US condemns Indonesian anti-LGBT statements
The United States criticized Indonesia on Thursday for saying there is “no room” for the gay community in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country.
“We encourage Indonesia, which rightly prides itself on diversity and tolerance, to respect and uphold international rights and standards by ensuring equal rights and protections for all of its citizens,” State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told reporters.
Earlier on Thursday, Indonesian presidential spokesman Johan Budi told AFP that “rights of citizens like going to school and getting an ID card are protected, but there is no room in Indonesia for the proliferation of the LGBT movement.”
He was responding to criticism that officials recently unleashed a wave of angry rhetoric against Indonesia’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.
Washington is “closely monitoring reports of possible measures in Indonesia that would restrict the freedom of expression for LGBTI individuals,” Trudeau said.
“In principle and in practice the United States government will always strive to protect and advance the universal right of all people, including LGBTI individuals, to express themselves both online and offline,” she added.
Indonesia’s LGBT citizens have long been targeted by vigilante Islamist groups.
But the community experienced an “immediate deterioration” in their rights following a sustained assault by ministers, religious hardliners and influential Islamic organizations — including a call to ban them from university campuses — over a two-month period earlier this year, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Thursday.
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1 Comments
Why should United States of America meddle into internal issues of sovereign nations? Is it not in the power of nations to make laws for themselves? And of course, just as ownership of guns by citizens is not acceptable in many nations of the world and America does not see it as good but rather encourages, allows and even protects those who use it to kill others does not mean that other nations must also allow it. Depravity is not a right but evil and the earlier America extricates itself from the delusion that America is the conscience of the world the better for her. America is virtually turning every part of the world into crisis so that they can sustain their businesses. America should rise up to propagate righteousness upon which America was founded. It is a shame that day by day America is entrenching evil in the world.
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