Ma’ruf Bajammal, a lawyer with the Community Legal Aid Center (LBHM), which is assisting TT, said the panel of judges decided that they could not continue examining the case because TT should have first appealed the dismissal to the authorities within the Central Java Police when he received the termination letter before resorting to filing a lawsuit.

“But there is no such mechanism within the police institution,” Ma’ruf told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

During Thursday’s hearing, Panca Yunior Utono, the presiding judge, said TT’s lawsuit was “premature” because TT had not yet filed an administrative complaint against the Central Java Police chief’s decision to terminate him after he was found to be a homosexual by his colleagues.

In the preliminary statement, the Central Java Police argued that the lawsuit had circumvented the proper legal procedures stipulated in the 2014 Government Administration Law.

Articles 76, 77 and 78 of Law 30/2014 on government administration stipulates that a citizen may file an administrative appeal against decisions made by a government official or their direct supervisor in a government institution. The panel of judges accepted this argument.

“Therefore, the panel of judges believes the court is not yet authorized to accept, examine or decide upon the dispute,” he said as quoted by tribunnews.com.

Panca said the panel of judges had taken into consideration the preliminary statements of TT and the Central Jakarta Police and decided that the case was not ready to be heard.

“We reject the plaintiff’s challenge,” Panca said.

In a previous interview with the Post, Central Java Police spokesperson Sr. Comr. Agus Triatmaja said that TT had been dismissed after an internal investigation and hearings and that they “rejected his request to appeal”.

“But that’s what we did. We appealed after the ethics panel made its decision and they rejected it. Based on the ethic panel’s decision, they subsequently issued TT’s termination letter. But now the judges say that they want us to file another appeal even though the termination letter has already been issued,” Ma’ruf said.

“TT didn’t do that because there is no provision to file an objection against a termination letter because the letter is already final and cannot be contested,” he added.

Ma’ruf said he was currently discussing with the LBHM team on their next steps.

Accompanied by the LBHM, TT filed a lawsuit against the Central Java Police with the Semarang State Administrative Court on March 26. The case had been ongoing for around month.

“I don’t think there will ever be legal certainty for anyone who is dismissed from the police institution,” he said.

While anti-LGBT sentiment has intensified over the past few years in Indonesia, activists say TT might be the first police officer to have been fired for being gay. He is the first to challenge the discriminatory decision in court without having to deny his sexual identity.

TT is gay but had kept it a secret for years until he was ambushed by fellow officers while on a date with his partner on Valentine’s Day.

Central Java Police told the Post that they discovered about TT’s private life through an internal investigation.

Human right organizations, including Amnesty International, have lambasted the police decision calling it “wrong, misleading and discriminatory”.

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