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View all search resultsState-sanctioned intolerance
By classifying "the spread of LGBTQ culture" as a threat to national security, Perpres No. 111/2025 has codified informal hostility into state-sanctioned persecution, declaring a minority group as a public enemy.
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Echa Wa’ode (center), an activist from LGBTQ+ rights organization Arus Pelangi, joins a march in Jakarta organized by the Indonesian Women's Alliance (API) on March 8, 2025, calling for labor rights, gender equality and protections to mark the 50th International Women's Day. (AFP/Yasuyoshi Chiba)
T
he LGBTQ community has never had it easy: online harassment and offline raids have long been recurring features of public life. But under Presidential Regulation No. 111/2025, which places "the spread of LGBTQ culture" among the state’s catalog of nonmilitary threats alongside terrorism, separatism and drug trafficking, that persecution carries something new: the state’s imprimatur.
The regulation doesn't create new crimes, but laws rarely need to criminalize something explicitly for people to feel empowered to punish it. The presidency’s labeling a group of citizens a threat to "national sovereignty" and "the erosion of nationalism" is essentially a blank check: for police to treat suspicion as patriotism, for local administrations to treat discrimination as defense and for vigilantes to treat intimidation as duty.
The stated intent may be to "contain" something, but containment measures rarely stay contained. They are read by everyone and acted upon by anyone who was looking for a reason.
That downstream reaction is already visible.
Human Rights Watch has documented a sharp escalation in the harassment of LGBTQ university students, including doxing campaigns against a student press outlet that posted about Pride Month.
The Religious Affairs Ministry is now drafting a curriculum amendment that discourages LGBTQ "behavior" in schools. The Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) has gone further by preparing a draft criminal bill, at the House of Representatives' invitation, that would punish not just same-sex conduct but also advocating for LGBTQ rights.
None of this exists in a vacuum; all of it draws oxygen from Perpres No. 111.
