Dateline: Mar 31

This week Dateline airs a story which was originally scheduled some weeks ago, on living as transgender in Indonesia.

Indonesia has a vibrant transgender culture and tradition, but there’s been a rise in intolerance in recent years from Muslim fundamentalists. Dateline’s David O’Shea gets an insight into the community and its fight for equal rights.

They’re known as ‘waria’ – a term created by mixing the Indonesian words for woman and man.

In this week’s episode, David O’Shea follows transgender human rights campaigner, Mama Yuli as she embarks on a national movement, lobbying for acceptance of warias in Indonesian society.

She reveals the struggle she endured when coming out to her family:

“I cried every day. When I got up I had nothing to eat. I was hungry. No one would give me food. I cried. But who helped me? No one did.”

Many Indonesians, including Mama Yuli’s own family, are starting to accept waria, but, there is still a threat from small but vocal extremist groups who refuse to accept warias as humans.

“We’re disturbed by the way they dress, by their presence, their behaviour. They shouldn’t be allowed to feel normal.” Muhammed Fuad tells Dateline’s David O’Shea.

These hard-line extremists often target waria events – shutting down their meetings and beauty pageants.

Conversely, there are religious warias who believe being transgender is a blessing, bringing them closer to God:

“Waria is something we have to live with and accepting that makes us closer to the creator. The one who makes us waria is Allah”

Tuesday, 31 March at 9.30pm on SBS ONE.