Under attack, Indonesian LGBT groups set up safehouses, live in fear

LGBT activists, facing a barrage of homophobia and hate speech by Indonesian authorities, are setting up hotlines and safehouses, while "unfriending" people on social media and deleting website directories that could expose them to violence. Indonesia's LGBT rights groups have been active for decades and have come under attack before, but usually only for one or two days at a time. This time, the anti-LGBT rhetoric began about two months ago, say activists who describe a community living in fear.

"This is the first time it's actually lasted this long," said Dede Oetomo, a prominent activist who founded one of the country's oldest LGBT rights groups, GAYa NUSANTARA, in 1987. There have been a few incidents of LGBT people being harassed, and Oetomo said LGBT groups are now working to set up safehouses and draw up evacuation plans in case of need.  

Read more via Reuters
 

International Women’s Day: the issues faced by sexual and gender diverse women

On a day that champions the achievements of women while recognising the ongoing struggle of gender inequality, Anna Brown believes it’s important to highlight women who face intersectional discrimination – because of both their sexual and gender identities.

International Women’s Day is an annual celebration of women around the world, one that Brown sees as a significant opportunity to raise awareness around women in the LGBTI community:

“Around the world lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and intersex women face human rights abuses such as corrective rape, physical attacks, and even murder. As queer women in Australia we have an important role to play in standing in solidarity with women across the world. For instance, we need to ensure that our government’s foreign policy initiatives on women and girls are inclusive of lesbian, bisexual, trans, and intersex women.” 

 Read more via Star Observer
 

UK: This is what domestic violence is like when you’re LGBT

Sam was three months pregnant when her girlfriend Lynn raped her. They were at home. Sensing that Lynn wanted sex, Sam decided to tell her that she did not. “She suddenly got nasty,” says Sam, flatly. “She was physically a lot bigger than me. She pinned me against a doorway and said, ‘I’ll have what I fucking like if I fucking want it.’ She assaulted me.”

Sam is in her early thirties. It is only in the last few months she has felt able to talk about the events of her early twenties. She looks up briefly, as we sit talking in a half-empty restaurant, and asks, “How do you say to your friends, ‘My girlfriend rapes me’ when their only mental definition of rape is a man forcing his penis inside a woman’s vagina? How do you say you were assaulted when it comes back to the idea of ‘that doesn’t count’? Well, it does count.”

It is a story that not only Sam finds difficult to tell, but one that many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people struggle to disclose. BuzzFeed News spoke to both LGBT survivors of domestic abuse and an organisation trying to help them – amid a backdrop of cuts to funding.
As the accounts of violence, rape, bullying, coercion, and control surfaced, sometimes for the first time, two questions began to form: What prevents LGBT people in particular from speaking out? And, what external forces are stopping them from finding safety?  

Read more via Buzzfeed
 

Poland: Office of Campaign Against Homophobia (KPH) has been attacked

Office of the Campaign Against Homophobia (KPH) was attacked on 3rd of March. Three young men tried to break into the premises of the KPH, shouting offensive terms to the employees of the organisation. Few activists of the KPH were present at the office by the time of the incident and they called the police immediately. However, the attackers managed to escape before the police officers arrived.

Worth noting that, this is the second occasion in the past few days when LGBT organisation has been under attack. Earlier this week, someone threw a brick to the office of the Lambda Warszawa and broke the windows. Everybody is safe and unhurt.  Read more via KPH

Nigeria: The trials of modern LGBT life

excerpt: I’ve dedicated some time to write articles on the gay issues in Africa, with a special focus on my home country, Nigeria. The great thing about sharing my story, aside from creating awareness, is that I’ve met lots of African gays who share their own stories, including a friend of mine, Sam, who was in Lagos, when he went to a café to meet up with a guy he found on Grindr last year. The guy followed him from the cafe and asked Sam for his phone. Suddenly, two guys appeared, telling Sam to cooperate. It dawned on him that this was a set up.

Instinctively Sam began yelling, “Thief!” to draw attention from passers-by. He had no gay content on his phone so these men couldn’t prove anything. The men began yelling, “Gay, Gay, Gay!” thinking the passers-by would attack Sam. Sam, with the confidence that there was no evidence of his sexuality, told them he’d get the police involved.

Three passers-by stopped and asked what was wrong. The men told them that Sam was gay and they set a trap for him. They said they had proof that Sam was gay. By then, eight people had joined the onlookers. A lady spoke up, “If he is gay, what’s your business?” Someone else said, “Homosexuality is legal is several countries, what’s your point?” Read more via EQ views

US: Father aims loaded gun at daughter after she comes out as lesbian

A man has been arrested in North Dakota for aiming a loaded gun at his teenage daughter after she came out as a lesbian. Police responded to a phone call at about 6.45pm Sunday from Bakir’s daughter, who said he was going to ‘blow her head off.’ Bakir surrendered the gun to officers and said he did not intend to harm his daughter but was just upset that she is a lesbian, court papers said.  

Read more via Gay Star News
 

Russia: This gay assault victim has the best response for those who thinks he should stay closeted

A gay Russian man was brutally attacked outside a grocery store for looking like a ‘fag’.  Posting the images of his injuries on social media, many told him if he dyed his hair a normal color and he should keep closeted for his own safety. He doesn’t agree. 

‘According to some, I need to stop talking about gay rights and to accept the reality that in Syzran and Russia that all gays will never be accepted as the norm,’ he wrote on his VK page. ‘Live as yourself behind closed doors with a boyfriend, and everything will be alright. If I wasn’t “searching for trouble”, my life would be a fairy tale. That “happily ever after” is a lie. If you submit to homophobes, if you submit to the closet, you’re not living your best possible life. While I might have a broken face, you have a broken life.' Read more via Gay Star News

Indonesia's Defence Minister threatens 'warfare' against gay community

Indonesia's gay community has come under attack, with the country's Defence Minister labelling the community a "threat" and likening fighting it to "a kind of modern warfare". Ministers and religious leaders have denounced homosexuality, blocked lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) websites and emboldened hardliners launching anti-gay raids.

When a minister criticised counselling services for gay students at a university last month, it triggered a heated media debate and was the start of what activists say has been a sustained assault on gay rights.   Read more via ABC
 

Australia: Man bashed in Waterloo 'for being queer', one of two suspected gay bashings in Sydney

Detectives are investigating two suspected gay bashings in inner Sydney, prompting a warning from police less than a fortnight before the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardis Gras Parade. The NSW Police spokesman on Sexuality and Gender Diversity, Superintendent Tony Crandell, said the occurrence of two "bias-related assaults" over one weekend was uncommon, and was of concern to police.

One of the victims, Dylan Souster, 22, said he was punched in the face by a man who called him "a queer" outside his apartment block in Waterloo in the early hours of Sunday morning. That man had initially been trying to help him, after he was earlier knocked unconscious by a group of young people and woke up in Waterloo Oval. Read more via Sydney Morning Herald  

Indonesia: LGBT Movement More Dangerous than Nuclear Warfare

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta -  Indonesia's Defense Minister, Ryamizard Ryacudu, has labelled the emergence of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) movement in Indonesia as a form of a proxy war to subtly undermine the sovereignty of a state - without the need to deploy a military force.

"I wrote about the subject 15 years ago - this is a kind of a modern warfare," said Ryacudu at the Ministry of Defense's Building on Tuesday, February 23, 2016. "It's the cheapest kind of war there is."

According to Ryacudu, the LGBT agenda is a latent threat to Indonesia's sovereignty, as it forces Indonesia to deal with states who support the LGBT agenda under the guise of human rights observance. Ryacudu continued that the state needs to be more cautious in reacting to the demands of LGBT communities for equality before the law.

"It's dangerous as we can't see who our foes are, but out of the blue everyone is brainwashed - now the (LGBT) community is demanding more freedom, it really is a threat," said the former Chief-of-Staff for the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI-AD). Read more via tempo