Asia in 3 minutes: Indonesians turn on pro-gay Starbucks, Duterte turns cannibal, and Malaysian men turn frisky over petrol station advert
Bangladesh police find missing government critic on bus, BBQ joint bars foreigners over fears of terrorist attacks
Indonesian Muslims call for Starbucks boycott over gay policy
Muslims in Indonesia have been urged to boycott Starbucks by major Islamic groups that accuse the coffee chain of being pro-gay. Leaders of Muhammadiyah, Indonesia’s second-biggest mass Muslim organisation, urged the government to revoke the company’s business licence for its stance on gay issues. A Muhammadiyah leader, Yunahar Ilyas, said the group was calling on “Muslims to not drink in Starbucks so that the income is not used to strengthen LGBT campaigns”.
What next? Opposition to Starbucks came after a video from 2013 circulated online featuring comments by the company’s chairman Howard Schultz. In the video, he said Starbucks embraced diversity after a shareholder complained that the company lost customers because of its support for gay marriage. “Our objection is because they are promoting something that is against the human instinct, against human behaviour and against religion,” said Perkasa’s Amini Amir Abdullah. But some Malaysians said they didn’t care. “Don’t make it such an issue that we have to boycott a company because of one small statement,” said a coffee drinker in Kuala Lumpur.
Men sexually harass petrol station advert in Malaysia
Adverts featuring a female worker smiling and with her thumb raised were placed outside energy giant Shell’s service stations in Malaysia. But photos of men kissing the cardboard cut-outs and grabbing her chest and crotch started circulating on Facebook, in what Shell blasted as “distasteful”. The Anglo-Dutch group said: “We do not condone this disrespectful act, which is completely against the culture of Malaysians and Shell’s core values. We urge netizens and members of the public to refrain from sharing these images further.”
What next? The woman, named in local reports as 25-year-old Nor Shafila Khairusalleh and who actually works at a Shell service station, criticised the “extreme behaviour” of the men in the images that spread across the internet. “They may just be joking, but I feel humiliated because that is still myself although it is just an image,” she told news website mStar. Shell did not say how many cut-outs were removed, but the oil giant has over 950 of them across Malaysia and serves nearly one million customers a day, according to its website.
Bangladesh police find ‘missing’ government critic on a bus
A prominent critic of the Bangladesh government has been found safe a day after his family reported him missing, sparking fears he had been kidnapped, police said. Farhad Mazhar, a poet, writer and dissident, was found on a coach around 200km from the capital Dhaka, where he lives. It is not clear what he was doing there, but police deputy inspector general Didar Ahmed told reporters it “did not look like a case of abduction”. The 69-year-old is a supporter of the country’s main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
