Only two days after I posted the link to the news about Proposed Marriage Bill (RUU) that claim to protect Indonesian women’s welfare by making the future ‘foreign’ husband pay Rp. 500,000,000 (yep that’s million!) or equivalent of 53,792.361 USD as per today’s exchange rate, I got so many replied on my Facebook page.

Apparently, the Religious Department is mulling over this bill again. This bill isn’t new. It was a hot debate topic and had caused strong opposition from Indonesian women back in 2005, many had thought the bill didn’t pass and life goes on. So to hear the bill has been brought to life is well…revolting to say the least!

This Indonesian scholar, Nuning Hallet had written a very good article about the issue and to quote her, she wrote:

“Explanation on Article 142 paragraph 3 of the draft bill mentioned the deposit is to protect Indonesian women should their foreign husband neglected them. Deposit will be return when their marriage reach 10^th years anniversary. However, if you look at it from “Familial State” perspective and nationalism based on body politics, I think this is an effort to suppress the number of mix marriages between Indonesian women and foreign men in order to keep the country’s sovereignty.”

And this one:

“Policy regarding women’s interests almost never being discussed at the parliament. Government institution feel they know more about their women’s needs from their manly specs and waited on the women to reacts on those policies. In this case, the draft bill had successfully provoked Indonesian women’s anger, even those who have no relationship with a foreign man. Their biggest concern is the stigmatization of Indonesian women being ‘sold’ by their own country.”

Although from further reading about this topic, it says it will be applied to Muslim Indonesian women, I still feel outraged and disgusted. I may not be Muslim, but I am Indonesian and a woman who thinks these parliament members had completely lost their minds!

They claimed to protect Indonesian women but the way I see it, this is nothing more than one heck of a pimping legalization or giving mail-order bride a government approval! These women are not a commodity, for God’s sake! Should they really earnestly care about Indonesian women welfare then why the heck they don’t even give a damn about Indonesian migrant workers? Lots of them even got killed, tortured, raped, you name it! What about them? Also, let’s not forget about the Indonesian women whose husband just walked out of them without leaving a single cent and married someone else, fathering more child than he could remember. Are these women getting any attention from the government? Hell NO! Is there even an enforced law about Child Support like in many other countries have?

There’s no money in the world that could stop if a husband is really a hidden sadistic person, you know! Think about it, let’s say a really wealthy foreign man who happened to have that kind of money lying around somewhere paid the deposit, took the new wife back to his home country, beat her up like a punching bag, abused her like a slave or worst killed the poor women what the hell is our noble government can do about it? It would just give these guys more reasons to overpower their wife since he had legally ‘bought’ her from her own country.

Dowry is not a new thing in Indonesia, it is engraved in some part of the culture but not something the government should step into and abused, I think. Following Egypt? Ehm, did anyone do their study first? Let me break it down for you, sirs:

1. In Egypt this rules applies only to those who have 25 years age gap between them.
2. The foreigner must put 50,000EGP (8,000USD) in the National Bank of Egypt in the wife’s name.

Now that sounds more logical! They are putting the ‘dowry’ in the wife’s name at the national bank, not in their government appointed bank like proposed on this BS bill! 8,000 US Dollars not 50 grand for crying out loud!

As a woman who married a foreign man, I can tell you that more and more Indonesian women rather go to their husband’s country (or somewhere else) just to get marry. Why? Simply because the system here is so not transparent! On paper, the fee to get marry is this much but on the ‘field’ the numbers varies, depending on your ‘contacts’. If this bill passed I can guarantee more of them will leave the country or even abandon their citizenship’s!

Talking from my own experience, the procedure to get marry abroad is more complicated but everything is transparent, the steps by steps are manageable as long as you got all the documentations you needed. I came to the States to married my husband using a K-1 Visa or well known as Fiancé Visa. It was a breezy process to obtain my visa, 3 months and I was well on my way. After the wedding, we applied for my Conditional Resident Permit (Green Card), now this process was more intricate and it ‘only’ took us over a year to get approved, that after we contacted our local state representative (similar to DPR Member here) who took care of our case immediately and with no charge! With that in hands, I can work, I can go to school, I can even buy my own house if I want to. The only thing that separates me from American citizen is I can’t cast my vote!

Sadly, here it is a lot more difficult for Indonesian women to sponsor their own husband to obtain a resident permit. The law even prohibited resident permit’s holder to purchase property here. While the Dual Citizenship law that just passed in 2006 is a great relief for plenty of mix marriages couple, there are still so much that needed to be fixed to honor this kinds of marriage. Needless to say, we got better ‘treatments’ in other countries than our own, which is kinda sad, no?

So, if you really want to protect us here are some ideas:

1. Education, education, education! Why don’t you provide counseling to Indonesian women about being in an inter-nations marriage? A lot of women are suffering from culture shock when they moved abroad. Educate these women on why a prenuptial agreement is good to have.
2. Clarify the complicated and sometimes shady bureaucracies of either getting marry in Indonesia or register a marriage.

For sure there are many more that needed to be fix to protect the welfare of our Indonesians women about mix marriage but those two are what popped up in my head right now.