Indonesia Still Using Humiliating 'Virginity Tests' on Female Soldiers
LatestHuman rights groups are calling on Indonesia to end the practice of requiring “virginity tests” for female military recruits, in which a doctor visually and manually checks for the presence of a hymen. An Indonesian military official told the Guardian the practice was necessary to weed out “naughty” women, while Human Rights Watch says it amounts to torture.
The Indonesian military uses a “two-finger” test to check for the intactness of female recruits’ hymens, according to several reports. Their bizarre fixation on virginity is coming under scrutiny this week at the World Conference on Military Medicine in Bali, the Washington Post reports. Besides the obvious point that the test is complete garbage — a broken hymen isn’t indicative of non-virginity — Human Rights Watch is asking that military physicians condemn the test on the grounds that it’s “harmful and humiliating” as well as a former of “gender-based violence.”