Women with megaphone: Don't get tired of speaking out, women are powerful.
Placards read: Women's rights and Human Rights, Resist.
Women activists in Indonesia are currently facing multiple attacks across various platforms. Attacks against them are no longer limited to physical spaces, but have also spread to the cyber realm.
Women activists who often speak critically in public spaces and defend human rights are more frequently attacked due to the deeply rooted patriarchal culture in Indonesia. The perpetrators exploit the unique vulnerabilities of women activists to become targets of attacks.
As women activists' struggles have embraced digital spaces as part of their campaigns, attacks are no longer focused solely on physical targets. Attacks against women activists have evolved into multi-level digital operations, ranging from posting misogynistic comments, spreading fake photos or videos, to hacking digital infrastructure. These attacks are specifically framed using issues of gender and sexuality.
Quoting from the story of one female activist interviewed by this daily, cyberattacks can take the form of the spread of artificial intelligence (AI)-based hoaxes, such as a portrait of herself juxtaposed with a religious leader, accompanied by a narrative of infidelity.
Herein lies the irony of the development of digital technology. While technology facilitates the struggle and campaigning of these brave women on public issues and human rights, it is also used as a means of attacking them.
Unfortunately, the state does not yet have strong or robust tools to protect the struggles of human rights defenders and the public interest, especially women. Human Rights Minister Natalius Pigai even acknowledged the vulnerability of women human rights defenders, who often speak critically in public spaces, to cyberattacks.
In line with the 1998 UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, which discusses the protection of human rights defenders from actions that threaten their lives, Indonesia also has regulations on the protection and respect of human rights. However Law Number 39/1999 on Human Rights does not contain specific provisions regarding the protection of human rights defenders, let alone women who are involved in the struggle to uphold and protect human rights.
Articles 100-103 of the law only regulate public participation generally, in this case individuals, groups, political organisations, social organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or other community organisations, that participate in efforts to protect, uphold and advance human rights.
The revisions to Law Number 39/1999 must include detailed and explicit provisions protecting human rights defenders, especially women. We agree with the government's plan to revise the Human Rights Law to include specific provisions regarding the protection of human rights defenders, both women and men.
In the future, women who struggle in the interests of society, the interests of those who experience injustice, should no longer be criminalised. Attacks against them, in any form, can be interpreted as attacks on the state.
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "Melindungi Perempuan Aktivis".]
