We published in 2015 on the practices within the army, which has the biggest number of female officers, the navy, and the air force. And then the same thing happened again. Many army generals, top military officers, they denied. They said, ‘we also do it with, with men’. One general said, ‘we also check men testicle’. It is different because this is mostly for medical reason, hernia, you know. But then the military was much more stubborn. They did not want to confront this issue. But later I learned that other armed forces from around the world, from the US, the UK, Australia, Japan, Canada, behind closed doors, they asked this practice with the Indonesian counterpart and it created quite a lot of pressure to end this practice. 

Host: In other words, there was public advocacy and there was behind the scenes changing of people's minds, who then exerted pressure on the people that mattered.

Andreas: Enough critical mass. And of course, by 2022, the army decided to announce it stopped the practice. And by 2023, all the three branches of the military, the Navy, the Air Force and the Army, of course, they all announced that this practice should be banned. And there is a military instruction not to do this practice.

Host: So it's, I guess it's like interesting sort of from a strategic standpoint, it's like there's an issue that comes up. There's a human, right - in this case, there's this human rights issue that comes up that you learn about and you're told, ‘okay, go research it’. And basically you research it, you interview a whole bunch of people. You publish a report. The report has a lot of media attention around it, which then creates a lot of interest and political pressure because it's sort of like everyone's suddenly like, ‘what is this happening? What is this? I've never heard of this. Why are you guys doing this?’ But then you have to do it another time and a year later, you have to do it another time three years later, obviously different branches each time. And sort of by that third time, now enough people behind closed doors are like, ‘you should change this, you should change this, you should change this, you should change this’. So that another few years go by around 2022, and it's finally the first sort of statement of we're not doing this anymore.

Andreas: The police did it in 2015, and then the army 2022, and then the rest of the armed forces 2023. But you know what? I have to say that many Indonesian women's rights NGOs did work on this. 

Host: I love Andreas bringing up this point, like, not me completely missing the point. It's not one organization represented by Andreas. It's a whole lot of people, and particularly in this case, women, who are impacted, working to change the situation. 

Andreas: They used the research to do their own advocacy. They created more pressure. They met with Indonesian generals. Every time there is a new general army, Navy. Uh, Air Force, you name it, president, new president, chief of staff, they all send letters, letter after letter, talking after talking, meeting after meeting, uh, and this is thanks to the National Commission on Women's Rights. They are the one who spearheaded the advocacy. 

Host: General Rumiati made this really funny comment at the beginning of our interview. 

Ngofeen: I love that you said that now you're bored of talking about it. So it means you did what you accomplished, you set out to do.

Sri Rumiati: I'm already retired now. I'm a retired policewoman now. 

Host: You’ve been listening to Rights and Wrongs, from Human Rights Watch. This episode was produced by me and Curtis Fox. Our associate producer is Sophie Soloway. Thanks also to Ifé Fatunase, Stacy Sullivan, and Anthony Gale. Music this episode is by me, Milo and Matthew Hughes. Archival News Clips this episode are from NPR, Al Jazeera, BBC, Jakarta Globe, and FOX. 

I’m Ngofeen Mputubwele. See you next time.