The North Sumatra University (USU) says it has fired its student news website’s editorial team over a fictional LGBT-themed short story that was published two weeks ago.
The story, titled, Ketika Semua Menolak Kehadiran Diriku di Dekatnya (When Everyone Refuses My Presence Near Her), was published on the website Suara USU (Voice of USU) on March 12 and is still available at the time of writing. The story was penned by the website’s then-Chief Editor Yael Stefani Sinaga.
The story caught the attention of the university’s academic administration after it was shared on social media and became highly popular, if not controversial. USU Dean Runtung Sitepu summoned the website’s 18 editors and writers to a disciplinary hearing yesterday and fired them on the spot, accusing them of promoting pornography and homosexuality through the story.
“I am removing you (editors of Suara USU) from Suara USU. Return to your studies and graduate soon, that’s what your parents are hoping for,” Runtung told the students, as picked up by Viva yesterday.
“When I read this, [I think it’s] not appropriate. There are many educational values that are good for you to publish. Why did you publish something like this?”
Runtung said he had repeatedly warned for Suara USU to remove the story amid the controversy it generated, but the editors refused. The website was even reportedly suspended by its server last week, but the editors skirted censorship by switching to another web provider.
Despite the firing of the editors, the university says it will not shut down the website.
“I will not shut down Suara USU. Suara USU will still exist. We will strengthen it, fill it with content that will develop USU,” Runtung said.
Ketika Semua Menolak Kehadiran Diriku di Dekatnya tells the story of unrequited love one woman has for her friend. The story doesn’t appear to be deliberately pornographic, and the most explicit passage, translated, reads, “You truly are disgusting. Your womb will shut. Believe that all men’s sperm will not stand to come in contact with you,” a man says in disgust to the story’s lead lesbian character.
Before her removal, Suara USU Chief Editor and the story’s author Yael Stefani Sinaga said her intention was not to promote homosexuality or pornography through the fictional piece, rather to raise awareness about all sorts of discrimination minorities face in the country.
Yael and the other editors have yet to release a statement regarding their removal from the website.
Homosexuality is not a crime in Indonesia (except in Aceh, the only region of Indonesia with special autonomy to enact explicitly sharia-based law) but in many parts of the country, authorities often take extra-legal action to harass and assault LGBT individuals on easily-biased grounds such as maintaining public order (as happened in the case of 10 “suspected lesbians” who were detained by police in Padang, West Sumatra).
Human Rights Watch last year released a report highlighting a disturbing rise in persecution against LGBT individuals in Indonesia. The recent increase in anti-LGBT hysteria, the worst the country has seen since the height of the last LGBT moral panic in 2016, has been attributed by some to election year politics and cynical leaders looking to score easy electoral points with increasingly conservative voters by scapegoating the vulnerable minority group.
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