Three men arrested in Indonesia for allegedly running LGBTQ Facebook group
A group of Muslim protesters march with banners against the LGBTQ+ community in Banda Aceh on Decmber 27, 2017. Anti-LGBT+ sentiment is common in Indonesia. (CHAIDEER MAHYUDDIN/AFP via Getty)
A group of Muslim protesters march with banners against the LGBTQ+ community in Banda Aceh on Decmber 27, 2017. Anti-LGBT+ sentiment is common in Indonesia. (CHAIDEER MAHYUDDIN/AFP via Getty)
Three men have reportedly been arrested in Indonesia for allegedly running an LGBTQ+ Facebook group.
As reported by Jakarta Globe, three men suspected of creating a LGBTQ+ community page on Facebook have been arrested by police in Sidoarjo, East Java.
The suspects, two aged 22 and one ahed 32, were arrested in a rented room in the area of Taman, Sidoarjo, followed a 24-hour cyber patrol by the local Criminal Investigation Unit.
The three men are currently being held at Sidoarjo Police Station pending further investigation. They face charges related to the distribution of obscene material through electronic media. If convicted, they could face up to 12 years in prisons and fines of up to Rp 6 billion ($370,000).
While there is no nation-wide law in Indonesia that criminalises same-sex sexual activity, it is prohibited in the Muslim provinces of Aceh and South Sumatra, the Human Dignity Trust reported. There is evidence to support the claim that “anti-pornography” legislation has been used to prosecute LGBTQ+ people. Those found guilty face prison terms of up to 15 years.
The latest arrests follow reports that two men have been sentenced to public caning for kissing each other in a toilet in Indonesia.
The men, aged 20 and 21, were sentenced in the Aceh province, where Sharia Law is practised, on Monday (11 August). They were arrested in April after police broke into the toilet.
In June, 75 people were arrested in Bogor, in West Java, after a raid on what police described as a ‘gay party’. A month earlier, Indonesia’s parliament proposed revisions to a broadcast law that would ban investigative journalism and LGBTQ+ content.
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