In the U.S. Navy, the line-crossing initiation is voluntary, or at least it was when I was in, but it's kind of expected. One of my roommates aboard the USS Enterprise (the aircraft carrier) was an older warrant officer; he'd become a trusty shellback as an enlisted man, but when he got his warrant, the record was misplaced. So when we crossed the line, he went through the initiation again, with the rest of us slimy pollywogs, so that it'd be in his records again. He was a good sport about it.
In the USN now, it's completely voluntary and there are very strict rules on what can occur during the ceremony. And probably close to 100% of the senior officers in the Navy are (at least privately) completely supportive of the new policy; the old initiation rituals were definitely illegal and were a constant source of concern for Navy leadership.
In a crew of hundreds, there will always be a handful of honest-to-god sadists who would delight in the chance to pour hot sauce on wogs' genitals and make them crawl on hot non-skidded decks. So one trick the ships do now is to have a all-hands call to announce the ground rules, secretly note the names of everybody who complains about it being too lenient and then make sure that those guys are standing watch during the ceremony.
CVN-65, 1976-79, operating out of Alameda in the SFBA; two WestPac / Indian-Ocean deployments. I was also there at Norfolk for the inactivation ceremony in December 2012. They had tours of the ship; it was interesting to see it after 33 years. A lot had changed; a lot hadn't.
I crossed a few times as a passenger on a boat in the Galapagos Islands. One of the Australian passengers made mention of it, but the Ecuadorian crew acted like they knew nothing about it. Kind of disappointed nothing was made out of it.
That was also the time I drank the Vice Governor of Bermuda under the table. He, being a vain Scotsman, thought Americans knew nothing about whisky. I, being one who is not culturally retarded in the ways of the booze arts, correctly named the scotch in his flask as Lagavulin 16 year, and it was downhill from there. The Canadians wisely ducked out before we emptied that flask and the boat of wine and beer. The Scotsman called out sick for our morning tours. I was apparently still drunk by that point, because I felt great until about an hour into our second snorkeling trip. Thankfully, cold Pacific Ocean water and exercise are pretty good hangover cures.
I did some research on this recently, as part of a broader story on hazing rituals in the military. It's fascinating stuff. As a Marine, I've experienced and/or witnessed a fair amount of hazing. It's amazing how defensive people are about these traditions.
Living in Singapore, which is just north of the Equator, I have no idea if the local Navy does this since crossing the equator must be a common occurrence.
I would suspect the Indonesian navy doesn't as the country straddles the equator.
