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Suspicion that LGBT rights are 'Western agenda' fuels Indonesian crackdown
Sydney Morning Herald - October 21, 2017
As other countries in the region move towards recognising LGBT rights – Taiwan will become the first Asian country to legalise same-sex marriage, Australia is conducting a postal survey on the issue and Thailand has passed legislation outlawing discrimination on the grounds of gender expression – Indonesia is moving in the opposite direction.
Human Rights Watch says anti-LGBT incidents have significantly increased over the past 18 months amid a "spike in noxious rhetoric from public officials and politicians".
"LGBT rights are seen as a Western agenda," prominent Indonesian gay activist Dede Oetomo told Fairfax Media. "The focus is always on same-sex marriage, which honestly us activists don't think will come any time soon."
Mr Oetomo said the Indonesian LGBT movement was not even demanding same-sex marriage, with the focus on rights such as freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.
Last year Defence Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu claimed the LGBT movement was part of a proxy war to conquer Indonesia that was more dangerous than nuclear war.
"It's dangerous as we can't see who our foes are, but out of the blue everyone is brainwashed – now the (LGBT) community is demanding more freedom, it really is a threat," he was quoted saying in Tempo.com.
"In a proxy war – another state might have occupied the minds of the nation without anyone realising. This sort of brainwashing is dangerous, as it skews the mindset of our nation away from our base ideology."
Mr Oetomo said donors and foreign embassies who support the LGBT community – even indirectly through poverty alleviation programs – must now do so very discreetly. "We had a national gay and transgender meeting and some of the donors said do not put our logo on the banner."
Earlier this month 51 people were arrested at a sauna in Jakarta popular with gay men. Homosexuality is legal in Indonesia, except in the ultra-conservative province of Aceh, which enforces Sharia law.
Meanwhile Indonesia's parliament is considering national legislation that would ban LGBT content on TV by the end of the year.
"I'm obviously concerned because it is a move backwards towards conservatism," Mr Oetomo says. "Activists in our organisation say it it is going to continue until the 2019 (presidential) election. If we get an Islamist president like in Turkey it will become worse."
On October 13 the United Nations human rights office expressed deep concern about a wave of LGBT arrests in Azerbaijan, Egypt and Indonesia saying they violated international law. It's this kind of international condemnation that can backfire here.
"Since Western countries, particularly the US, are now championing LGBT rights as human rights, the association of LGBT rights with Western schemes to destroy Indonesian culture are aggressively perpetuated and strengthened," Hendri Yulius, a lecturer and researcher of gender and sexuality studies and author of Coming Out wrote in New Mandala.
Indonesia has a long history of embracing diverse sexualities. The Bugis from South Sulawesi recognise five genders, including transgender priests known as bissu. In East Java, the traditional dance Reog Ponorogo depicts the relationship between a warrior and his boy.
"These cultures have existed for a long time in Indonesia but people forget it, they think (LGBT) is imported," says transgender woman Yulianus Rettoblaut, who is known as Mami Yuli.
Mami Yuli is the much loved defender of the waria, Indonesia's transgender community of biological men who believe they were born with the souls of women.
"We don't hide, we came out, I am who I am and we have lived comfortably in the community for years since I started dressing up like a woman."
But now Mami Yuli worries that waria are the most at risk of being targeted in the war on homosexuality in Indonesia.
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