I was even more surprised today reading the comments on the Orlando gay nightclub shooting. I checked the Facebook page of mainstream Indonesian media (not the religious ones) and found out that a lot of people were actually cheering at the event. Not everyone, but at least between 30% and 50% of the comments. Not only are they cheering about it, they are also calling for more murders and more attacks on gays.
My Indonesian is not perfect but I translated a few here:
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| Sane shooting, I applaud! If the shooter comes to Indonesia he will be my honored guest!!! |
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1= Thank God those who died are gay!
2= Thanks God 50 contaminated by the disease are dead, I hope there is more poison for the rest
3= Hope that gays can learn from this event... |
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| What a happy event... hoorah... |
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| Waiting for the next shooting... hopefully in Indonesia next time... Hahahaha.... |
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| Great so LGBT people can go to hell as soon as possible... Because they always refuse and challenge Allah and so they can see by themselves what will happen to them for Judgement day... they must be afraid now of their punishment, etc... |
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| Kill them all until the last... so there are no more LGBT... |
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| Great... please continue... so the earth goes back to normal... |
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| I'm sad why the shooter killed only 50 people... it should have been all... |
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| hhmmm lgbt destroyed... that's a lesson for the other ones, why don't you get together again? Anyone else wants to get shot? |
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| Too bad the shooter can only kill only 50 people why not all |
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| It's ok to shoot them, if needed just bomb them... they are useless people... |
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| It needs to be done again... hopefully next time it can be thousands... so the gay community can die |
I could go on and post thousands more. Really. Again, they are not just one or two isolated comments but a huge part of the reactions. You can check for yourself on the facebook pages of Merdeka, VOA Indonesia, Tempo, Kompas, Tribunnews, Detik, Liputan 6, etc.
Actually, for most of the articles regarding the shooting, one of the two dominant emojis is the "Haha" face (sometimes with the sad face as well).
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| Facebook Haha Emoji |
For instance on Merdeka, VOA America and Liputan 6 (and unfortunately many more - virtually every Indonesian language news site):
On Detik.com, the most popular news website in Indonesia, 71% of the people who expressed their feelings after reading the main article about the shooting said they were "Senang" (happy).
A big contradiction is that those who are cheering are also the ones talking about a conspiracy. So they seem to want people to die, they call for more murders, yet they don't believe that one of them could possibly do it?
To what extent do these comments represent the opinion of Indonesian people is something I don't know. But it is certainly troubling and scary. It is obvious that the government's constant bashing of LGBT is not helping.
