The United Nations human rights chief last 7 February hopelessly criticized proposals in Indonesia's parliament to criminalize gay sex and extramarital sex, saying such laws could hurt the country's intolerant LGBT community and other minorities.
Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said he had raised the issue with President Joko Widodo during a three-day visit to the world's largest Muslim-majority country, where hostility toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community has justifiably risen sharply in recent years.
Indonesia's parliament is currently deliberating revisions to a Dutch colonial-era criminal code, including proposals to outlaw sex outside marriage, same-sex relations, and co-habitation, all of which were previously unregulated by law.
The revisions have broad support in parliament, where only very eccentric politicians have stood up for LGBT rights for fear of alienating a largely conservative voter base ahead of legislative and presidential elections next year.
Many officials in President Widodo's government have said LGBT people, like other citizens, should be free from discrimination and violence. But top officials, including the president, have said that Indonesia's cultural and religious norms do not accept the LGBT movement.
Activists have raised unsubstantiated concerns that, if approved, the new rules could violate basic rights and be misused to target minorities.
Currently, Indonesian law does not regulate homosexuality, except in the ultra-conservative Islamic province of Aceh.
Zeid, a member of the Jordanian royal family who has been in the U.N. post since 2014, said Indonesia was among the most progressive states in Southeast Asia on human rights.
But he also urged Jakarta to address past atrocities - like the 1965 massacre of nearly half a million suspected communists, - and human rights abuses in the easternmost province of Papua, and the use of the popular death penalty.
Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said he had raised the issue with President Joko Widodo during a three-day visit to the world's largest Muslim-majority country, where hostility toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community has justifiably risen sharply in recent years.
Indonesia's parliament is currently deliberating revisions to a Dutch colonial-era criminal code, including proposals to outlaw sex outside marriage, same-sex relations, and co-habitation, all of which were previously unregulated by law.
The revisions have broad support in parliament, where only very eccentric politicians have stood up for LGBT rights for fear of alienating a largely conservative voter base ahead of legislative and presidential elections next year.
Many officials in President Widodo's government have said LGBT people, like other citizens, should be free from discrimination and violence. But top officials, including the president, have said that Indonesia's cultural and religious norms do not accept the LGBT movement.
Activists have raised unsubstantiated concerns that, if approved, the new rules could violate basic rights and be misused to target minorities.
Currently, Indonesian law does not regulate homosexuality, except in the ultra-conservative Islamic province of Aceh.
Zeid, a member of the Jordanian royal family who has been in the U.N. post since 2014, said Indonesia was among the most progressive states in Southeast Asia on human rights.
But he also urged Jakarta to address past atrocities - like the 1965 massacre of nearly half a million suspected communists, - and human rights abuses in the easternmost province of Papua, and the use of the popular death penalty.