The East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) strongly condemns recent and ongoing attacks against lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people in Indonesia. ETAN stands with those Indonesian organizations and activists opposing all forms of discrimination and violence against LGBT people.
There has been a shocking rise in hate speech and homophobic actions in Indonesia. In recent months, anti-LGBT policies have spread and members of the LGBT community face ongoing harassment and death threats. Statements attacking LGBT people have come from all levels of government and include education officials calling for a ban on LGBT groups on school campuses and Indonesia's Vice-President Jusuf Kalla asking UNDP to defund LGBT organizations. Indonesia's leadership is ignoring its responsibility to include and protect all of its citizens by allowing this environment of intimidation and hatred to continue and spread.
These courageous voices of Indonesian organizations and individuals opposing discrimination and violence against LGBT people must be joined by others in Indonesia and throughout the world.
Luhut Pandjaitan, Indonesia's Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs, qualified his call to respect the rights of LGBT people with pseudo-science, when he added that homosexuality is the result of a chromosomal condition that requires " curing." Pandjaitan's statement was followed in February 2016 by the Indonesian Psychiatric Association's classification of homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder, another sign of the heightening of homophobic attitudes in the country. (The World Health Organization stopped listing homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder in 1990.)
The attacks on LGBT people highlight the growing deterioration of human rights throughout Indonesia. Journalists have been arrested and environmental activists murdered. Religious minorities face growing threats and discussions of past human rights violations, including the 1965/66 massacre of hundreds of thousands, have been canceled under official and unofficial threats.
These courageous voices of Indonesian organizations and individuals opposing discrimination and violence against LGBT people must be joined by others in Indonesia and throughout the world.
We call on President Joko Widodo to take immediate action to end the threatening anti-gay rhetoric and show leadership in protecting the safety and rights of LGBT people. Widodo was elected on a platform that included a respect for human rights. He must condemn the discriminatory statements and policies of those in his administration. He must also ensure that perpetrators of violence against the LGBT community are prosecuted.