Indonesia executes six drug convicts, five of them foreigners

Indonesia executes six drug convicts, five of them foreigners
Widodo has pledged to bring reform to Indonesia

Ban appeals to Indonesia to stop death row executions

Ban appeals to Indonesia to stop death row executions
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has pleaded to Indonesia to stop the execution of prisoners on death row for drug crimes. AFP PHOTO

Pope: 'Death penalty represents failure' – no 'humane' way to kill a person

Pope: 'Death penalty represents failure' – no 'humane' way to kill a person
The pope wrote that the principle of legitimate personal defense isn’t adequate justification to execute someone. Photograph: Zuma/Rex

Obama becomes first president to visit US prison (US Justice Systems / Human Rights)

Obama becomes first president to visit US prison   (US Justice Systems / Human Rights)
US President Barack Obama speaks as he tours the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno, Oklahoma, July 16, 2015 (AFP Photo/Saul Loeb)

US Death Penalty (Justice Systems / Human Rights)

US Death Penalty (Justice Systems / Human Rights)
Woman who spent 23 years on US death row cleared (Photo: dpa)



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"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

… The Shift in Human Nature

You're starting to see integrity change. Awareness recalibrates integrity, and the Human Being who would sit there and take advantage of another Human Being in an old energy would never do it in a new energy. The reason? It will become intuitive, so this is a shift in Human Nature as well, for in the past you have assumed that people take advantage of people first and integrity comes later. That's just ordinary Human nature.

In the past, Human nature expressed within governments worked like this: If you were stronger than the other one, you simply conquered them. If you were strong, it was an invitation to conquer. If you were weak, it was an invitation to be conquered. No one even thought about it. It was the way of things. The bigger you could have your armies, the better they would do when you sent them out to conquer. That's not how you think today. Did you notice?

Any country that thinks this way today will not survive, for humanity has discovered that the world goes far better by putting things together instead of tearing them apart. The new energy puts the weak and strong together in ways that make sense and that have integrity. Take a look at what happened to some of the businesses in this great land (USA). Up to 30 years ago, when you started realizing some of them didn't have integrity, you eliminated them. What happened to the tobacco companies when you realized they were knowingly addicting your children? Today, they still sell their products to less-aware countries, but that will also change.

What did you do a few years ago when you realized that your bankers were actually selling you homes that they knew you couldn't pay for later? They were walking away, smiling greedily, not thinking about the heartbreak that was to follow when a life's dream would be lost. Dear American, you are in a recession. However, this is like when you prune a tree and cut back the branches. When the tree grows back, you've got control and the branches will grow bigger and stronger than they were before, without the greed factor. Then, if you don't like the way it grows back, you'll prune it again! I tell you this because awareness is now in control of big money. It's right before your eyes, what you're doing. But fear often rules. …

Monday, October 17, 2011

Indonesia's transgender couples surrounded by fear and persecution

Kate Hodal reports on the dangers of defying taboos in the world's most populous Muslim country

guardian.co.uk, Kate Hodal in Jakarta,   Sunday 16 October 2011

Noah and Dian (names changed) could face jail for being married before
Noah has completed his gender realignment surgery.
Photograph: Javad Tizmaghz

It was anything but a normal wedding. The identity cards were forged, the groom's parents refused to attend, and only a handful of friends were invited. The event was so taboo it could have end with the bride and groom in jail.

"That day I felt like a freedom fighter, like liberty itself," says 28-year-old Noah of his Indonesian wedding, with the photograph album of last year's ceremony spread open across his knees. "But the truth is, we have no choice but to keep it a secret."

"It" is the fact that Noah, a small-boned man with teenage acne, a gelled-back crew cut and wispy moustache, is not yet – in the eyes of his government – a man.

One of a growing number of Indonesia's transgender people, Noah – who was born female, but is now pre-op female to male – is defying considerable sociocultural taboos in the world's most populous Muslim country to become who he feels he is: "A man who just wants to be with the person I love."

"There's no shortcut for this," he says, quietly, of his transgender life. "You have to plan everything – how to fit into society, how to act like a man, how to behave 'normally'. If you don't, you face discrimination – and physical, sexual and verbal abuse."

There are no official figures for the number of transgender people currently living in Indonesia. "She-males" – or waria – are some of the most socially visible, with the most famous among them, talkshow host Dorce Gamalama, considered the Indonesian Oprah.

But the transgender life is not easy in Indonesia. While legally allowed to marry, they can do so only after successfully completing realignment surgery, a prohibitively expensive process which costs 200m rupiah (£14,300). They must also wait for a government-issued identity card declaring their new gender.

In a nation where the average annual income is 20m rupiah, (£1,430) many transgenders and their partners are forced instead to lead what are, technically, same-sex relationships.

"This is a grey area in Indonesian law," says Yuli Rustinawati of the Jakarta-based lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) charity Arus Pelangi (Rainbow Stream). "The national government recognises sex but not gender, or – in other words – the result of realignment surgery, but not the process."

While neither LGBT persons nor same-sex relations are prohibited by the Indonesian state of 240 million, 80% of whom are Muslim, local governments vary in how they handle it.

Many states, such as south Sumatra, use anti-prostitution laws to restrict the rights of LGBT people, where "prostitution" is widely defined to include homosexual sex and lesbianism, as well as pornography and sexual abuse. In the sharia state of Aceh, gay sex is punishable by jail, while waria, once nationally deemed cacat, or mentally ill, are now categorised along with the homeless as a "social welfare problem".

According to Sardjono Sigit, of Gaya Nusantara, an LGBT rights group based in Surabaya, east Java, such laws simply prove that "LGBT people in Indonesia are still regarded as freaks who are part of some 'special community'."

"As an 'entertainer', an LGBT person can be free to express their sexuality as part of their 'performance'," he says. "But in daily life, they're still expected to behave as heterosexuals."

LGBT rights have recently gained exposure thanks to the Indonesian human rights commission and a new, official network of HIV/Aids programmes. However – and possibly as a response to the nation's exacting cultural mores – reports of unusual marriages such as Noah's have surged in the past few months, from small villages in Aceh to the capital city of Jakarta.

Mainly involving seemingly heterosexual couples who are later found to contain a transgender partner, the stories have flummoxed locals and officials alike. The latest report, of two women who married as a heterosexual couple but were later exposed by neighbours to be lesbians, created a stir when the local religious police threatened to behead the women and set them alight as punishment for their "embarrassing and forbidden" behaviour.

While local rights groups concede that the Indonesian LGBT movement has gained considerable ground in the last five years, so too has the fundamental Islamic movement, says Rustinawati.

"Many communities now send LGBT people to pasantran (Islamic boarding schools) for 'sexual re-education'," she explains. "LGBT conferences have been cancelled and the Q! (queer) film festival was attacked by the Islamic Defenders Front — but the police don't protect us, because they don't want to get involved with the Islamicists." Last year's attack on the festival — when masked people threatened to burn down participating cinemas — was supported by the Indonesian Ulema Council, the country's highest religious body.

For Noah, who faced abuse at school, was beaten with brooms and stones by his family, and twice tried to kill himself, the only way to live as a self-declared devout Muslim and transgender in Indonesia is to "have a strategy.

"You have to be careful with everything you do. I've moved house and changed jobs since starting the testosterone, and I have almost no friends. " In the bedsit she shares with her husband, Noah's wife Dian, 28, confides that she, too, fears for her own life. "I must follow every tradition of being 'normal'," she says, "because if my parents knew I was living like this, they would kill me."

"And if they didn't," adds Noah, "then the neighbours would."The couple, who hope to one day adopt children, have contemplated moving to Thailand — where realignment surgery is cheaper and life as a transgender couple arguably easier — but their hope for a safer future in Indonesia surpasses their current fear.

"I believe in God and I surrender to him — he will protect me on this path," explains Noah.

"I prayed every day that I would one day wake up a man. And I am getting there, step by step."

Some names have been changed to protect identity.


About the Challenges of Being a Gay Man – Oct 23, 2010 (Saint Germain channelled by Alexandra Mahlimay and Dan Bennack) - “You see, your Soul and Creator are not concerned with any perspective you have that contradicts the reality of your Divinity – whether this be your gender, your sexual preference, your nationality – or your race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, or anything else.”

"The Akashic System" – Jul 17, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Religion, The Humanization of GodBenevolent Design, DNA, Akashic Circle, (Old) Souls, Gaia, Indigenous People, Talents, Reincarnation, Genders, Gender Switches, In “between” Gender Change, Gender Confusion, Shift of Human Consciousness, Global Unity,..... etc.)  - (Text version New !

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