Sometimes we talk about a country taking a wrong step on human rights, but Indonesia’s new criminal code is more like a huge leap.

Backwards.

Off a cliff. 

There are so many things wrong with the new criminal code parliament passed on Tuesday, I hardly know where to begin. Its provisions go against international human rights law, undermine freedom of speech and association, and violate the rights of women, religious minorities, LGBT people... the list goes on.

My colleague and Indonesia expert Andreas Harsono says, the new law potentially puts “millions of people in Indonesia subject to criminal prosecution.”

Perhaps what’s gained most international attention, is the provision that makes consensual sex outside marriage a criminal offense. It’s a full-scale assault on the right to privacy, allowing authorities to intrude into the most intimate decisions of individuals and families.

Indonesia has millions of couples without marriage certificates – as many as half of all Indonesian couples do not marry legally because of difficulties in registering the marriage.

They include members of hundreds of unrecognized religions, like Baha’i, Ahmadi, and local faiths, as well as people living in remote regencies and islands. And under Indonesian law, LGBT people are not permitted to get married at all.

So, now all these millions of people are suddenly breaking the law?

You might think the new criminal code is so vastly abusive as to be unworkable. Surely, they can’t arrest millions of people.

True, but it will “work” in one way at least: it will boost corruption and repression.

The new law’s oppressive provisions will open the door to invasions of privacy that will enable police to extort bribes and politicians to harass critics and opponents.

As Andreas says: “Passage of this criminal code is the beginning of an unmitigated disaster for human rights in Indonesia.”

A new Reuters investigation in Nigeria adds yet another level of horror to an already terrifying situation.

(CONTENT WARNING: sexual violence and medical abuse)

After being abducted, held for months, even years, and raped repeatedly by Islamist militants of the Boko Haram insurgent group, women and girls who escaped or were rescued were then held in a Nigerian military compound in a forced abortion program.

The abortions happened in nearly all cases without the person’s consent. Based on witnesses, the report says, “Resisters were beaten, held at gunpoint or drugged into compliance…”

The military also used deception, telling the women and girls that injections and pills were for other purposes, like fighting malaria.

That ordinary people in northern Nigeria are caught between a repugnant insurgency and abusive security forces is in itself nothing new. Boko Haram’s barbarity is well-documented, including attacks on schools, slaughtering civilians and mass abduction and rape of girls.

And crimes by security forces fighting the insurgency are rife, as they often consider an entire community to be the enemy. Government officials and other authorities in Nigeria have even raped and sexually exploited women and girls displaced by the conflict with Boko Haram.

But the new Reuters report is a new type of horror: abusing already traumatized and terrified people with forced medical procedures.

After Boko Haram’s mass abduction of 276 girls from a secondary school in the town of Chibok in 2015, the world joined Nigerians in the hashtagged rallying cry #BringBackOurGirls.

Yes, but not like this.

UN experts recently warned warring parties in Yemen about their grave abuses against migrants and asylum seekers.

Unfortunately, both sides ignored the expert warnings.

Neither the Saudi government nor Ansar Allah, often called “Houthi forces” and the de facto authority in much of Yemen, took an interest in investigating the serious allegations.

An October report, now public, details how Saudi security forces allegedly killed hundreds of migrants in cross-border shelling and shooting between January and April. Captured migrants were allegedly tortured by Saudi security forces, with girls as young as 13 reportedly raped. 

Women and girls are also at risk of sexual violence by smugglers who, collaborating with the Yemen Immigration, Passport and Nationality Authority (IPNA), under the control of Ansar Allah, are extorting migrants.

Migrants in an IPNA reception camp are also allegedly subjected to forced labor, sexual exploitation, forced to traffic drugs, and other forms of abuse.

Saudi Arabia and Ansar Allah may think they can ignore the experts. But ignoring their victims is indefensible.

(compiled by Emily Palomo)

• Migrants face ‘unprecedented rise in violence’ at EU borders (The Guardian) 
• Domestic violence law not protecting women in Tunisia (HRW) 
• Peru's first female president Dina Boluarte pledges to heal nation's wounds (Reuters)
• Japan proposes a fertility law that discriminates against lesbians and single women (HRW)