Chinese LGBTQ Comics Found At The Post Office?
Indonesia’s at it again with placing strict rules on LGBTQ people and allies.
For the past few months, things have been getting worse for LGBTQ people in the country. While originally the country had no anti-LGBTQ laws except for in the province of Aceh (which is ruled by Sharia law), the authorities have suddenly turned extremely hostile towards queer people. This has caused many increases in arrests like the one at a gay sauna in October that resulted in the arrest of 58 men.
Now, it seems that they’re cracking down on LGBT comics as well.
Indonesian authorities announced that they intercepted a shipment of Chinese gay comics that went through a major post office in the capital city of Jakarta.
The Attorney General’s office shared that hundreds of comics were found on Tuesday, and M Yusuf, the director of JAM Intel, shared that authorities will now be on the lookout for similar packages.
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Yusuf also shared that though the authorities don’t know much about the comics yet, they were happy to discover the merchandise before they were distributed across the country.
“At the moment we are still investigating these comics, as well as publishers and we’re still in the evidence collecting phase. But the comics are written in Chinese (Mandarin),” he said.
“If we find the culprit, we will turn them over to police.”
This is just another case of intolerance displayed by a government that still sees homosexuality as legal. That said, the toxic attitudes towards homosexuality, and other forms of LGBTQ life, has created a near deadly environment for people who aren’t straight and cisgender.
In addition, politicians have already banned LGBTQ behavior on television (including documentaries and news coverage), and they plan to pass a bill that will criminalize homosexuality in the entire country.
Debate on that bill will pick up in July.
H/t: GayStarNews
Note: “19 Days” is the name of a Chinese web comic, but it was not the Chinese comic discovered in Indonesia. Indonesian officials never announced the title(s) of the comics they found.
