‘Homophobic Indonesians still at large’: Sociologist

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta, Thu, 05/17/2012 

Dede Oetomo: (JP)

As the world marks International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia on Thursday, recent incidents show that “many homophobic people are still at large” in the world’s largest moderate Muslim country, a sociologist says.

Dede Oetomo, a sociologist from Airlangga University in Surabaya, East Java, said that “it was very painful to see a number of Indonesians still shamelessly harassing people from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender or LGBT communities in the lead-up to the commemoration”.

The international day was founded at the 2006 International Homosexual and Human Rights conference in Montreal, Canada.

Dede added, however, that there was a silver lining, referring to a delegation from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) who would be reviewing the rights situation in Indonesia from May 21 to June 4.

“I feel sure they will evaluate recent events in the country, particularly the fact that the authorities have washed their hands of these incidents,” the gay rights activist Dede told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Introduced in 2006, the quadrennial review is a part of the UN’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) to evaluate the human rights records of the UN’s 192 member nations.

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