Indonesia: Google removes applications LGBT at the request of the authorities

AFP

AFP

Wednesday, 31 January 2018 04:06

UPDATE
Wednesday, 31 January 2018 04:06

Look at this article

JAKARTA, Indonesia | The american giant of the digital Google has removed from its online stores in Indonesia one of the applications of dating for gay men the most used in the world, at the request of authorities, said on Wednesday a spokesman.

During January, the indonesian ministry of Communications had called on Google to remove from its online store Play Store 73 applications LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) including dating services, and called on the population to avoid using applications that do not correspond to the social and cultural standards of the most populous muslim country in the world.

As a result, Blued — application and social network that counts more than 27 million users across the world — is no longer available in the online store Google Play for users in indonesia, said a ministry spokesman, Noor Iza.

“There was in that application of negative content related to pornography. Without a doubt, that one or more users of the application set of the pornographic content,” said the spokesman to the AFP, without other details.

Google declined to comment.

On Wednesday, the application Blued was still available in the online shop of Apple, another american giant of the internet.

According to the daily indonesian Kompas quoting the spokesperson for the ministry, 14 other applications that LGBT people have also been removed from the online store of Google in Indonesia.

Homosexual relations are legal in Indonesia, except Aceh province, the only one in the archipelago of South-East Asia to apply the islamic law (shari’a).

However, the indonesian police has frequently recourse to the strict laws, anti-pornography, to repress members of the LGBT community.

The withdrawal of these applications occurs on a background of increasing hostility towards the community LGBT in Indonesia. For some time, of ministers, of the conservatives and islamist groups engage publicly homophobic statements.

Last December, ten men had been sentenced to two years in prison for having participated in a feast homosexual in a sauna of the capital Jakarta.