“New by-laws championed by Tangerang’s ambitious mayor, Wahidin Halim, aim to run gamblers, drunks and prostitutes out of his satellite city on Jakarta’s outskirts. They are enforced by a small army of “public order officers” who cruise the streets able to arrest at whim.
The move has created a de facto curfew for women in Tangerang who, if they are caught alone at night, must prove they are not prostitutes.
As well as banning “physical intimacy” in places visible to the public, a by-law states that any woman “who behaves suspiciously” in streets, hotels, theatres, coffee shops