Yesterday I had a chat with my friend. In short, I told her that I applied for an internship in ILGA UN Programme. Then we were joking about how her language abilities would make the UN desire her to work for them. She told me she doesn’t want to work there due to unaligned ideology.

Her reason reminded me of something.

So in past two years I’ve been labelled as being 'too left' by some (or most) of my friends and networks. I’m not sure what’s the reason behind –since they only talk behind me— but I guess it would be due to my hard criticism to the government and the NGOs who work closely to them and did nothing but running away and hiding during and after LGBTI crackdown 2016.

Anyway, later on they found out that I worked with UN Mechanism, particularly in UPR Cycle 3. They started to mock me, saying that I lost my ‘leftiness’ for popularity and privilege to go abroad. "Oh so now Tama is willing to work with the government,” they said. Things got more interesting because the leftish mocked me as well.

I could only smile.

Those rumours were not surprising at all. When Arus Pelangi asked me to work with UN mechanism, I knew exactly what I was going to face.

The thing is, the more I work with LGBTI communities, the more I realize how privileged I am. Well educated, coming from middle class background, supportive family; plus pretty excellent English ability and good understanding in both national and international law. To not using those privilege for the sake of combating injustice and oppression in every possible way would be something I regret for my whole life. It should be noted that till now, I am one from only three under-30-yo Indonesian LGBTI Rights Defenders who have the abilities (read: privileges) and willingness needed to work with UN Mechanism.

Beside, I do not see anything contrary to my values in working with UN mechanism.
(note: working with UN Mechanism is totally different from working for UN)

LGBTI movement everywhere have their own strategies which represent the needs and factual situation of their community. For some, working with human rights, which is automatically related with UN mechanism, is one of the strategies, including for the movement I join here. Every strategy coming from the grass-root community will always have my respect and support, though I might have different opinion.

Also, whether I like it or not, it is a fact that Human Rights is an existing tool that could be used to reach our aims. Human Rights is the only language that both the State and the movement speak. Indonesia who signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are obligated to respect, fulfil, protect, and protect the Human Rights. Furthermore, these obligations are also clearly written in our Constitution. Therefore we can push the State to fulfil their obligations by, for example, repelling discriminatory laws and implementing SOGIESC friendly law enforcement. Speaking to the State with Human Rights language has been proven to successfully reduce or prevent further violence that could happen.

Working with UN mechanism, for me, is also beneficial in terms of building international solidarity. For that to happen we firstly need to raise awareness on the endangering situation in Indonesia. Since UN is obviously a media darling, and there are representatives of almost every countries that you can talk to, working with UN Mechanism becomes a great chance to spread the news. I had an experience talking to Dutch diplomat who was in charge for Indonesian issues and was really shock to hear my updates on our situation. She read News about us, of course, but had not gotten the whole picture till we talked. It is also a perfect chance to meet other defenders and share experiences or call for direct actions. From my Tunisian and Slovenian friends I learned about the horrible situation happening in Tunisia and Chechnya, and our whole team spent some time to do joint action supporting their cause.

Another advantage ones can take form working with UN is that you can directly criticize (or appreciate) the UN Bodies or certain State. I still remember how embarrassed was the UNDP headquarter representative when I asked about them running away without any explanation after triggering crackdown in Indonesia –right after he proudly said that UNDP would always be available for LGBTI Rights Defender in needs for emergency support. Plus, we can also tell (or clarify) the States about what kind of supports that we really need rather than what they think we need. US diplomat I met thought that we would ask them to speak up about us before I told her otherwise.

Back to the rumours,

Isn’t it funny? People are so busy debating on ideologies while LGBTI people are suffering and dying, being targeted to persecution, starving, having no access to education and descent jobs and living. We compete to see whose theory is the best while forgetting the basic values and history behind those theories.

Oppression and injustice are real out there, getting worse day by day. We surely believe in people’s power. And therefore we, the people, have to keep empowering rather than imposing each other. To make use every single opportunities and privileges to seize the power that has long been taken from us, is the only option we have now.

Different strategies won't kill us. Silence will.