Universitas Brawijaya (Unibraw) in Malang, East Java reported a Facebook support group for gay students to the police for using the institution’s name without permission – a move that exposes the discriminatory views of those who run the state-owned university.
The university was recently alerted to the existence of a Facebook group, supposedly by and for its gay students, called “Persatuan Gay Universitas Brawijaya Malang” (Association of Gays at the Brawijaya University in Malang). Yesterday, lawyers from the university reported the group to the police, accusing it of defamation under the Information and Electronic Transactions Act (UU ITE), as the university never gave the group permission to use its name.
“With this violation of UU ITE, we hope the admins (of the group) will be punished by law. We hope the National Police can solve (this case). They can even solve terrorism cases, why can’t they solve something like this?” said Prija Djatmika, head of a team of advocates from the university, as quoted by Detik yesterday.
“It’s not true that Unibraw is a haven for LGBT, we reject that. We want the police to act sternly on this matter.”
The university’s spokesperson today also confirmed that they had reported the group to the police for defamation.
The identities of the group’s creators are not yet known. The university said they have not found evidence that any of their students had created or joined the group. In one case, they believe that someone created an impostor account for one of their students and joined the group with it.
While all institutions of education should ideally promote progressive, non-discriminatory thinking, considering that Unibraw is a state-owned university, it should not have the right to discriminate against LGBT individuals under the constitution, which guarantees equal rights to all citizens. Even President Joko Widodo said last year that “the police must act” against any moves by bigoted groups or individuals to harm LGBT people or deny them their rights, and that “there should be no discrimination against anyone.”
This case proves that there’s still, sadly, an overwhelmingly negative stigma against the LGBT community in Indonesia. There exists numerous unofficial Facebook groups that use the Universitas Brawijaya name (like this one), but those groups have never been reported to the police because they’re “inoffensive” according to Indonesian norms.
It’s probably going to be a while yet before the LGBT community becomes “inoffensive” in Indonesia if institutionalized discrimination, even at the university level, still exists against them. In May, Universitas Andala (Unand) in Padang, West Sumatra, controversially forced all applicants to their university to sign a form saying they’re not part of the minority group, a policy that was supported even by the province’s governor.
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