‘Never seen anything like this’: Inside Indonesia’s LGBT crackdown

In less than 18 months, being gay in Indonesia has gone from widely tolerated to just plain dangerous.

An unprecedented wave of police raids, vigilante attacks, and calls for the criminalization of homosexual sex have left many in the country’s LGBT community fearing for their safety.

“(Gay Indonesians) are exhausted and they’re horrified,” Kyle Knight, a Human Rights Watch researcher with the LGBT rights program, told CNN.

“Even the activists I know who started the very first organizations in the 1980s say they’ve never seen anything like this.”

It’s a dark turn for a country that for decades prided itself on its diverse, heterogeneous society…

MORE: Indonesia LGBT crackdown: How gay rights are at risk in the world’s largest Muslim country – CNN.com