LGBT has no place in the country: VP

Jakarta. Vice President Jusuf Kalla expected that people would tightly hold their moral, culture, and religious norms and refuse to accept any deviant behavior and movement such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) groups.

“We live in a country that is guided by moral, cultural, and religious norms. We cannot accept LGBT groups to exist here,” said the Vice President in a press conference held at his office at Merdeka Utara, Monday, (15/2/2016) .

According to him, LGBT groups can be deemed as breaking the existing norms, moreover when they become a movement which persuades people to join them.

Deviant sexual orientation and behavior, he added, is a private matter and thus it is not appropriate to share such privacy to public.

Mr Kalla then refuted that the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) had funded LGBT movement in Indonesia.

“There is no official funding from the organization, but it might be through NGOs,” he said.

The National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas), the Vice President continued, has asked the UNDP representative in Jakarta to clarify about the rumor.

“Bappenas has met with UNDP and they said they do not have such funding in Indonesia. It funded LGBT projects in Thailand,” he said.

It is reported that UNDP in collaboration with the Swedish Embassy in Bangkok and USAID has disbursed fund for LGBT projects as much as USD 8 million.

In its statement, UNDP said it has launched the project since December 2014 and will run up to September 2017.

The project is aimed at supporting LGBT population to know their rights, including the right to file a lawsuit whenever any human right violation against them occurs.