Malaysian LGBTQ groups dismayed as politicians stay silent on Halloween party raid in lead-up to election

Queer folks say that the silence by Malaysia’s political parties following a Halloween party raid by religious authorities says a lot about the community’s place in society

LGBTQ Malaysians and rights advocates also highlighted the silence from the more progressive Pakatan Harapan coalition and youth-centric party Muda

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Queer folks say the silence by political parties jockeying for support ahead of the November 19 election is telling about their place in society. Photo: AP

Published: 8:30am, 1 Nov 2022Updated: 7:54pm, 1 Nov 2022

Days after Malaysian religious officials raided a Halloween party organised by the LGBTQ community, queer folks say the silence by political parties jockeying for support ahead of the November 19 election is telling about their place in society.

Enforcement officers from the Kuala Lumpur Islamic religious authorities (JAWI), accompanied by police officers, detained 20 people from a private party held in Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown on Saturday, as rights activists fear growing intolerance towards the LGBTQ community.

Homosexuality is considered a crime in Muslim-majority Malaysia, which practices dual civil and sharia legal systems that empower states to deploy moral police to oversee compliance to religious laws among the country’s majority Malay-Muslims, who account for over 60 per cent of the country’s 32.7 million people.

Carmen Rose, one of the organisers of the private party dubbed “Shagrilla”, said they had received the green light from the police to hold the event. “One of the organisers even met up with the police a day prior to answer questions,” she said, describing the raid as an “ambush”.

Jay, a patron at the party, recounted being stunned and described the raid as dehumanising for the trans and non-binary folk present.

“The enforcement seemed arbitrary, and the police targeted people who showed any feminine outer appearance; there were even men who were arrested for wearing earrings,” said Jay, who declined to reveal his full name.

While everyone was eventually allowed to leave the venue after an hour, the 20 who were detained spent another three hours under interrogation by JAWI before being released with instructions to attend counselling.