Asia's first LGBT-focused streaming service tackles taboos

Yahoo – AFP, Catherine Lai, December 30, 2019

GagaOOLala brings more than 1,000 feature films, shorts, web series, and
documentaries to people across Asia, where censorship and traditional attitudes
mean there has been little in the way of gay content in the mainstream
media (AFP Photo/Roslan RAHMAN)

Singapore (AFP) - A rom-com about a lesbian flight attendant and a romance in a gay spa are among the shows featured on Asia's first LGBT-focused streaming service, which is pushing boundaries in an often highly conservative region.

GagaOOLala brings more than 1,000 feature films, shorts, web series, and documentaries to people across Asia, where censorship and traditional attitudes mean there has been little in the way of gay content in the mainstream media.

After launching in 2017 in Taiwan, a beacon for gay rights since becoming the first place in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage, it has expanded to 21 territories including several that still criminalise homosexuality.

"One of the main impetuses for me to create GagaOOlala, (is) to kind of dispel a lot of the myths and misconceptions that a lot of people might have about LGBT people," said Jay Lin, a prominent LGBT rights activist in Taiwan who founded the platform.

"We're not all living really tragic lives -- we're entrepreneurs, we're fathers," the 46-year-old, who is raising twin boys with his partner in Taipei, told AFP.

With about 280,000 members, made up mainly of gay people but also including a significant number of straight women, its success comes as some progress is made on LGBT rights in parts of the region.

As well as Taiwan's move to legalise same-sex unions in May, India's Supreme Court last year struck down a colonial-era ban on gay sex.

Dire rights situation

But the gay rights situation remains dire in other countries where the platform operates -- making its presence in those markets all the more important, supporters say.

Gay sex is still banned in Singapore as it is in Malaysia, where in the past year women and men have been caned under Islamic laws for having same-sex relations.

The tiny, oil-rich sultanate of Brunei introduced death by stoning for gay sex as part of a harsh new sharia penal code earlier this year –- but later rolled it back following a storm of criticism.

Censorship also persists in some countries, with Malaysia's film board this year cutting gay sex scenes from "Rocketman", the movie-musical based on the life of British singer Elton John.

The platform -- which is planning a global launch next year -- has not run into any regulatory hurdles so far, according to Lin, but he acknowledged the need to tread carefully in more conservative places.

The service often relies on closed chat groups, social media and LGBT influencers for promotion instead of advertising openly.

Lin's team started by building up GagaOOlala's library with Western content, but has since branched out, making an effort to find content from across Asia.

Earlier this year GOL Studios, a sister platform, was launched to help LGBT filmmakers find talent and funding, as well as distribute and market their work.

Homegrown content

The platform ramped up its production of original content this year, making its first Thai film, its first lesbian feature film in Japan and a Germany-Spain co-production.

"As we have developed..., we have realised that actually a lot of Asians also want to see Asian faces, and watch Asian stories and watch films take place in places or cities that they're familiar with," said Lin.

For streamers focusing on niche areas like GagaOOLala, original shows are key to building their brands.

Lin said interest in the platform jumped after the recent release of the "Handsome Stewardess", a series about a Taiwanese, tomboyish lesbian who takes a job as a flight attendant to pursue her new love interest to Singapore.

"The Teacher", another original about a gay educator who is in love with an HIV-positive married man, also proved a hit, bagging best supporting actress at the Golden Horse awards, dubbed the Chinese-language "Oscars".

GagaOOlala is not alone in relying on original content to draw in viewers and boost its profile.

Bryan Seah, head of original productions at Southeast Asia-focused streamer Hooq, said people felt "pride" at seeing local performers on screen.

Viewers were sending a message that "I want to see my favourite Indonesian actor, I want to see my favourite Filipino director, fronting something that has the scale and ambition to match the best Korean content", he said.

Tradition meets Twitter as Saudis pledge to new king

Yahoo - AFP, Wissam Keyrouz, 27 Jan 2015

Saudi Arabia's new King Salman attends a ceremony at the Diwan royal
palace in Riyadh on January 24, 2015 (AFP)

Decades ago, Saudis trekked across their desert kingdom to pledge allegiance to their new kings at their palaces. Now they are just using Twitter.

Thousands of Saudis have poured into the palace of King Salman who acceded the throne after the death of his half-brother Abdullah last week.

Many others exercised the entrenched tradition at the palaces of provincial princes.

Saudi blogger Raef Badawi, shown
in Jeddah in 2012, was sentenced
in May 2014 to 10 years in prison,
1,000 lashes and a fine for
"insulting Islam" (AFP)

But thousands of others have pledged their allegiance to the new ruler online, taking advantage of social media networks.

Chief among them is Twitter, whose popularity has exploded with an astounding 40 percent of Saudis now using the microblogging website.

Saudi Arabia is governed by a strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law, but authorities have stopped short of banning Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, unlike in the Islamic republic of Iran.

Ultra-conservatives tweet as much as liberals in the tightly censored absolute monarchy, with clerics attracting the most followers, like Mohammed al-Arefe who has 10.8 million of them.

However several users have faced jail over their posts that have been deemed offensive to the authorities or to Islam.

King Salman himself has an account that saw its number of followers surge to 1.6 million as he became the monarch.

"I pray to God to help me serve our dear people and achieve their aspirations, and to keep our country secure and stable," read a tweet posted on the account following his accession.

A hashtag in Arabic declaring "I pledge allegiance to King Salman" spread quickly among Saudi tweeps after King Abdullah died on Friday, as users of the site mourned the late monarch.

'Progress without abandoning tradition'

"I have pledged my allegiance through Twitter because as we progress technologically, we do not abandon our identity and traditions," said Twitter user Salman al-Otaibi.

"This pledge is a duty on every Muslim," he told AFP.

Metab al-Samiri tweeted: "With full obedience, I pledge allegiance to you Salman."

The pledge is both an Islamic obligation to provide the ruler with legitimacy and a tribal commitment to obey the new leader.

Twitter has also proven to be a headache for authorities in Gulf monarchies as social media blogging sites render their censorship largely helpless.

Users calling for reforms in the kingdom have taken to the platform to voice discontent and demand concessions from the ruling family.

"We want a consultative Shura Council that is elected by the people, capable of legislating laws and holding the cabinet to account," said one tweet.

"This way, the alleged reforms could be achieved," it added, using another popular hashtag that said: "Demands for King Salman."

Despite timid steps to introduce reforms, Saudi Arabia under Abdullah remained a tightly controlled kingdom, where conservatives continue to play a strong role.

The case of blogger Raef Badawi serves as an example of the Gulf state's ever-tightening freedom of expression.

Badawi is serving a 10-year jail sentence for insulting Islam, and he has also been sentenced to 1,000 lashes, having received 50 of them in public this month.

Twitter is "the source of all evil and devastation", said the kingdom's top cleric Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh in a fatwa edict in October.

"People are rushing to it thinking it's a source of credible information but it's a source of lies and falsehood," he said.

Despite such warnings, there are no signs of Twitter's popularity waning in Saudi Arabia, whose five million users give the kingdom the world's highest penetration.

A woman's open & direct msg to Saudi authorities worth much more than her husband's words. #Michelle_Obama_NotVeiled pic.twitter.com/PV7K5imDEn
— Ali Batu Karaali (@abkaraali) January 28, 2015

THANK YOU @MichelleObama for standing up for women. Now can we also tell them that lashes & beheadings are not ok. #Michelle_Obama_NotVeiled
— Piccia (@Piccia) January 28, 2015

Related Articles:

Michelle Obama opts to forgo headscarf during Saudi Arabia visit
Saudi postpones blogger lashing on medical grounds

Facebook Became the New Town Hall and Twitter the Fastest Media

Independence War Propaganda Uncovered

Jakarta Globe, Thessa Lageman, December 16, 2013

Photographs taken durin the Indonesian war for independence have recently
 been published. Censorship laws and government propaganda kept the photos from
public view during the height of the conflict. (Photo courtesy of Dienst voor
Legercontacten and Nationaal Archief)

The Dutch Indies, 1945-1949. Only about 10 percent of the Indonesian population wanted independence. These “roving gangs” needed to be stopped, but there was definitely no war raging. At least, this was the picture created for the Dutch by a successful propaganda war.

The information given to the Dutch population at the time of the Indonesian War of Independence was misleading, according to Dutch historian Louis Zweers. The Dutch military communication service decided which photos and information could be published in the newspapers. It proved to be a successful strategy.

The Dutch believed that their soldiers were protecting the Indonesian population against a few “long-haired terrorists” or “bandits,” instead of thousands of guerrilla fighters.

They had no idea that in fact a war was raging and that at least 100,000 Indonesians and over 5,000 Dutch soldiers died in the years between 1945 and 1949.

Zweers, who was born in 1948, analyzed thousands of photos and news reports from the war. They had been lying untouched in boxes in the National Archive in The Hague for decades, until in 1995 he received a phone call from an archivist.

“It clearly had little priority,” Zweers recalled. “People didn’t want to know about it.”

He himself had become interested in Indonesia at a young age, because of his grandfather who had taken part in the military expedition in Lombok in 1894 and left him his awards, photos and papers.

In addition, the historian’s niece moved to Indonesia to be with her Indonesian husband in 1951, at a time when almost all the Dutch left the country.

This interest in the country resulted in the compilation of 20 books about the Dutch Indies and Indonesia, and his Ph.D. thesis about the censorship of the news on the Indonesian War of Independence.

Zweers reached the conclusion that the battle for public opinion in the Netherlands was equally important as the actual battle being fought in Indonesia. The Dutch government wanted to maintain its hold on the colony and did everything it could to convince the world that a “building mission” was going on, and not a “combat mission.”

“The Dutch military did the exact same thing recently when referring to the Dutch mission in Afghanistan,” Zweers explained.

The Dutch referred to the military activities in Indonesia as politionele acties , or police actions, and the term has been used in the Netherlands ever since.

“This veiled language was used to make clear that it was a justified, internal matter to restore law and order,” Zweers said.

If people knew that an actual war had broken out, the Netherlands would be even more fiercely criticized by the Americans and British, he added. The picture that was sent out would also have a big influence on the morale of the Dutch soldiers’ families.

The 250 employees that worked for the Dutch military communication service in Batavia therefore made sure the press zoomed in on the humanitarian side of the conflict and legitimized the Dutch military action. This all went very smoothly, especially after hiring American PR agency Swanson.

Photographs taken durin the Indonesian war for independence have recently been

 published. Censorship laws and government propaganda kept the photos from public

 view during the height of the conflict. (Photo courtesy of Dienst voor Legercontacten

and Nationaal Archief)

At the beginning of the war, obedient journalists were allowed to visit certain areas outside Batavia together with press officers. Journalists could also travel inland by jeep without being accompanied, but this was extremely dangerous, because of the various militias and the fact that being Dutch automatically made them a target. Most journalists stayed at hotels in the capital and attended the press conferences and receptions. One exception was Dutch war correspondent Alfred van Sprang, who worked for United Press and disguised himself as an American.

During the last months of the war in 1949, when a fierce battle was being fought between the Indonesian freedom fighters and the Dutch army, the press was denied access to all areas of operation. Thousands of victims died in the jungles and mountains of Java and Sumatra, but the Dutch still read stories about how their army was helping to bring order in Indonesia. The newspapers frequently showed photos of Dutch soldiers offering food and clothes to the thankful Indonesian people.

“The soldiers did things like this too, but photos of casualties did not pass the censorship, because it would give an undesirable image of the war,” Zweers noted.

The pro-government Dutch media did not attempt to break from the army press officers’ censorship. The foreign press was more critical — and the army press officers had a harder time convincing them that the war was a humanitarian intervention. According to the Dutch press offices, foreign journalists were biased and supported the Indonesian republicans.

Occasionally, a letter from a Dutch soldier telling his family the true story of what was really going on slipped through the cracks. Some of these letters were published in the few critical, left-wing press. However, this did not cause widespread outrage among the Dutch population. Zweers believes this was because there were no photos published with those letters.

“There was no visual proof of burned kampongs or civilian casualties,” he said. “Also, most people believed the army when they responded by saying that these reports were highly exaggerated.”

A war does not exist without photos, and no photos means no impact on public opinion, according to the historian.

“The same goes for Syria at the moment. Only after photos of the gas attack were spread did a shock wave hit the world and could voices be heard saying the chemical weapons had to be removed from the country.”

Also, the photos taken in the Dutch Indies were still black and white.

“Blood doesn’t look as shocking in gray,” Zweers said.

“During the Vietnam war, color photos and moving pictures were shown. You could hear the cries of the wounded. That made a big impression.”

Nowadays war photos are often taken with mobile phones and immediately posted on the Internet.

Photographs taken durin the Indonesian war for independence have recently been

 published. Censorship laws and government propaganda kept the photos from public

 view during the height of the conflict. (Photo courtesy of Dienst voor Legercontacten

and Nationaal Archief)

Amateur photos were taken at the time in the Dutch Indies as well, but very few of actual acts of war. And most of those few photos were not found until much later — even up until now.

Recently, an ex-marine who fought in the Dutch Indies between 1946 and 1948 showed two photos that he owned of mass graves at Madura on Dutch TV.

One might wonder what would have happened if there had been more press freedom and a more critical coverage of the war by the Dutch press.

Would the Dutch people and the 150,000 Dutch soldiers who were fighting against the Republic of Indonesia have been more strongly opposed to this war? Zweers believes the answer is yes.

“There certainly would have been more protest in the Netherlands, as happened in the United States during the Vietnam War.”

“However,” he adds, “you never know whether the politicians and the military would have listened to the public.”

RI press gets hardest ever presidential reprimand

Antara News, By Vicki Febrianto, Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The Indonesian press was given the hardest reprimand ever by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

"The president has often talked about the press and its role. But this time, I think, this is the hardest ever reprimand from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to the press because he has used such words," said Wina Armada, member of the Press Council on Wednesday.

Wina was referring to the statement by President Yudhoyono in a radio interview earlier in the day where he asked the media in Indonesia to convey balanced information to the public on both the successes and failures of his government so as not to confuse the people.

"If the government is said to be all failed, bad and should withdraw, as if there nothing was good, this is a poison. On the other way, if the government is always reported all that good, this is not good either," President Yudhoyono told a private radio station in Jakarta, on Wednesday.

The government will accept whatever criticism the public voices , the president said, as long as the press reports were balanced. This influence the government to take actions on improving the results that have not been reached, he pointed out.

In response to a question on what he thought about the critiques on his government through mass media and the press, Yudhoyono stressed that such a thing was quite normal and had been faced by all the governments before his, from Soekarno to Megawati Soekarnoputri.

"What is important for political education, the truth is conveyed in a balanced manner, if it is good, say so and what is not yet good, say it is not yet good. This way will enable the real truth in this country," the President said, adding that the press could adjust the situation by internally.

The Indonesian president made the radio remarks on the first anniversary of his second term in power, as he was reelected to second term through a landslide victory in election last year and taken his oath of office on October 20, 2010. Some elements of public in Jakarta have been critical of his government, saying that there had been nothing good during his first year in power.

Ethical press

According to Wina, the press had currently been working in accordance with the content of Chapter 1 of the Press Code of Ethics, namely on the principles of accuracy, balanced reportage and without malice. News on the President has basically be proportional, said Wina, former secretary general of the Indonesia Journalists Association (PWI).

"I think the President has somehow enjoyed the benefits from the reports on him that disseminated by the press, especially during the last presidential election and even in the previous election," Wina pointed out.

He admitted that there have been those who were pro and against the government among the press circle but they also remained on the track of good ethical code. Thus, should the current freedom of the press is considered already excessive, this idea is incorrect because Indonesia rank of press freedom has somewhat declined.

Confusion among the public, he added, has not been caused by news from the press but more from the policies of the government itself. Despite the fact, the public nowadays has already been smart and will not easily believe in unethical or malicious news.

Wina revealed that a meeting between the President and the Press Council was actually scheduled to take place on Wednesday (October 20) but then dropped because (the President) was said to have another more urgent work to do. Should the meeting have taken place, then it must have been quite a good momentum for the President and the Council to talk.

Freedom index

Global journalists association, Reporters Sans Frontiers, in its annual report on world press freedom index for 2010 indicates that Indonesia had dropped from 101 in 2009 to 117 with freedom score of 35.83. This is the lowest position Indonesia has been, especially when compared with the rank of around 50 in 2002-2005.

The Indonesian press even is lower in press freedom than small countries such as Timor Leste (94), Mauritania (95) and Kuwait (86). Even Indonesia is still under African countries, Kenya (74), Nigeria (106) and Djibouti (110).

The Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), an Indonesian independent journalists association, in a report last August says that from August 2009 to August 2010, it documented 40 cases of violence against journalists. Compared to last year`s 38 cases, it is clear this year shows an increase in the number of cases.

Threat and intimidation are rampant in Indonesian journalism. This year, there are 8 cases of threat and intimidation. Threat is commonly expressed by mass organization (3 cases), politician and unknown individuals (both 2 cases). One case is conducted by crowd.

Reporting prohibition or censorship occur 6 times, all are done by local government officials including personnel from local hospitals.

Legal repression in terms of criminalization or defamation civil suit, or witness subpoena occur 5 times. Perpetrators are members of the police (3 cases), politician and private citizen (one case each). Confiscation of equipment occurs four times - done by bureaucrats, private security personnel, members of mass organizations and unknown individuals, one case each.

Related Articles:

RI press freedom ranking drops

President: Media should provide balanced information

Press Freedom Index 2010