Eight men face jail for holding gay party

       

Indonesian police have arrested eight men for allegedly holding a “gay party” in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, police said Monday.

Officers busted 14 men holding the gathering in two inn rooms in Surabaya, the second greatest city in Indonesia, around midnight on Sunday.

A portion of the men were watching gay porn and performing "freak sexual acts", said Shinto Silitonga, Surabaya police's head of investigators.

Police named eight men as suspects and recorded preparatory charges against them under Indonesia's intense hostile to explicit entertainment law. Two of the eight could confront up to 15 years in prison for starting and encouraging the occasion.

Six others were discharged. 

“This is the first time we enforce the law and arrest gay people in the city,” Silitonga told AFP.

Except for Aceh province, which upholds sharia law, gay sex is not illegal in Indonesia, which mainly follows a criminal code inherited from former colonial ruler the Netherlands.

However, there was a backlash against the country’s LGBT community last year with government ministers publicly making anti-gay statements.