Yahoo – AFP,
November 11, 2016
Crowds
cheered Friday night as a group of Indonesian transgender women showed off
glittering gowns in a beauty pageant held almost entirely in secret to avoid
unwanted attention from hardliners in the Muslim-majority nation.
Twenty-eight-year-old
Pie Nabh Tappii won the title of Miss Transgender Indonesia, facing off
competition from 18 other contestants.
"I am
happy, but I want to cry as well... I didn't expect this," Tappii told AFP
after being crowned.
In addition
to the crown, Tappii's prizes included 10 million rupiah ($745) and a two-metre
(six and a half-foot) high trophy.
The pageant
in Jakarta was kept mostly under wraps, with just a handful of media invited as
organisers warned cheering supporters not to share images of the event on
social media as it unfolded, fearing the wrath of religious radicals.
Hardliners
in the world's most populous Muslim-majority country have grown increasingly
bold in recent years.
They have
halted a festival focusing on women's issues and have targeted the Christian
minority, seeking to close down churches and stop their community work.
The Indonesian
constitution officially recognises six different religions and most of its 255
million inhabitants practise a moderate form of Islam.
But critics
say the influence of fringe hardline groups, and the authorities' unwillingness
to tackle them for fear of being labelled anti-Islamic, has fuelled a dangerous
increase in intolerance, including against the transgender community.
The parade
comes just a week after tens of thousands of Muslims protested in Jakarta
against the city's Christian governor, angered by allegations he insulted
Islam.
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