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RI to bring home Mayang's remains
Mayang Prasetyo
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Mayang Prasetyo. Courtesy Mayang Prasetyo
The Foreign Ministry is working to bring home the body of Mayang Prasetyo, an Indonesian who was allegedly murdered by her boyfriend in Brisbane, Australia, last week.
The ministry's director for legal aid and the protection of Indonesian nationals overseas, Tatang Budie Utama Razak, said on Tuesday that officials has flown to Bandar Lampung in Lampung province to meet with members of Mayang's family, who asked for her remains to be repatriated.
The family hopes that her body can be returned home and buried there,' Tatang said.
He also said that the Indonesian Embassy in Canberra was working with the Queensland Police, which has opened an investigation into the case.
A Foreign Ministry team has also collected documents from Mayang's family that could be useful to the Australian police in their investigation.
According to Tatang's correspondence with the victim's mother, Mayang had visited her family last month before returning to Australia.
Mayang's mother, Nining Sukarni, acknowledged that her son was a transgender who was in a relationship with an Australian.
Tatang also confirmed that according to her passport, 27-year-old Mayang was born a boy called Febri Andriansyah.
The passport was issued by the Denpasar Immigration Office in Bali.
Australian Federal Police officers discovered Mayang's remains in her apartment in an upmarket area of Brisbane on Saturday evening after neighbors reported a stench, AFP reported.
The police declined to confirm reports that body parts had been found in a pan of boiling water.
Mayang's boyfriend, 28-year-old chef Marcus Peter Volke, is believed to have fled the apartment after committing the murder. Police found Volke's body later on Saturday night in a nearby street. It appears he committed suicide by slitting his throat.
Mayang and Volke met while working as chefs on international cruise ships, and are believed to have become engaged in August last year, according to the Australian Associated Press.
The couple reportedly moved from Melbourne to Brisbane six months ago.
The murder-suicide has made headlines in Australia with some media outlets publishing details of the couple's love life.
Some, including the Brisbane-based Courier Mail tabloid, ran stories describing Mayang as a high-class, transgender prostitute.
Headlines have included 'Monster Chef and the She-Male', and 'Ladyboy and the Butcher', while photos of Mayang posing in a bikini have also been published.
The sensational reports so irked the Brisbane Trans Community that it initiated an online petition urging the Courier Mail to publicly apologize.
'Rather than persecuting the offender in this case, it appears the Courier Mail is attempting to justify or trivialize Mayang's murder on the basis of her transgender status,' one petitioner wrote on change.org.
As of Tuesday evening, the petition had garnered 14,012 signatories.
Details about Mayang's private life have also turned up in local media news stories, with some stories claiming her name appeared on an Australian escort service website.
