University of Indonesia suspends 16 male law students over viral lewd chat
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The Indonesian university students are accused of making vulgar and explicit sexual jokes in a group chat about female peers and lecturers.
PHOTO: UNSPLASH
JAKARTA – A leading Indonesian university suspended 16 law students on April 16 after a sexually explicit group chat about their female peers went viral, sparking a debate about gender violence in the Muslim-majority country.
Screenshots of a conversation between 16 male students at the University of Indonesia (UI) were posted on social media this week, eliciting shock and anger from female peers and a wider societal discussion.
The university said in a statement on April 16 that it had suspended the young men for two weeks pending an investigation.
“This step was taken as part of the university’s commitment to... maintaining a conducive academic environment,” spokesman Erwin Agustian Panigoro said in a statement.
The students are accused of making vulgar and explicit sexual jokes in the chat about female peers and lecturers.
One message read “silence means consent”, suggesting that women who do not verbally refuse a sexual advance are implicitly agreeing to sex.
Days later, a group of women students at the university berated the men in a public forum.
A video of the confrontation, in which the accused men stare at their feet as they are chewed out by women who said they were made to feel unsafe, also went viral.
The university student body is demanding that the men be brought before an ethics board and given strict sanctions.
The incident has triggered a public debate about verbal sexual abuse and harassment, often brushed off as inconsequential in conservative Indonesia.
More than a quarter of women in the country reported having experienced gender-based violence, according to the latest survey of the UN Development Programme.
The Indonesian Education Monitoring Network, or JPPI, a non-governmental organisation, said it had recorded more than 200 cases of violence in education institutions in the past three months countrywide, nearly half involving sexual abuse.
The JPPI is demanding the government declare a state of emergency on violence in education and make it a national priority.
The country passed a law on sexual violence in 2022 that criminalised harassment, including actions that take place online. AFP
