Police Chief Must Also Focus On Gender Equality: PDIP

Semarang, Central Java, Nov 20 (Antara) - A lawmaker from the Indonesia Democratic Party Struggle (PDIP) has urged the new National Police Chief General Sutarman to pay attention to gender equality in the police forces, in addition to tackling the headscarf issue. "The police chief is not only obliged to enforce the headscarf right, but also gender equality," Eva Kusuma Sundari, Deputy Chairperson of the PDIP faction in the House of Representatives (DPR) said on Wednesday when asked to comment on the police chief`s decision to allow policewomen to wear headscarves while on duty. She stated that the PDIP hailed the police chief`s stance, which underlined that wearing a headscarf is a human right, but also hoped that policewomen donning headscarves would not be discriminated against while rendering their services to the public. Eva further said, "It is actually a mere expansion of the choice initially given only to policewomen in Aceh." She also hoped that the headscarf decision would be the beginning of the implementation of policewomen`s human rights (HAM) in other more strategic areas, such as equal career opportunities, especially in terms of policewomen to assume leadership positions. Eva pointed out that discrimination against women had been quite evident as no regional police command in the country was led by a policewoman after Brigadier General Rumiah vacated her position in Banten in February 2010. Rumiah, who was ranked a senior commissioner, was the first policewoman to become a regional police command chief in the country. She was appointed as the Banten regional police Command Chief in January 2008. Eva added that the PDIP hoped that the new police chief would be serious about improving the police`s organizational culture and make the police more accountable, including with regards to the human rights and protection of policewomen. "We also hope the new police chief will not ignore gender equality like his predecessors," she stated. Eva, who is also a member of the DPR`s Commission III overseeing Legal Affairs, Human Rights and Security, pointed out that despite the past 15 years of reforms, the number of female police officials was still very low and accounted for only around 3 percent of the total. "This is ironical because the police continues to maintain its military characteristics, which are discriminatory and aim to subordinate women," she said. She said the pledge taken by four former police chiefs to boost the percentage of women in the police force to 30 percent had been proven a lie because it was never been accompanied by affirmative strategies aimed at achieving that target. Eva noted that so far the police had been insensitive and unresponsive, which was reflected in their discriminatory treatment of policewomen. She cited the example of policemen, whose involvement in rapes in Jayapura, Gorontalo and Aceh had come to light, and who had gone unpunished, while the cases of "a policewoman in Mojokerto, who was abstaining from work to avoid sexual harassment by her superior and a police woman whose private photos had been spread publicly by her ex-boyfriend" had been processed very quickly and both had been discharged from service.