“The governments should recognise that peace and stability requires promoting tolerance, not kowtowing to extremists who haven’t figured out that their children are going to watch everything on the internet anyway some day,” said Robertson.
“These three governments should protect freedom of expression and the arts, and tell the gaggle of extremists to stay at home if they don’t want to see the movie,” he said.
Southeast Asian political observers say regional governments have their work cut out keeping the lid on tensions between conservative groups and segments of the population that are demanding equal rights for the LGBTQ community.
“The contestation by both camps has to be adroitly managed… governments are often caught between a rock and a hard place. Once the confrontation has crystallised, it’s often too late and the domestic concerns tend to prevail,” said Eugene Tan, an associate law professor at the Singapore Management University.
Consensual sex between men is a crime in Singapore, owing to a colonial-era law. But officials have vowed that the section of the penal code called Section 377A will not be enforced.
However leaders, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, say the law must remain in the books as most Singaporeans are conservative and do not accept homosexuality.
In neighbouring Malaysia, homosexuality is punishable by caning and up to 20 years in jail. Anwar Ibrahim, the former deputy prime minister turned top opposition leader, is serving a five-year jail term for “sodomising” a male aide, the second time in two decades he had been convicted of such a charge. His supporters say the charges are trumped up to keep the charismatic leader out of politics.
In Indonesia, homosexuality is not illegal but the country’s resurgent hardline Islamist groups are fomenting intolerance of the LGBTQ community, rights activists say.
In Hong Kong, where the Legislative Council repealed colonial anti-homosexual laws in 1991, an anti-gay group on Wednesday submitted a petition to the city’s film classification authority opposing its decision to classify Beauty and the Beast as suitable for all ages. The film, which premiered in London last month, opens in most cities starting Thursday.
