Gay Films in Indonesia

Members of the Islamic Defender Front donned masks and threatened to set fire to a venue at the Q! Film Festival in the Indonesian capitol city if screenings continued.

The protesters called the international film festival blasphemy and chanted homophobic war cries. Despite the protests, the festival celebrates its ninth installment with the Jakarta event, opening last week.

The fest shoots to raise awareness and tolerance of gay issues. We're still going to go on, John Badalu, the festival's co-founder and this year's director, told Jakarta Post. Unfortunately, though, some of last night's showings ground to a halt.

Despite permanently ending Q! fest screenings at the French cultural center and the Japan Foundation, screenings at the police-guarded Goethe Institute German Cultural Centre shall continue, the center's program assistant told The Guardian.

Indonesia's top Islamic body has said that homosexuality is an abuse of human rights and demanded the government ban an ongoing gay and lesbian film festival.

It also condemned foreign cultural centres for showing the films at private screenings.

We reject the screening of the films which contain gay and homosexual lives as they are against Islamic and Indonesian cultural values, Indonesia Ulema Council (MUI) chairman Ma'ruf Amin said: The foreign representatives including the German and French cultural centres must show their respect for our sovereignty. They should not bring their culture which goes against our local value.

Q! is in its ninth edition and has become the biggest festival of its kind in Asia and the only one in the Muslim world, testifying to Indonesia's fading reputation as a moderate country.

Communications Minister Tifatul Sembiring has posted comments on  Twitter blaming perverted sex acts for the spread of AIDS, and quoted a Koranic verse about stoning homosexuals.