It’s a sad commentary on the high levels of opposition towards LGBT rights in Indonesia that certain groups would create fake banners saying a political party supported the rights of the protected minority group in order to attack them.
That is what has allegedly happened to the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI) — one of Indonesia’s youngest and certainly its most progressive political party.
Recently, banners featuring the logo “Respect LGBT rights”, as well as PSI’s logo and images of the party’s general chairman, Grace Natalie (whose last name is misspelled on the banners as “Natali”), and secretary general, Raja Juli Antoni, appeared in several locations throughout Jakarta including a pedestrian crossing bridge on Jalan Abdullah Syafei in Tebet, South Jakarta.
https://twitter.com/Eduardsiagian02/status/1090443849770487814
Antoni released a statement to media outlets today confirming that the banners were not made by PSI.
“We suspect that this systematic attack was carried out by political groups who are disturbed by PSI’s struggle against corruption and intolerance,” Antoni said in the statement as posted to PSI’s official website.
“PSI’s uncompromising attitude towards those who steal the public’s money and intolerant radical groups who like to intimidate others seems to have made the country’s black political forces worry and try to weaken our new party,” he added.
PSI, which is part of President Joko Widodo’s coalition, is often referred to as Indonesia’s “millennial” political party and has taken some bold actions to make a name for itself including giving “liar awards” to opposition leaders and declaring that they would reject any discriminatory laws based on religion.
What is especially sad about this is the PSI actually does support LGBT rights. Although it is not very vocal in this support, it can be seen in certain actions such as the party once chastising Ferry Batara, the regional chair of PSI Depok, for saying that he supported the creation of an anti-LGBT task force in the city. PSI released an official statement apologizing for Ferry’s remarks and saying that he did not speak for the tens of thousands of PSI members across the country.
But while we’d love to see PSI own it and declare, “Y’know what, the posters are fake but what they say is true — we do want people to respect LGBT rights!” we know that the reality is that doing so would almost certainly be political suicide for the young party, given the public’s overwhelmingly negative sentiment towards LGBT rights in Indonesia amidst the country’s current politicized LGBT panic.
At any rate, the banners have reportedly already been removed following orders from the Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu).
