JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP)—Indonesia’s Parliament unanimously passed a long-expected revision of the country’s penal code on Tuesday that criminalizes sex outside of marriage for citizens as well as foreigners, prohibits promotion of contraception, forbids progressive political thought, and bans defamation of the president and state institutions.

The amended code also expands an existing blasphemy law and maintains a five-year prison term for deviations from the central tenets of Indonesia’s six recognized religions: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism.

Citizens can face a 10-year prison term for associating with organizations that follow Marxist-Leninist ideology and a four-year sentence for spreading communism. Anti-communism has long been a tenet of the Indonesian state. [...]

-- December 6, 2022; By Niniek Karmini