Gay dating app blocked in Indonesia

JAKARTA: US technology giant Google removed Blued, a social network for gay people, from its app store following a request from the Indonesian government, an official said yesterday.

“The Blued application has disappeared from (the) Play Store for Indonesia since Sunday,” Noor Iza, a spokesperson for Indonesia’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, said.

Blued was still available for download on Apple’s App Store in Indonesia yesterday.

Iza said the ministry was working with Google to remove “negative content” from the company’s app store.

The ministry had also blocked 169 gay-friendly websites this year due to pornographic content, the spokesperson said.

Homosexuality is not illegal in Indonesia, the world’s most-populous Muslim-majority country, except in autonomous Aceh province, where Islamic law is enforced. But sexual minorities have increasingly come under attack in recent years.

Last year, police in the cities of Jakarta and Surabaya briefly detained scores of people on suspicion of involvement in gay prostitution and pornographic acts.

A draft revision to the criminal code currently being debated in parliament calls for the criminalisation of sex outside marriage, including gay sex.