Google junks Indonesia version of largest gay app

Google has pulled one of the world’s largest gay dating apps from the Indonesian version of its online store in response to government demands, Jakarta said Wednesday, amid a crackdown on the LGBT community.

Officials had called for the tech giant to remove 73 LGBT related applications, including dating services, from its Play Store, and urged people to shun apps that broke with cultural norms in the world’s biggest Muslim-majority nation.

Communications ministry spokesman Noor Iza confirmed Wednesday that gay dating application Blued no longer appeared in the Google Play Store available to Indonesian users.

“There was some negative content related to pornography inside the application,” Iza told AFP.

Google declined to say whether it would comply with the government demand to remove dozens of LGBT-related apps.

Homosexuality and gay sex are legal in Indonesia – except in conservative Aceh province, which is ruled by Islamic law – but same-sex relationships are widely frowned upon and public displays of affection between gay couples almost unheard of.

In Aceh at the weekend, police forcibly cut the hair of a group of transgender women and made them wear male clothing, sparking protests from rights groups.

Elsewhere in Indonesia, police have often used a tough anti-pornography law to criminalize members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender LGBT community, and the government’s gay apps ban comes against a backdrop of growing hostility towards the embattled minority.