There also are alarming indications that the use of virginity tests extends to other parts of Indonesia's security forces.
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"If she [a candidate) turns out to be a prostitute, then how could we accept her for the job?" he said. But rather than condemning the practice and promising its abolition, Moechgiyarto defended it as a means to ensure the "high moral standards" of the police and reportedly suggested that failure of the test was simply proof that applicants were sex workers. A senior police official, Inspector General Moechgiyarto, on November 18 confirmed that the National Police required the test for female applicants. Indonesia's National Police has responded to Human Rights Watch's exposure of this abusive practice with defiance. Those efforts prompted colleagues in police recruitment teams in 2010 to defend "virginity tests" as a means of preventing "prostitutes joining the police." High Commissioner Sri Rumiati, a police psychologist who now teaches at the Graduate School of Police Sciences in Jakarta, underwent the virginity test in 1984 and subsequently advocated for their abolition. Indonesia's National Police can't feign ignorance of the tests, nor the opposition to them within police ranks. Indeed, last month, the World Health Organization stated unambiguously that "There is no place for virginity (or 'two-finger') testing it has no scientific validity." Indonesia's National Police have imposed these abusive and degrading tests on thousands of female applicants since as early as 1965, despite the fact that they contravene National Police principles that recruitment must be both "nondiscriminatory" and "humane." Meanwhile, the tests have been recognized internationally as a violation of human rights, particularly the prohibition against "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" under article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and article 16 of the Convention against Torture, both of which Indonesia has ratified. My friend even fainted really hurt, really hurt." "I feared that after they performed the test I would not be a virgin anymore. In a police hospital in the city of Makassar in 2008, Sari says that she and 20 other fellow police recruits were told to undress, lie down on a table and allow a physician to perform a "two-finger test." Six years later, Sari says she is still traumatized.
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(CNN) - Like thousands of other female applicants to Indonesia's National Police, 24-year-old Sari (not her real name) submitted to the mandatory "virginity test" that the authorities require women - but not men - to take as part of the application process.
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Kine: New President much send message on protection of womenĮditor's note: Phelim Kine is deputy director of Asia Division at Human Rights Watch.Phelim Kine: Tests recognized internationally as violation of human rights.Indonesia's national police force reportedly requires "virginity tests" for women.