The Indonesian army will no longer conduct virginity tests on women applying to join the forces, the chief of staff announced on Wednesday. The practice was long condemned by rights groups who called it degrading and traumatic.
“Whether the hymen was ruptured or partially ruptured was part of the examination … now there’s no more of that,” Andika Perkasa, the Indonesian army chief of staff, told reporters, referring to the invasive two-finger examination that was conducted to determine whether female applicants’ hymens were intact.
In the past, the military used the tests to determine recruits’ morality.
