The “LGBT panic” that has gripped Indonesia this year continues to expand government sanctioned discrimination against the minority group, as evidenced by the rules of a contest currently being run by the country’s Youth and Sports Ministry.
The ministry is currently accepting applications for the Pemilihan Duta Pemuda Kreatif 2016 (Creative Youth Ambassador Selection 2016) program, which aims to find young creative leaders around the country in various disciplines such as music and art to help lead a creative movement that will make Indonesia more competitive and decrease youth unemployment.
Which all sounds great, until you look at the rules for the selection process:
The highlighted line stipulates that those selected must be “Physically and mentally healthy, not involved in promiscuity and sexually deviant behavior, including LGBT, which is explained by a medical certificate.”
That’s right, they expected contestants to have a letter from a doctor declaring they were not LGBT or in some other way “sexually deviant”.
The Sport Ministry was rightfully blasted for this rule by many groups, including strong criticism from the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) which lambasted it as the state trying to control its citizen’s sexual orientation.
If you look at the Pemilihan Duta Pemuda Kreatif website now, you can see that the part about LGBT has been removed (you can see it was changed from this earlier cached version).
So the ministry took the criticism to heart and changed their minds, right? Nope, not at all, unfortunately. The remaining line still states that contestants not be “Involved in promiscuity and other deviant behavior,” and they made it clear to the Jakarta Post that that meant LGBT.
The ministry’s deputy for creative youth enhancement, Eni Budi Sri Haryani, said they removed the term LGBT from the rules as it may hurt people, but made it clear that LGBT individuals were still not eligible for the program and even added that they would be screened out, asserting that the ministry “can conclude whether or not the contestants are LGBT people” by interviewing them one by one.
Asked how exactly an interview would be able to determine that, Eni told the Jakarta Post, “We will not select sick people to become the creativity ambassadors. How can we choose those who are LGBT people or who are drug users for the big duty?”
It’s absolutely appalling that a government official could espouse those views and even more appalling that a government institution operate based on them. It’s especially ironic that they would apply this kind of blatant discrimination to a contest about finding creative industry leaders in Indonesia. Apparently the ministry is completely clueless as to how many of Indonesia’s most accomplished and skilled artists are members of the LGBT community. But then, so many of them are forced to hide their sexual orientation from the public because of government sanctioned discrimination like this. It’s incredibly sad and frustrating. Something needs to break the cycle.
