The civil liberties of LGBT Indonesians are under threat, according to a Human Rights Watch report.
The traditionally tolerant South East Asian nation has declared there is no “room for gays” in the majority Muslim country, in what is the culmination of a spate of violent condemnations and hateful rhetoric aimed at the LGBT community.
Indonesia’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens have long been the target of militant Islamic groups.
But since last January, a steady stream of government officials and mainstream religious organizations have joined the anti-LGBT chorus, ramping up their attacks against the community.
Last month, the Prime Minister ordered that openly affectionate homosexual couples be banned at universities, while his Minister of Defense likened LGBT rights activism to a proxy war on the country led by evil foreign forces:
“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…”
The government also urged social media platforms Facebook and Whatsapp to remove all gay-themed emojis and banned Tumblr over LGBT content. Amid concerns of the growing vitriol against Indonesian gays and lesbians, the spokesman of President Joko Widodo’s made clear that protecting them was not a government priority:
“Rights of citizens like going to school and getting an ID card are protected, but there is no room in Indonesia for the proliferation of the LGBT movement,” he said.
In February, the country’s largest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), refused to recognize the existence of LGBT rights groups and declared homosexual activities as deviant and a perversion of human nature that must be rectified.
Islamic activists have also called on the House of Representatives to consider a law that would criminalize gay sex — similar to Uganda’s controversial “Kill the Gay Bill” of 2014 — and carry sanctions for anyone supporting LGBT groups.