Homosexuality is not a crime in Indonesia (except in Aceh, which is allowed to enforce its own form of sharia law), but it is often treated like one by homophobic citizens and authorities.
It was the anger of local residents that reportedly led police to raid a rented home in Bogor’s Tugujaya Village on Saturday night. The locals suspected that the 12 women living in the home were lesbian couples.
The head of the village, Sugandi Sigit, said the people of Tugujaya were disturbed by the presence of the supposed same-sex couples.
“People are restless with the presence of LGBT, Tugujaya Village must be clean of LGBT no matter what, so we did a sweeping,” Sugandi told Tribunnews Bogor on Sunday.
Sugandi said that six of the people were living in the rented home because their workplace was not far away. But not anymore.
According to the village head, although none of them were arrested (since they had not, in fact, broken any laws) the 12 women have all left the village after the police and villagers “appealed” to them to leave.
“Now they’ve already returned to their homes, because as we said at that time to them, go on and just go back home, the people here are disturbed (by their presence),” Sugandi said.
The head of the district’s Municipal Police (Satpol PP), Sumantrai, confirmed the women had left the village and said that it was fortunate the police had interceded because if not the citizens might have taken vigilante action against the women.
“Community leaders are grateful for the action, if not, our citizens could become anarchic and they would not be silenced,” Sumantrai said as quoted by JawaPos.
So, basically, it would appear that these 12 women were forced from their homes, for no legal reason whatsoever, because the majority could not accept the minority and were threatening them with potential violence. Hmm, wonder how many of those same villagers are angry about the treatment of Rohingya Muslims being forced to flee Myanmar due to persecution by the Buddhist majority there?
