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Authorities in #Indonesia's Aceh province have flogged two gay men 77 times.
This is not the first time this has happened, and it is yet another failure of @jokowi's govt to live up to its pledges to protect #LGBT people.
https://www.cnnindonesia.com/nasional/20210128142349-12-599530/pasangan-gay-di-aceh-dihukum-cambuk-77-kali-oleh-3-algojo
This is not the first time this has happened, and it is yet another failure of @jokowi's govt to live up to its pledges to protect #LGBT people. https://www.cnnindonesia.com/nasional/20210128142349-12-599530/pasangan-gay-di-aceh-dihukum-cambuk-77-kali-oleh-3-algojo
A mob forcefully entered these men's apartment in November 2020, apprehended them, and handed them over to the public order police: http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Aceh,-gay-couple-risks-100-lashes-for-%27sodomy%27-51651.html
Every element of this abusive episode—from the snooping, to the Sharia squad tip-off, to the flogging sentence—is in accordance with the law in Aceh: https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/03/29/human-rights-watch-complaint-rights-lgbt-people-indonesias-aceh-province
Aceh’s position within #Indoneisa is unique. The 2004 tsunami ended a 30-year conflict with a peace agreement on Aceh’s “special status,” making it the only province that can legally adopt bylaws derived from Sharia (though such provisions are spreading): https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/06/22/dispatches-indonesias-blind-eye-abusive-sharia-bylaws
Over the past decade, Aceh’s parliament has adopted Sharia-inspired ordinances that criminalize everything from non-hijab-wearing women, to drinking alcohol, to gambling, to extramarital sex. The province’s 2014 Criminal Code bars both male and female same-sex behavior.
Officials have stoked homophobia. In 2012, then-Banda Aceh deputy mayor Illiza Saaduddin announced a “special team” to make the public more aware of the “threat of LGBT," posting an image of herself to Instagram holding a handgun and vowing to flush gays out of Aceh.
In October 2015, Sharia police arrested two women, ages 18 and 19, on suspicion of being lesbians for embracing in public, and detained them for three nights at a Sharia police facility in Banda Aceh before sending them to a week of religious rehab: https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/10/02/indonesia-suspected-lesbians-detained
Officers attempted to compel the two women to identify other suspected LGBT people by showing them photos of individuals taken from social media accounts -- a tactic that #LGBT people told me about when I did an investigation on the crackdown 2016: https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/03/29/human-rights-watch-complaint-rights-lgbt-people-indonesias-aceh-province
An episode nearly identical to this week's flogging happened in 2017 -- vigilantism, police involvement, prosecution under grossly discriminatory Sharia regulations, public flogging: https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/05/20/indonesia-stop-public-flogging-gay-men
Aceh’s Sharia ordinances empower members of the public as well as the special Sharia police to publicly identify and detain anyone suspected of violating its rules: https://www.hrw.org/news/2010/12/01/indonesia-local-sharia-laws-violate-rights-aceh
And this is not just a problem in one province. The entirety of #Indonesia has been engulfed by a govt-driven anti-LGBT crisis for the past five years: https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/08/10/these-political-games-ruin-our-lives/indonesias-lgbt-community-under-threat
Govt officials have actively stoked anti-LGBT antipathy, and authorities continue to lead or participate in arbitrary raids and arrests on private spaces: https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/07/indonesia-investigate-police-raid-gay-party
Increasingly, everywhere across the country, authorities are a showing a disturbing pattern of using a discriminatory pornography law as a weapon to target LGBT people: https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/07/indonesia-investigate-police-raid-gay-party
The crackdown has contributed to a major public health crisis. HIV rates among men who have sex with men were already spiking, and the attacks of the last five years have stoked fear and destroyed health infrastructure: https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/07/01/indonesia-anti-lgbt-crackdown-fuels-health-crisis
After a 2018 visit to Indonesia, the UN high commissioner for HR, @raad_zeid stated: “The hateful rhetoric against [LGBT Indonesians] being cultivated seemingly for cynical political purposes will only deepen their suffering and create unnecessary divisions.”
And the Indonesian govt has made commitments to protect #LGBT people: https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/21/indonesias-tepid-lgbt-support-un
But it seems @jokowi's commitment to "unity in diversity" does not genuinely extend to protecting people regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity: https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/05/12/sparing-rod-indonesia
