Muhammad Millendaru Prakasa, which is the name in her passport, was arrested in Jakarta on Sunday. The Indonesian tested positive for crystal meth and a user amount of shabu, as the drug is called there, was also found in the hotel room.
“She admitted in a statement broadcast on TV that she has been drinking alcohol and taking shabu,” Kas said. “She apologized for that.” In Indonesia, drug use and possession are subject to severe penalties.
Waria’s
In the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, transgender people are less accepted today, the correspondent explains. “Society has increasingly come under the influence of conservative Islam.”
Waria’s, a contraction of the words for woman (wanita) and man (pria), used to be respected in society. “Waria’s had their own scene in the nightlife and were known as lavish partygoers, “says Kas. But nowadays LGBTI people are more often seen as people who need to be ‘cured’.
Shaved bald
For example, two years ago in Aceh, a group of transgender women was shaved by the police. They were forced to wear men’s clothes so that they “act like real men from now on,” said the local police chief against the BBC.
To avoid this kind of excess and possible intimidation or mistreatment by cellmates, activists after Millen’s arrest called for Cyrus not to keep her in a male prison.
‘Hopefully new standard’
“I hope there is a way for me not to be put in a male cell,” she told news site Detik herself. But because she is registered as a man in her ID, that still happened.
On Wednesday it became clear that the police are making an exception. “Thank you,” said the Commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Indonesia on Twitter. “Hopefully this will become the standard in the future.”
If the model is found guilty of drug use by the judge, she may be jailed for five years.
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