Virginity tests in Indonesia for girls who wants to join army or navy and airforce cancelled

The Indonesian Army will stop subjecting female recruits to mandatory vaginal exams, the army chief said in an interview with local reporters this week.

Rights groups have long viewed the procedure as a continuation of the invasive and discredited so-called virginity test that is slowly being stamped out in many places.

In an interview on Tuesday, Gen. Andika Perkasa, the army chief, said there would be “no more vaginal and cervix examinations,” and that there would no longer be an assessment of whether women’s hymens were intact.

His confirmation came less than a month after he hinted at the changes in a different statement, setting off celebrations among activists who have campaigned against the practice for years.

They said they hoped the move would lead other branches of the Indonesian military to change the procedure. Latisha Rosabelle, 21, who grew up in Indonesia and started a petition against the practice that garnered nearly 70,000 signatures, said she was “stunned” when she heard the news.

“I had been posting stuff online for years,” said Ms. Rosabelle, now a student at Smith College in Massachusetts. “It felt so slow. I was a little bit hopeless.”

During the test, a doctor inserts two fingers into a woman’s vagina, based on the incorrect notion that it’s possible to determine in that way whether a woman has had sexual intercourse.

Besides being based on misinformation — hymens break for a variety of reasons, and there is no physical way to know whether a person has had sex — the practice has been roundly condemned as a violation of human rights.

“‘Virginity testing’ reinforces stereotyped notions of female sexuality and gender inequality,” the World Health Organization and two other arms of the United Nations said in a joint statement in 2018.

“The examination can be painful, humiliating and traumatic. Given that these procedures are unnecessary and potentially harmful, it is unethical for doctors or other health providers to undertake them.”