Mengikuti #BelgianPride di Brussels

Saya kebetulan lagi perjalanan dinas di Brussels, ketika tahu bakal ada #BelgianPride 🏳️‍🌈 di pusat kota. Sesudah bertemu dengan seorang kenalan, diplomat Amerika, kini tugas di North Atlantic Treaty Organization, saya memutuskan untuk ikutan parade.

Kebetulan tempat saya menginap, Hotel NH Brussels Grand Place Arenberg, hanya terletak dua blok dari tempat dimana parade dimulai.

 

Saya sempat tanya kepada rekan-rekan Human Rights Watch di Brussels bila ada yang ikutan. Hanya ada tiga orang ikutan. Satu dari Brussels tapi satunya terbang dari Beirut, Lebanon, buat ikutan. Satunya lagi, seorang ibu dari dua anak asal Amerika Serikat --etnik India-- akan ikut agak sorean. Kami janjian bertemu di tempat parade. Ternyata buat saling bertemu bukan perkara mudah. Ada puluhan ribu orang ikut parade. 

Saya memutuskan menikmati saja Brussels Parade dengan berbagai rombongan serta mengambil gambar. Saya tersentuh melihat seorang ibu dan anak perempuannya. Mereka mendukung anak atau abang mereka seorang gay. 

"My brother is gay, so what?" 

Saya sering wawancara individu lesbian, gay, bisexual dan transgender di Indonesia. Mungkin ratusan bila tak lebih dari 1,000 dalam lima tahun. Saya mengerti betapa mereka menderita, bahkan ketakutan, dengan penolakan keluarga terhadap orientasi seksual mereka. 

Saya senang lihat ibu dan anak ini di Belgia mau membantu keluarga-keluarga lain --bila memiliki anak dengan orientasi seksual LGBT. Semoga kesadaran serupa tumbuh cepat di Indonesia 

Menariknya, ketika memperhatikan route parade di Google Map, saya lihat Google mewarnai rute tersebut dengan warna pelangi. Anda perhatikan ada tanda "Grand Place." Ia adalah lokasi dekat hotel saya.

Hotel saya bahkan terletak dekat route utama.

Kami jadi bisa menikmati parade dengan mudah: melihat orang menari, dengar musik berbagai macam ragam. Saya mengikuti parade ini dari ujung ke ujung, termasuk panggung musik dekat stasiun Brussels.

Ada suasana gembira. Ada berbagai macam ragam orang. Saya melihat kelompok gay yang bisu dan tulis. Saya melihat organisasi lesbian yang didukung oleh rekan-rekan perempuan hetero mereka. Berbagai macam ras ikutan parade. Tua dan muda. Macam kawan saya yang datang dari Beirut, saya juga lihat ada rombongan orang Arab, ikutan parade. Orang kulit hitam, kulit kuning, kulit putih, sawo matang, semuanya ada.

Saya perhatikan berbagai gedung pemerintahan juga memasang bendera pelangi. Mereka mengucapkan selamat merayakan parade, selamat bergembira. Dari kantor walikota sampai berbagai perkumpulan dagang.

"We're stronger together," teriak sebuah pidato.



Parade dimulai dengan sebuah bendera pelangi, ukuran raksasa, dibuat membuka jalan. Penonton ramai. Musik juga ramai, dari lagu Diana Ross "I'm Coming Out" (1980) sampai George Michael "Freedom" (1990) sampai "Brave" karya Sarah Bareilles (2013) bisa dinikmati. Ini memang lagu-lagu populer yang diciptakan buat mendukung individu LGBT.

Saya merasa belajar soal hak minoritas orientasi seksual. Dulu saya tak tahu bahwa lagu Diana Ross bicara soal kesulitan, diskriminasi, individu LGBT ketika mau malela (coming out). Dulu saya tahu ada tetangga, dua perempuan, hidup bersama-sama. Biasa saja. Mereka bekerja, mereka mencari makan seperti kebanyakan orang. Tapi saya tak tahu mereka pasangan lesbian. 

Pikiran saya soal hak LGBT dibuat tersentak pertama kali, bukan dalam diskusi atau dalam bacaan, tapi dalam suatu perbincangan ringan, suatu sore ketika menunggu kelas mulai, dengan guru jurnalisme saya, Bill Kovach, di Universitas Harvard, pada 1999.

Kovach bilang dia percaya Amerika Serikat akan melegalkan "gay marriage" sebelum dia meninggal. Saya mengerti bahwa dalam masyarakat saya selalu ada individu LGBT. Namun mendengar ide perkawinan sesama jenis, buat saya, ibaratnya disambar petir. 

Saya bilang pada Kovach bahwa saya belum bisa mengerti. Bayangan saya seorang menikah itu antara seorang lelaki dan seorang perempuan. 

Kovach bilang individu LGBT juga berhak saling menunjang dalam hubungan mereka: warisan, asuransi kesehatan, membesarkan anak. Mereka berhak mencintai dan dicintai. 

 

Saya diam saja. Namun saya percaya pada integritas dan keilmuan Kovach. Perbincangan tersebut membuat saya selalu ingat akan kata "LGBT rights." 

Kovach juga mendorong saya belajar bagaimana meliput diskriminasi terhadap individu LGBT maupun perempuan. 

Lima tahun lalu saya ingat ucapan Bill Kovach ketika Presiden Barack Obama mendukung hak LGBT. Prosesnya tak langsung drastis tapi bertahap sampai 2014. Kovach tentu bahagia dengan harapannya terpenuhi. Ramalannya terbukti benar.

Hak LGBT makin saya dalami ketika saya bekerja untuk Human Rights Watch. Saya membaca buku, jurnal kesehatan, makalah psikiatri dan sejarah. 

Pada 2016, kami menerbitkan laporan penindasan kepada individu LGBT. Judulnya, “Permainan Politik Ini Menghancurkan Hidup Kami” Kelompok LGBT Indonesia dalam Ancaman.

Pada 2018, kami menerbitkan laporan setebal 70-halaman berjudul "Takut Tampil di Hadapan Publik dan Kini Kehilangan Privasi: Dampak Hak Asasi Manusia dan Kesehatan Masyarakat dari Kepanikan Moral Anti-LGBT”. Laporan tersebut mencatat bagaimana retorika kebencian di Indonesia berubah menjadi tindakan main hakim yang menyalahi hukum serta bagaimana berbagai instansi pemerintah dan pejabat –kadang bekerjasama dengan organisasi militan– lakukan intimidasi, pelecehan, dan kekerasan terhadap orang-orang LGBT.

Saya kira pemahaman saya akan hak LGBT sudah jauh lebih maju dari ketika berbincang dengan Kovach pada 1999. 

Di Brussels, saya senang lihat ada Rainbow Cops --perkumpulan polisi Belgia yang anggota-anggotanya dukung hak LGBT. Saya kirim foto dari Rainbow Cops ini kepada seorang polisi di Semarang, yang diberhentikan dari kepolisian karena dia seorang gay.

Dia senang sekali. Saya percaya suatu hari nanti juga akan ada rainbow cops dan rainbow soldiers, bekerja biasa, secara terbuka di Indonesia. 

Oh ya, saya pribadi suka dengan lagu "I Choose You" dari Sara Bareilles. Siapa pun, baik individu heterosexual atau homosexual, berhak mencintai dan dicintai. Ia sederhana sekali. LGBT berhak mencari kebahagiaan sama seperti semua orang.

‘Race, Islam and Power’ A troubling tour through a pained land

Duncan Graham
The Jakarta Post

Malang, East Java

Human rights activist Andreas Harsono’s new book Race, Islam and Power shows the damage incurred on “wonderful Indonesia” as a result of violence.

Inside view: Andreas Harsono's new book 'Race, Islam and Power' is a discomforting read for anyone who cares for the moral development of this nation.

Visiting outlying islands in this sprawling archipelago reveals an unease felt about Java, “the denominator of Indonesia”. From Aceh to West Papua live citizens who see the nation’s largest ethnic group as oppressive colonialists.

First President Sukarno used a common language, universal education and the non-denominational Pancasila philosophy to create the “unitary state”.

When these did not work, persuasion turned to force.

In his new book Race, Islam and Power, human rights activist Andreas Harsono explains the damage incurred on “wonderful Indonesia” as a result of violence.

This was never meant to be a jolly travelogue. The author quotes West Sumatran poet Leon Agusta (1938-2015): “They’re the two most dangerous words in Indonesia: Islam and Java”, to which Andreas adds: “Muslim majority and Javanese dominance”.

Despite efforts from people like Andreas to bring human rights issues to the fore, this year’s election campaigns focused little on such issues.

Nevertheless, perhaps some voted against Prabowo Subianto because of questions about the former general’s actions in the Army. Others might have rejected Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, reasoning that he dodged confronting post-1965 cases of persecution, despite having previously promising to open discussion on human rights.

Little has happened to reconcile the state with the survivors and the families of the real or imagined Communist victims who were never charged under the law. The guilty still control. Dealing with unresolved shame is not a problem exclusive to Indonesia. Australians are grappling with a new understanding of their nation’s past as historians are openly having discussions on massacres targeted at the Aborigines right into last century.

Consider the continuing cruelties: In Aceh, men who love each other and unmarried women who love men get whipped in a medieval public ritual in front of smartphones. People who have made mild comments about faith are put behind bars for blasphemy.

Across Indonesia, hate fermented against gays is brewed by religious leaders. Ahmadiyah sectarians get persecuted, as do followers of minority mainstream faiths.

Indonesians love the outsider-imposed label of tolerance, but this is continually threatened; robust analysis mainly comes from foreign academics, safe on campuses far away.

At last comes a critic with credibility from within. As a local, Andreas risks confrontations. In pre-independence East Timor a soldier demanded: “Are you red and white (a nationalist)?”

Andreas said he was an impartial journalist. Fortunately only his visit was terminated.

During Soeharto’s authoritarian New Order government, Andreas, an Indonesian with ethnic Chinese heritage, would have understood that discrimination is pervasive.

In Salatiga’s Satya Wacana Christian University in Central Java, he followed lectures by the late George Aditjondro, a sociologist and author who was so powerful a critic of Soeharto (he likened the president to an octopus) that he fled to Australia to avoid arrest.

George’s teachings and writings raised questions about Indonesia’s governance and the nature of Benedict Anderson’s “imagined community”. The late US scholar also quashed the view that only Westerners can be colonialists. Andreas has become a torchbearer for the freedoms they championed.

Although he enrolled in electronic engineering school, writing for student unions revealed he had a talent for journalism. After a year with this newspaper, he became the Jakarta correspondent for Bangkok’s The Nation English language daily. He also won a prestigious Nieman Fellowship to study journalism at Harvard.

Through reporting, he has seen far more of his country than most. Along the way he realized that daily reporting was not effective enough in providing information that would allow the world to understand Indonesia.

The result is this political travelogue, subtitled Ethnic and Religious Violence in post-Soeharto Indonesia. The title is clumsy, the cover drab. There’s no index, but there is a handy list of sources. The prose is excellent.

This is a discomforting read for anyone who cares for the moral development of this nation. It is also a counterweight to the glossy mags promoting Indonesia as a land fit for hedonists.

This is sweaty and edgy journalism. It can also be dangerous. In 2004, activist Munir Said Thalib was assassinated on a Garuda flight to Europe. The case remains unsolved.

For 15 years Andreas has been where the pain is raw, where the wee folk live, work, travel and get jailed, hearing their authentic stories of discrimination and repression, their anger and puzzlement: Was this the land our heroes promised in 1945?

“What they learned at school was totally different from what they saw in their real life,” he writes. “I hear this over and over throughout Indonesia.”

Race, Islam and Power has been published in Australia in English, the language Andreas used, as he was “trying to speak to an international audience about violence in Indonesia […] especially policy makers, academics, opinion leaders”.

No local press organizations would handle the work, which proves the author’s point about the country’s fear of confronting the past; yet society’s betterment depends on its citizenry knowing about the state’s real history.

Andreas’ work aims to build a better nation by exposing truths. Those who agree with George W. Bush’s quote “you’re either with us or against us” might call the author a traitor; yet critics can be finer patriots than jingoists – and more effective.

Andreas has been a Jakarta-based researcher since 2008 with international NGO Human Rights Watch and he is often its spokesman. His statements are measured and fact-based – as they are in this book.

This is important because villainy thrives when far from public view. When atrocities are revealed, doubt dampens outrage if accusations are shrill and facts vague. Could these gentle friendly folk really be so brutal – and if so, why?

Sadly, tragically, yes. There’s been slaughter and dispossession from Sabang to Merauke, a route Harsono has traveled and meticulously studied.

Democracy is “people power”, though not for losing politicians trying to force their interests through street protests. They tread a dangerous track.

The same goes for those howling religious hate. This book shows these roads will never lead to the respected nation the founders imagined and the people desire. (ste)