JAKARTA, Indonesia – A new bill in Parliament would extend the authority of the Indonesian broadcasting commission and increase its ability to censor content on digital platforms, including social media. The bill, which was disclosed in March 2024 and submitted to the list of legislators’ priorities in November, explicitly prohibits the content presenting the publication of lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender online publication.
Dave Laksono, a deputy working on the bill, known as the broadcasting bill, said that it is important that Indonesia follows global trends in the regulation of digital platforms.
“It is our responsibility to strengthen control, to make a filtering on social networks, on the information that children will receive,” he said.
Censorship of the contents on digital platforms is a simple extension of what is already going on with movies, television and radio, he adds.
At the same time, another new bill discussed widen the police authority to monitor and close internet access. It is at the top of the new military law, promulgated in March, which increases military authority in digital space.
LGBT defenders claim that the broadcasting bill, combined with military law and police bill, adds a new layer of risk of sexual minorities. This will lead to a new discrimination against the already vulnerable LGBT community – control them rather than protect them, explains Richa Shofyana, known as Chacha, who works in the mechanism of response in crisis, which aims to prevent and respond to crises involving sexual and sexist minorities.
A story of discrimination
The current atmosphere in Indonesia is a digital rehearsal of 2016 – a year in which transgender women lost their jobs in the mass entertainment industry, due to a television and radio censorship law, explains Kanzha Vinaa, a transgender woman who directs Sanggar Swara, a non -governmental organization focusing on transgender rights in Indonesia.
This year has marked the rise in an anti-LGBT movement. Even then, many LGBT people have started to close their social media accounts, says Vinaa. There were comments on his stories that attacked his identity and even threatened his life, she adds, and they were not erased by the platform.
“It was not considered violence,” she says.
Chacha says that during this period, in particular in 2023, her old name and her photos of her without a scarf appeared on social networks, and she lost access to her WhatsApp account.
There were several reasons for the rise in anti-LGBT feeling, according to the defenders. There was a new political leadership at the provincial level – a candidate was Chinese and not Muslim, which sparked demonstrations of Muslim conservatives. In addition, the United States legalized homosexual marriage in 2015, which prompted many Indonesian politicians to be more and more cautious about the Movement for LGBT rights.
It was during the administration of President Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, who was in power from 2014 to 2024.
Nenden Sekar Arum, executive director of the Southeast Asian freedom of expression network, called Safenet, affirms that criminalization and censorship towards LGBT persons have intensified during the Jokowi administration. Between 2016 and 2018, the Ministry of Communication and Information transferred block 169 websites with “immoral” LGBT content, as well as the Grindr and Blued dating application, a gay social network application.
This ministry no longer publishes the names of the applications and blocked sites, so it is not clear how inaccessible remain.
Indonesian police already regularly arrest groups of people gathered for parties. In February, police arrested 56 people in Jakarta. And last November, Isa Zega, a transgender woman and a social media influencer, became suspect in a blasphemous case after downloading content showing that the pilgrimage in Omra carrying a scarf. These two cases took place under the Administration of Prabowo Subianto, the current president.
“The current government continues (Jokowi’s works),” said Nenden.
Pornography
Anyone who has found the manufacture, sharing or sale of pornography containing “deviant relationships”, the definition of the law including sexual acts involving same -sex, can be imprisoned.
Settlement treatment regulations with negative content
Allows the government to block websites considered to be “negative content”, by focusing largely on pornography and “other illegal activities”. Since 2016, this has been used to block LGBT sites and mobile applications.
Régulations from the Indonesian broadcasting commission (KPI)
Prohibit the representation of sexual diversity and sex in men, followed by any television or radio broadcast which has “promoted” a homosexual lifestyle.
Regulation on private electronic systems organizers
Order all digital and social media platforms to share the choice of sexual orientation of each account with the Ministry of Communication and Information.
Modification of the electronic information and transaction law
Anyone who has found content sharing “against a standard”, which includes LGBT content, can be imprisoned.
Bill to modify the law of broadcasting
The Parliament begins discussions on the modification of the broadcasting bill to impose new restrictions on any content or advertising representing a behavior linked to the LGBT, with penalties ranging from written warnings to the revocation of licenses. The debate on the bill is postponed to the request of several politicians, but is submitted to the list of legislative priorities in November.
‘I’m going to stay’
Laksono, the legislator, said that the broadcasting bill is still in the discussion phase in Parliament, and there is no decision at the time of finalizing it. But it is common for legislators to suddenly finalize bills, as was the case with military law.
Yowerra Arief, director of Remotivi, a media study organization, predicts that Parliament will precipitate the discussion on this bill and will soon finalize it.
The Indonesian broadcasting commission, known as KPI, considers the problem as simple: the new bill aims to protect children, explains Ubaidillah, the head of the KPI.
“We focus on how to guarantee that looking at children are not influenced to justify behavior,” he said.
Vinaa, on the other hand, says that she plans to face the new bill differently from what she responded to events in 2016, when she disappeared from social media for years.
“At this point, I don’t want to make them able to silence me again,” she said. “So, whatever happens, I will stay in the digital space to recover the spaces, with all the risks I know.”