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"You can't leave the house if you don't wear the hijab."
Nadya says that she heard this phrase from her mother's mouth when she left in the morning to go to her school in the west of the island of Java, one of the most conservative in the country.
The hijab, the veil used to cover the head, neck and chest by many Indonesian women, was mandatory for her since she started high school, and that girl, who is now 26 years old, remembers that period with considerable disgust.
In her student years, Nadya's mother used to tell her that she was born with bright yellow skin and that is why she had to stay covered in class, being very light in complexion compared to the common Indonesian girl.
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When Nadya took off her scarf in class, she always had problems.
Her friends nicknamed her
kerudung dusta
(the liar in the hijab), a pretty scary judgment and label when you're a teenager, because your life seems to revolve around your peers and school.
The teachers also bullied her at times, accumulating bad marks on her school report, and informing her parents that she had removed the veil.
As Anindya Restuviani, director of programs of the Feminist Association of Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, believes, the obligation to wear the hijab in the classroom, “is the embodiment of how the patriarchy believes that women should not have bodily authority, to the point to regulate what to wear or not to wear ”.
For this reason, from their group, they support the recent decree approved by the Government to stop forcing girls and teachers to wear the headscarf at school.
A rule approved on February 3, when the Minister of Education and Culture, the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Religious Affairs made the determination that any student or teacher can choose the clothes they want to wear in class, whether they are attributes or not. religious.
The new decree establishes that students may choose to wear a long skirt and a short or long-sleeved shirt, with or without a scarf.
Restuviani believes that this is a "correct" move, taking into account that the application of the dress code "is incorrect in the first place, and not only discriminatory, but also sexist."
The decision legally puts an end to this abuse in the classroom that has taken place for two decades, requiring both female students and teachers to use it, as in the case of Nadya.
According to the NGO Human Rights Watch, more than 60 local and provincial ordinances have been adopted since 2001 to enforce what local officials have designated as "Islamic clothing for Muslim women."
A 2014 national regulation recognized that wearing the hijab was not a legal requirement, but even so, Christian students and teachers, or of other religions, had been forced to wear it until now.
Andreas Harsono, a researcher for this organization from Indonesia, applauds the new initiative and explains that it could “have a great impact if applied consistently”, since it will affect “millions of schoolgirls in a total of 300,000 state schools in Indonesia” , Add.
"We are talking about at least 15 million schoolchildren who are under the mandatory rules of wearing the hijab, if we assume that a school has an average of one thousand students," he says.
In June, the regent of Central Lombok instructed all Muslim officials to wear a 'niqab', rather than a mask, to fight the coronavirus
The new decree establishes that the students will be able to choose to wear a long skirt and a short or long-sleeved shirt, with or without a scarf.
Teachers may also stop wearing it, if they wish, at their workplace.
Certainly there will be some challenges.
Usman Hamid, director of the Amnesty International Indonesia movement, notes that the mayor of Pariaman, a city in western Sumatra, for example, has already expressed his refusal to implement the decree in his region.
On the other hand, the decree only covers public schools that are under the management of local governments and the Ministry of Education and Culture, thus, it has no effect on Islamic state schools and universities under the Ministry of Religious Affairs.
It also excludes Aceh, an extremist province that is located in the northwest of the island of Sumatra and that has greater autonomy than others in the country.
It is the only one that officially follows a version of the sharia.
The arrival of the new decree was accelerated after a scandal that took place in January involving a Christian who had recorded a school teacher in the city of Padang, in West Sumatra, asking him to make his daughter, also a Christian, dress a hijab.
A fact that the school admitted and that had happened to more than 20 other students.
This is not the last scandal to happen in Indonesia in a few months.
In June Moh Suhaili Fadhil Thohir, the regent of Central Lombok, a regency in the Indonesian province of West Nusa Tenggara, instructed all Muslim female officials to wear a niqab, a veil that covers the face, rather than a mask, to fight against coronavirus.
In June, the regent of Central Lombok instructed all Muslim officials to wear a niqab, instead of a mask, to fight the coronavirus.
Women began to buy this garment and in July dozens of civil servants participated for the first time in a massive assembly wearing this outfit.
Thohrir applauded the fulfillment and recommended the rest to make an effort to carry it.
The women's and human rights groups put their hands at their heads exerting a lot of pressure.
Since then, it has not been raised again.
With the arrival of the new decree, local governments and school directors must revoke the mandatory hijab from any regulation before March 5.
Thereafter, sanctions will be imposed on any local head of government or school principal who fails to comply.
Activists such as Harsono, from Human Rights Watch, point out that the way in which this new regulation will be implemented will be key and it will also be important to have the correct functioning of the hotline service that the Ministry of Education has made available to female students. and teachers so that they can report if the school principals do not follow the rules.
The monitoring should not only be done in the cities, remarks Restuviani, of the Feminist Association of Jakarta.
His group has seen that much of the clothing takes place in the large urban cities of Indonesia as well.
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