In Indonesia’s digital shadows, LGBTQ+ voices are being hacked, harassed and silenced – often with the law’s blessing.
In the dark corners of Makassar’s digital sphere, where anonymity should be armour and expression a right, LGBTQ+ voices are being silenced. Writing for Bollo.id, journalist Gayatri Resqi Wulandari Gani offers a harrowing dispatch from the front lines of a digital war waged not with bullets, but with logins, lawsuits and the silence of state complicity.
Barry, one of many, yet also singular in his suffering, offers his account to Bollo.id of what it means to be targeted simply for existing aloud. His story is one of vanishing identities, hacked profiles, and the painful choreography of self-censorship. “To lose a social media account”, Barry says, is not just losing access, “it’s losing home, memories, experiences, everything is gone”.
Makassar’s LGBTQ+ activists live under siege. Their words, flagged. Their images, stolen. Their lives, under algorithmic and human scrutiny alike. Attacks come wrapped in the rhetoric of ‘morality’ executed through the blunt tools of Indonesia’s ITE Law, and rarely, if ever, met with justice. Reports languish unacknowledged. Police responses range from indifference to accusation.
Legal advocates like Mira and Ros from LBH Makassar and LBH Apik South Sulawesi confirm the chilling trend: LGBTQ+ victims are more likely to be investigated than protected. Their solution? Build resilient networks outside the system, networks like SAFEnet and PurpleCode, who catalogue, train and fortify, offering stopgaps in a nation without a digital sanctuary.
And yet, resistance pulses forward. Queer communities strategise behind closed doors in form of discussions, workshops on encryption and impersonation, and quietly circulated security manuals.Their resistance is both practical and poetic: a refusal to vanish.
But it’s not just trolls and hackers they battle, but systems. Suci of Perempuan Mahardhika Makassar names the real antagonist: a patriarchal, heteronormative order etched into the very architecture of online life. Even in digital “safe spaces,” queer bodies remain at risk – sexualized, stigmatized or simply erased. As transgender activist Eman notes, the web has ceased to be neutral ground. Social media, once a haven, now mirrors a society still hostile to gender expression.
The government’s own narratives exacerbate this reality. Politicians publicly brand LGBTQ+ people a threat to national morality, fertilising a digital soil ripe for hate. Activists aren’t merely contending with trolls, they’re contending with institutions.
What the article captures so poignantly is that for LGBTQ+ Indonesians to be online is to risk being undone. And yet, they log on. They speak. They fight. Not because it’s safe, but because silence has always been a luxury they couldn’t afford.
In this battle for voice, the act of speaking itself becomes radical. And that’s what makes this story, not just urgent, but revolutionary.
Original article (“Dari Balik Dunia Digital : Suara yang Tak Pernah Didengar”) by Gayatri Resqi Wulandari Gani first appeared in Indonesian on Bollo.id on 15 December 2024.
It’s available here.
Bollo.id is an Indonesian independent media outlet focused on public interest issues, including environmental concerns, human rights, and issues affecting vulnerable groups and minorities. They aim to provide news and information from the perspective of the community and work to empower marginalised voices. In addition to news, Bollo.id also focuses on citizen journalism and training residents to become citizen journalists.
Summary by TMH.
