All 21-year-old Elisa Siti Mulyani wanted was just to be free from her stressful relations with his boyfriend. But Elisa was brutally beaten to death by various hard objects, and her body was dragged by a motorcycle from a long distance, in Pandeglang, Banten province, early this month.
She was tortured to death not by a robber, thug or some strangers in the street but by her own ex-boyfriend, Riko Arizka.
A week after the Pandeglang sadistic murder, another brutal murder happened again. This time, LH, a 43-year-old woman was killed by her lover, 34-year-old man, GL. She was stabbed many times.
The reason? She doesn’t want to stay with GL after they were having sex.
The two cases are not unique as in last three years more and more women have been killed by their lover, partner or husband out of jealousy, and because these men believe that the woman they engage with are their property, and will be theirs forever. They think that they are entitled to beat them up, do anything against them and even kill them.
According to KOMNAS Perempuan (National Commission on Violence Against Women), 145 women were killed in femicide cases in 2019. This number jumped to 256 cases in 2021, before dropping to 84 cases in 2022. It means that every two days one woman is killed in a femicide case in Indonesia.
These numbers are collected based on police reports and mass media reports. This means the actual femicide cases are much higher than what was reported. How many cases were not reported? How many women are reluctant to file a report because they are afraid to lose the man they thought to be their love of the their life before it’s too late?
This murder, popularly known as femicide or feminicide, is a woman killing fueled by hatred, revenge, conqueror, enjoyment, and thought that a woman is in their possession, and thus they can do whatever they want to them.
Femicide perpetrators are mostly those close to the victims – their husband, boyfriend, partner or even close relatives or family members. Women thought that their closest kin or friends is their guardian, so they accept every harassment or violence their guardians inflicted on them. They could never have thought that harassment can escalate to lethal form of violence or killing. These women usually don’t listen to any people trying to advise or warn them because they keep telling themselves that the harassment is a form of action from their loving men to protect them, an act of love.
And the surrounding culture and customs also help these beliefs to cultivate, and the murder to happen. People here still believe that husband, for instance, can beat up his wife and daughter to educate her. They will turn a blind eye on violence taking place next to them, just across their own home, or around their neighborhood. Also, they don’t want to intervene because they thought it is not their responsibility.
With such rampant femicide cases in Indonesia, most here has yet to take women murder as a serious problem. Femicide still categorized as a common killing.
Preventable
Many femicide cases are actually preventable. However, it needs active participation from members of the community. We should stop our ignorance and pay attention to what happen in our surrounding and can intervene whenever there is a violence near us. It’s part our responsibility as a human being to save life.
Also, a hotline must be provided by the government, local authorities and civil society organizations to allow a report of any case of verbal, sexual, and physical battery, before they escalate into femicide. Many women are reluctant to file a report in sexual harassment and violence as well as molestation because they are afraid of their safety. They will do a report once they know how to safely reach the authorities, which can, for instance, provide any restraining order to prevent the perpetrators to cause more harm to the victims.
In a wider context, we should also push the government to provide a more comprehensive sexual education at the school levels. Such a sexual education should not merely discuss about sexual intercourse, but also talking about how woman and man shared the same responsibility as an equal human being. With such an adequate sexual education, everyone of us will know that rejection is a normal thing, happening every day, stressing the value that no men or women should think they are more desirable than other. This way, we can hope less oppression will take place within a society.
It is crystal clear that we need some serious solutions, to prevent the cases of woman killing to spike even more.
