ALSA Legal Discussion I

On 24th of March 2016, ALSA LC UGM successfully carried out ALSA Legal Discussion with an issue that is very sensitive. Andra (Batch 2015) was given the opportunity to become the project officer of this event and chose the issue to be discussed. ‘Identitas Kaum Minoritas”’was the title which refer to the LGBT community in Indonesia who are minorities and are being discriminated by Indonesian people sexually, socially, physically, and other kinds of discrimination. We discussed this issue with college students from UGM and other universities.

Our aim from this discussion is to get to know the perspectives from college students, especially law students and discuss it from the legal perspective. People can freely express their opinions to agree or disagree with the speakers. We invited three speakers from two different background. Two speakers (Mario Pratama & Renate Arisugawa) were from the LGBT community called PLUSH and one speaker (Anastasia Sukiratnasari S.H.) was an Advocate from Legal Aid Agency in Yogyakarta. The discussion was attended by 105 college students and it went very well.

The speakers gave the materials with their perspective. The Advocate gave the materials from the legal perspectives by using cases that she had taken and there are loopholes in Indonesian law which can be questioned by the LGBT community. PLUSH brought the materials for college students to know what is ‘LGBT’ and what they had been through since living in Indonesia. Students were actively asking questions and also gave their perspectives towards the LGBT community.

ALSA LC UGM hope this discussion bring impact to both the LGBT community and for Indonesia. So far, this is the most challenging issue that ALSA Legal Discussion had ever brought up which made ALSA LC UGM the first to bring this issue up without being banned by the university.