Planned reforms to Indonesia’s criminal code would penalize extramarital sex with up to a year in prison, ban cohabitation before marriage, and illegalize “insults” to the country’s president, state institutions and national ideology.
The country’s criminal code was last updated in 1981 by the strongman Suharto, with some liberalization occurring after the fall of his New Order government in 1998.
The new code is expected to be passed on Dec. 15.
“We’re proud to have a criminal code that’s in line with Indonesian values,” Indonesian Deputy Justice Minister Edward Omar Sharif Hiariej told Reuters.
The country is secular and religiously pluralistic by law, but the majority of Indonesians are adherents to Sunni Islam.