JAKARTA: Indonesian authorities are investigating an Islamic wedding planning service for promoting the marriage of girls as young as 12 years old, despite laws that forbid child marriage.
The Indonesian child protection commission said it had reported the website, Aishaweddings.com, to police for allegedly breaching at least two laws, while the women’s empowerment and child protection ministry said it was preparing to do the same.
The website “violated and ignored the government in protecting and preventing children from becoming victims of violence and exploitation”, Minister Bintang Puspayoga said in a statement on Wednesday.
On its website, which has since been taken down, the agency featured a photograph of a young Islamic bride, in a white hijab and wedding attire.
Next to the photograph read the captions: “All women wish to be devout and obedient to Allah and their husband” and “To be pleasing to God and your husband, you must be married at 12-21 years of age, and not older”.
In September 2019, Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, revised the country’s marriage law to raise the minimum age women can marry to 19 from 16.
The wedding planner, which also promoted polygamous marriage, which is legal in Indonesia, did not immediately respond to an email and messages sent by Reuters via its Facebook page seeking comment. The account was later taken down.
Before it was taken down, the message “It is better to marry than to starve to death” was posted on the Facebook account.
An online search showed the wedding planner’s website had been anonymously registered in Panama.
A police spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment, while Indonesia’s ombudsman told media the site was “damaging to the country’s youth”.
Despite the legal age revision, Olin Monteiro of the Jakarta Feminist Association said women in Indonesia were often regarded primarily as child bearers and that the wedding planning service was indicative of weak education and law enforcement.
One in four girls in Indonesia is married before they turn 18, according to a 2016 report by Indonesia’s Statistics Agency and UNICEF.
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