Jacqui Baker

Rarely do the police figure in studies of politics. Of all the institutions of the state, police are the great wallflowers of the political party. They are not known for their great generals or their formidable political veto power. And yet, six months into the much-anticipated presidency of Indonesia’s Joko Widodo (Jokowi), 
it has been his failure to manage the complex and nuanced politics of the police that has not only brought about the downfall of Indonesia’s highest crime-fighter but exposed Jokowi’s personal and political weaknesses.

Human Rights Watch reported last week that Indonesian police conducted two-finger “virginity tests” on young female police cadets as part of their recruitment process. Following a public uproar, the Indonesian police responded with their muddle of insular defensiveness and denial. Indonesia’s police chief, General Sutarman, denied the practice. A senior female officer said that while there used to be “virginity tests”, they didn’t happen anymore. Meanwhile, the police head of human resources justified the practice, arguing that a woman’s “track record” should be judged by the integrity of her hymen. “Do we want to have prostitutes joining the police force?”, he asked. Finally, a spokesperson for Dokkes, the police department for medicine and health, tried to play down the tests by stressing the police’s rubric for good health. A missing hymen is not a cause for failure, but combine that with poor eyesight, then it’s a no-no. Dokkes is the department that administers the discriminative tests. Amid the public scrutiny over its “virginity tests”, we should be aware that the tests are only one of many human rights violations that the department enables in the impunity-ridden institution.

In part 12 of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Jacqui Baker argues that the ugly truth of organised crime is that governments and their agencies are a fundamental part of it. Global challenge 12: How can transnational organized crime networks be stopped from becoming more powerful and sophisticated global enterprises? Rethinking the “war on transnational organized crime” demands an interrogation of ourselves. In late 2000, United Nations General Assembly ratified the Convention on Organised Crime. This heralded a landmark moment of multilateralism in the war against the transnational organised criminal syndicates. Meanwhile, in another corner of the UN, an ad hoc committee was just beginning to sketch out what a similar convention on corruption might look like.