A leading Indonesian university suspended 16 law students on Thursday after a sexually explicit group chat about their female peers went viral, sparking a debate about gender violence in the Muslim-majority country.

Screenshots of a conversation among 16 male students at the University of Indonesia were posted on social media this week, eliciting shock and anger from female peers and a wider societal discussion.

The university said in a statement on Thursday it had suspended the young men for two weeks pending an investigation.

“This step was taken as part of the university’s commitment to … maintaining a conducive academic environment,” spokesman Erwin Agustian Panigoro said in a statement.

The students are accused of having made vulgar and explicit sexual jokes about female peers and lecturers.

One message read “silence means consent”, suggesting that women who did not verbally refuse a sexual advance were implicitly agreeing to sex.