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Rights activists to present their case at MK hearings

Jakarta Post - August 25, 2016

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Hans Nicholas Jong, Jakarta – With conservative academics dominating the hearings of a judicial review request to outlaw extra-marital sex at the Constitutional Court (MK), where they lashed out at what they called "liberal values", human rights defenders have come forward, asking to be given a say in the matter.

The court is reviewing four articles in the Criminal Code. A group calling itself the Family Love Alliance says the articles are antithetical to the Constitution because they do not clearly state that sexual relations outside marriage, including same-sex relationships, are illegal. The group has petitioned the court to scrap or change the wording of the articles.

In the last six hearings at the court, a number of university professors from the nation's top universities presented by the petitioners argued that free sex was against existing norms and that the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community had no place in Muslim-majority Indonesia. A number of justices, such as Patrialis Akbar and Aswanto, expressed their agreement with this argument.

Responding to the developments at the MK, at least four activists said they planned to ask the court to be given an opportunity to refute the arguments of the petitioners. They are prominent gay rights activist Dede Oetomo, Human Rights Watch (HRW) Indonesia executive director Andreas Harsono, Islamic Anti-discrimination Network coordinator Aan Anshori and Yap Thiam Hien award winner Handoko Wibowo.

The practice of offering testimony from someone who is not a party to a case is known as "amicus curiae", or "friends of the court" in English. The Institute of Criminal Justice Reform (ICJR) will help the activists file the amicus curiae with the court. Andreas said he planned to disclose the findings of the HRW should he be given the opportunity to testify before the court.

"More or less, my testimony will be the same with our research, which says that while there has been no attempt [from the government] to protect them [LGBT Indonesians] for three decades, there's also been no attempt to criminalize them," Andreas told The Jakarta Post.

Aceh, a special autonomous province in Indonesia and the only one to impose sharia on all its citizens, is the only province that criminalizes same-sex relationships. "The bylaw was passed by the provincial administration in 2014 and the bylaw came into effect in October 2015. After that, things have snowballed," Andreas said.

"The impact [of an amendment to the Criminal Code] will even be greater. People could take matters into their own hands. And we're not just talking about homosexuals, but also heterosexuals. I can't imagine the impact," said Andreas.

Dede, who founded GAYa Nusantara, Indonesia's oldest LGBT rights group, said he wanted to testify to straighten out the false notion that homosexuality could spread like a disease and that the LGBT community wanted to promote homosexuality.

"This is a result of not having sex education in our schools, so much so that the Constitutional Court justices know nothing [about sexuality]," he told the Post.

This false notion is exacerbated by the absence of a research culture in the country, so that people do not bother to learn more about homosexuality, according to Dede.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/08/25/rights-activists-present-their-case-mk-hearings.html.