Enlarge image
Couple holding hands in Jakarta: Lovers in Indonesia will have a much harder time in the future
Photo: MAST IRHAM/EPA
In Indonesia, sex outside of marriage will be banned by law and punished with up to a year in prison.
The parliament in the Southeast Asian island state approved a corresponding draft law on Tuesday.
The new rules apply to locals and tourists.
Critics had previously urged the House of Representatives not to pass the new law: it violated civil rights in the largest Islamic country in the world.
The new legislation is scheduled to come into force in 2025.
"Indonesia wants to take the path of law-violating catastrophe by criminalizing extramarital sex," Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, warned on Twitter a few days ago.
Hundreds of people took to the streets in several Indonesian cities on Monday to protest the project.
Already in 2019 there was a draft law for a new code of conduct.
However, it was initially postponed due to mass protests.
Now not only sex among unmarried people should be banned: according to the law, couples should no longer live together before marriage.
Violation would result in six months imprisonment.
However, the police would only investigate if a family member files a complaint.
This point is seen as a compromise between Liberals and Conservatives in Parliament.
Tourists on the holiday island of Bali, for example, should therefore hardly be affected by the law.
So far, sex outside of marriage and homosexual relationships have not been considered criminal offenses in Indonesia.
However, both are considered taboo in the conservative country.
Only in the province of Aceh on the north-western tip of the island of Sumatra is the Islamic Sharia legal system implemented.
Sex outside of marriage is punished there with up to a hundred strokes of the cane.
aar/dpa