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Wednesday, April 25, 2007

One Case of Domestic Violence

Some days ago, one local newspaper reported one case—a wife reported her husband to the police because he married another woman without her agreement. She said that her husband had left her for some years. When she found out that her husband had married another woman, she asked him to be back to him. However, he refused. That’s why she reported her husband to the police.

The husband said that he married his (first) wife because he was forced to do that not because he loved her. She got pregnant from another man. And to “save” her from society’s accusation of being a bitch, he married her with agreement that they would get divorced after the baby was born. Unfortunately, his (first) wife did not divorce him as soon as she promised. Therefore, he left her.

When asked by the police why he did not divorce his first wife first before he married his second wife, he said that to file a divorce, he needed more money than to marry his girlfriend whom he said he loved. To file a divorce, someone needs to provide around Rp. 1.250.000,00 or around US$ 120, while to marry a woman, someone only needs around Rp. 400.000,00 or around US $ 40.

When I talked about this to a friend, she said, “Let us see it from the bright side, Nana. It means that our government does not want people to file a divorce easily. Broken family is not good, is it? In another side, our government even wants to encourage the citizens to get married. Getting married is good, isn’t it?”

My response was, “But, from this case, we can see that it even causes domestic violence. The man irresponsibly left his wife—apart from his excuse that he married her for pity only. He should have prepared himself with such a possibility. No matter what, many Indonesian people still adore marriage higher than being single, although they are not happy in the marriage. They would show other people that they are married and falsely happy rather than live single and people in the community pitifully look at them, ‘Oh poor you, nobody wants you’. And apparently his first wife was included into such a group.”

PT56 18.05 220407

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