Samantha Hawley, Indonesia – A peak human rights group has accused the Indonesian Government of fuelling a campaign of hate against the LGBT community. The nation's constitutional court is currently considering banning homosexual sex.
Human Rights Watch said in the first six months of this year, the Government and its ministers had stoked an unprecedented attack against LGBT people.
In one case, the Defence Minister labelled LGBT activism a proxy war on nation that is more dangerous than a nuclear bomb. The Research, Technology and Higher Education Minister called for a ban on LGBT students at university campuses. And one Indonesian mayor said mothers should teach their children how not to be gay.
Transgender people unable to join prayers
Nancy, 69, from eastern Jakarta, who is transitioning from a man to a transgender woman, has suffered from the discrimination in the majority-Muslim nation.
She said the hijab she wears limits her femininity. "Why am I wearing a hijab? Because I wanted totality in my life," she said. "With this hijab, I can no longer act and do as I please. I need to be as feminine as possible."
She cannot pray at a mosque and said she misses Friday prayers the most because they were a chance to pray with others in a group. "Discrimination happens often. That's like everyday I experience that," she said.
Lenny, a transgender woman, works to help the more than 40 per cent of transgender people living in Jakarta who are thought to have HIV.
"If [transgender people] try to make the connection with religious issues then we will never get anywhere," she said. "But remember, none of us wants to be transgender. We want to be normal like others."
Lenny wears a hijab too, but to pray she drives to a mosque far from her home and changes clothes, turning her back into the man she does not want to be so she can pray with the group.
Kyle Knight, the author of Human Rights Watch's latest report, said Indonesian authorities' condemnation of its LGBT citizens was extremely damaging.
The Human Rights Watch report he authored said discrimination had become far worse. "It opened up this cascade and cacophony of anti-LGBT rhetoric at the highest levels of government that is going to take a long time to rebuild the security that LGBT people felt in Indonesia for decades," he said.