When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

You've reach your limit of free articles.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime.

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Ad-free experience NEW

Exclusive international news coverage

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Monthly Access

30-day free trial, then $2.90 per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch
LGBTQ Plus

LGBT In Indonesia Targeted By Islamists And Government

After the Indonesian defense minister compared LGBT people to a nuclear threat, Islamists targeted a gay community that used to be widely tolerated.

Police take down a demonstrator at a gay rights rally in Yogyakarta in February
Police take down a demonstrator at a gay rights rally in Yogyakarta in February
Nicole Curby

YOGYAKARTA — A Beyoncé impersonator in a silver sequined leotard takes the stage at the packed Oyot Godhong Café in this Indonesian city. One audience member is pulled onto the stage and fake breasts are wobbled in his face. The crowd goes wild.

Backstage, one of the performers introduces herself. "My name is Miss Sarita Karma Sutra," she says. A regular performer at the Reminton Cabaret Show, she is proud of her versality. "Sometimes I dress like Lady Gaga. Sometimes like Rihanna, Jessie J, Shakira."

After the show, the audience rushes to take photographs of themselves with the singers. But transgender women — or waria — as they're known here in Indonesia, aren't always greeted with such enthusiasm. In February, hardline Islamist groups threatened a longstanding Islamic boarding school for waria, forcing it to close down.

Kyle Knight, a researcher with Human Rights Watch (HRW), produced an in-depth report on the surge in anti-LGBT vitriol that has swept through Indonesia this past year.

"We saw the police failing to protect LGBT people when they were attacked by militant Islamist groups," he says. "We saw activists who had to burn their files and shut down their offices."

Even more "heartbreaking," says Knight, is that people who'd never experienced abuse or harassment from neighbors and family members suddenly found themselves under attack. "Because the media coverage was so negative and because this social sanction for abuse was coming from the highest levels of government, people who had previously been allies or at least accepted their LGBT friends and neighbors and family members, all of a sudden were turning on them," he explains.

The HRW report said LGBT groups faced local harassment, institutional discrimination and random violence in recent months and called it a "crisis'.

Until recently, LGBT Indonesians have largely been received with a mix of tolerance and quiet stigma, according to Dédé Oetomo, an academic who has been an LGBT activist in Indonesia since 1987.

"I'm not going to deny there's violence, especially for trans women — in the streets, in the parks, in the neighborhoods," he says. "But once you're past that, once you've actually proved useful, you're accepted, albeit begrudgingly. As it's been said over the years, it is possible to live as a gay, lesbian, bisexual, whatever. But you may not want to tell too many people…"

But as their visibility has grown over time, LGBT groups have also faced greater dangers. In many parts of Indonesia, LGBT people no longer able to gather in groups for fear of being attacked.

Activists and those providing support services, including HIV/AIDS assistance, have been among the most affected, says Knight. "They're scared. They've taken measures to protect themselves, by destroying files, for example, or not holding events, being extremely skeptical of new people they meet," he explains. "And this is where it's scary."

Under Indonesian law, gay sex is not criminalized. And yet, some local governments have enforced laws that target and impinge on the fundamental rights of LGBT people, according to the advocacy group Arus Pelangi.

Now there is an attempt to outlaw gay sex at a national level, with a hearing currently underway at the Constitutional Court.

But Oetomo says that LGBT people show resilience despite the attacks leveled at them, adding that volunteers keep joining the Surabaya-based organization Gaya Nusantara. "It's amazing how in the increasingly homophobic and trans-phobic environment, people keep coming out," the activist says.

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Geopolitics

Senegal's Democratic Unrest And The Ghosts Of French Colonialism

The violence that erupted following the sentencing of opposition politician Ousmane Sonko to two years in prison left 16 people dead and 500 arrested. This reveals deep fractures in Senegalese democracy that has traces to France's colonial past.

Image of Senegalese ​Protesters celebrating Sonko being set free by the court, March 2021

Protesters celebrate Sonko being set free by the court, March 2021

Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

PARIS — For a long time, Senegal had the glowing image of one of Africa's rare democracies. The reality was more complicated than that, even in the days of the poet-president Léopold Sedar Senghor, who also had his dark side.

But for years, the country has been moving down what Senegalese intellectual Felwine Sarr describes as the "gentle slope of... the weakening and corrosion of the gains of Senegalese democracy."

This has been demonstrated once again over the last few days, with a wave of violence that has left 16 people dead, 500 arrested, the internet censored, and a tense situation with troubling consequences. The trigger? The sentencing last Thursday of opposition politician Ousmane Sonko to two years in prison, which could exclude him from the 2024 presidential elections.

Young people took to the streets when the verdict was announced, accusing the justice system of having become a political tool. Ousmane Sonko had been accused of rape but was convicted of "corruption of youth," a change that rendered the decision incomprehensible.

Keep reading...Show less

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

You've reach your limit of free articles.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime.

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Ad-free experience NEW

Exclusive international news coverage

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Monthly Access

30-day free trial, then $2.90 per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch

The latest