Twelve women in Indonesia have been arrested after police raided a house in Kampung Benteng, Cigombong over the weekend.
The raid was conducted after locals reported seeing “immoral activities” at the residence with saying the women were dressed in “tomboy clothing” and had short haircuts.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has the arrests, saying the government should be protecting the LGBT+ community instead of targeting them.
“What’s most offensive about this incident is that police and government officials steamrolled privacy rights and rule of law to appease the bigotry of a few neighbours,” said Andreas Harsono, senior Indonesia researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“Evicting these women based on prejudiced assumptions of their sexual identity threatens the privacy of all Indonesians and has no place in a country whose motto is ‘unity in diversity.’”
Homosexuality is not illegal in Indonesia but there have been “at least four raids on LGBT people in private settings in 2017 alone,” HRW reports.
“Police raids on private gatherings of LGBT people foster dangerous anti-gay hysteria at a time when the government should instead be stepping up to protect this marginalised minority,” Harsono continued.
“It has been nearly a year since President Jokowi pledged his support to the LGBT community, but his failure to take action has allowed raids like this to continue unabated.”
HRW r that authorities in Aceh were flogging gay people in private after the international condemned the public punishments that were previously being carried out.
