By Inti Muda, partner in the Indonesian Healthy Cities with PRIDE program
West Java, as one of the most populous provinces in Indonesia, is in the spotlight not only for its complex social dynamics, but also for the emergence of local regulations that directly or implicitly discriminate against LGBT people. In the last five years, there have been at least six legal products in various districts and cities in West Java that define non-normative sexual orientation and gender identity as a social threat that must be controlled, monitored, and even “rehabilitated”.
Various cities and districts in West Java – such as Bogor, Cianjur, Karawang, Garut, Bandung, and Bandung Regency – have issued local regulations that directly or implicitly discriminate against LGBT people. The pattern of discrimination that emerges is evident in the way these regulations define non-normative sexual orientation and gender identity as “deviation”, “sin”, or “sexual disorientation” that is deemed to require corrective intervention. Some regulations mandate communities and authorities to participate in the monitoring and intervention of LGBT individuals, including through the establishment of task forces and coaching programs. This approach not only contradicts international mental health standards that recognize that sexual orientation is not a disorder, but also reinforces stigma, opens room for abuse of power, and criminalizes the existence of queer youth in everyday life.
These regulations are not just administrative policies – they are the systemic face of fear, ignorance and institutionalized social control. Under the siege of moral and heteronormative narratives made into law, young queer people in West Java are forced to survive under threatening conditions. However, behind this pressure, there are also collective initiatives born from the community itself – a silent but powerful resistance: building a safe space.
In the midst of growing structural pressure through discriminatory regulations in West Java, the young queer community has not remained silent. Inti Muda West Java, as one of the organizations consisting of young queer people, young people living with HIV, and other young key populations, is here to answer these concerns. Departing from various reports and direct experiences about the high number of evictions, identity-based violence, and homelessness experienced by young queers, they initiated a collective initiative: a shelter program, or a safe house for young queers.
One of the shelter members is cooking his meals in the kitchen
This shelter was formed not only as a temporary residence, but also as a space of protection and recovery, and supporting communities to access healthcare services through other connected interventions from Inti Muda West Java. Where young queers can feel safe, accepted, and connected to a community that understands their experiences, it becomes more than just walls and a roof, this shelter is a space for community intervention in responding to the absence of the state in protecting the right to a safe and dignified life for all.
The beneficiaries of this shelter came here because they lost access to decent housing. Each brings a story of how being a young queer person in West Java is not just a matter of identity, but of survival.
One of those stories belongs to Alkar, a 21-year-old gay man living with HIV whose journey reveals the layered struggles of navigating safety, stigma, and survival as a queer youth in West Java.
Alkar currently lives at a community-run shelter operated by Inti Muda West Java in Bandung city. Originally from Bandung Regency, Alkar’s life has been shaped by pressure—not only due to his health status but also from a society that fails to provide safe spaces to survive, even in his own house with his own family.
In March 2025, Alkar started working at a fried chicken shop in Bandung. For him, It wasn’t just a job—it was a symbol of hope, a chance to build a life independently. But reality took a different turn. Shortly after he began working, his HIV status was exposed to his employer and coworkers. To prevent further stigma and discrimination towards his gender and sexuality, he even told the coworker that he was a former drug user. Alkar is not strong enough to gain more discrimination if they found out about his sexuality. From then on, he began experiencing exclusion such as being banned from staying in the staff dormitory, isolated at work, and eventually pressured to resign under the pretext that “no place would ever hire someone like him.”
Although this experience wasn’t explicitly about his gender or sexuality, Alkar’s story reflects the structural vulnerability faced by many queer young people. Those with diverse gender identities or sexual orientations—especially those living with HIV or with histories of drug use—often find themselves at the intersection of multiple forms of stigma and exclusion. In many cases, rejection isn’t just something they face in public spaces, but it comes from their own families as well. The accumulation of rejection can manifest as chronic stress, anxiety, and deep psychological trauma, especially for young people with diverse gender and sexuality backgrounds
He returned home, but the situation worsened. Emotional security was absent, and financial stress became more suffocating at his home. At the same time, his parents began to question his monthly visits to the hospital to collect antiretroviral (ARV) medication. Alkar hadn’t disclosed his HIV status, let alone his sexual orientation, fearing that revealing one might lead to the outing of the other. Home no longer felt like a safe place. Instead it became a new source of fear and anxiety for him.
Faced with job loss and no place to stay, a friend told him about the shelter operated by Inti Muda West Java in Bandung. Karim reached out, and once he learned he could access it, he felt a sense of possibility of return. Alkar turned to the community shelter managed by Inti Muda. For him, this shelter wasn’t just a roof over his head—it was a safe space: a place where he wasn’t judged, policed, or pushed away. “I can finally rest without being kicked out or yelled at,” he said. For the first time, he felt seen, valued, and safe enough to rest—physically and emotionally.
Alkar’s experience illustrates that safe spaces for queer youth and young key populations can’t be taken for granted in existing social systems. These young people can’t rely on families, workplaces, or state institutions that are often the very sources of harm. Shelter initiatives like the one built by Inti Muda are not just temporary protections—they are acts of community resistance, care, and survival.
Like Alkar, Diana’s journey to the shelter wasn’t planned. Instead, it was born out of urgency as a crisis response. Her story emphasizes another layer to the realities faced by young, queer, and marginalized individuals and people living with HIV in West Java regarding the fear that is not just of rejection from society, but from one’s own family and partner. If Alkar’s path spoke of stigma in the workplace and home, Diana’s was a quiet escape from violence that began behind closed doors and continued in silence until she found the courage to seek safety.
It was past midnight when Diana found herself walking alone along the streets of Bandung. She didn’t have a destination but just a small backpack and a heart weighed down by violence and rejection. Earlier that evening, a fight with her husband had escalated into physical abuse. What started as a small misunderstanding turned into verbal and physical abuse. When his husband’s family members arrived, hoping they’d intervene, Diana was met not with comfort, but with blame. No one stood by her. Instead, they told her to leave.
With nowhere to go, Diana walked alone in the middle of the night in a cold Bandung street. Eventually, she stopped at a small coffee stall to sit because she was unsure what to do next. She pulled out her phone and reached out to her friends who are also members of Inti Muda West Java. “Is anyone at the office? Can I come?” she asked. The shelter wasn’t open yet, but Diana found a cheap place to sleep for the night. The next day—on her day off from work—she made her way to the shelter.
When Diana arrived, she was welcomed kindly. The team and other residents didn’t question her too much—they simply let her in. “At that moment,” Diana said, “I felt like someone was finally on my side.”
Diana is 24. She works at a small massage and reflexology center. She lives with HIV and has a history of drug use. Since December 2024, she’s been accessing the Inti Muda shelter in a flexible way—sometimes staying over, sometimes sleeping at a coworker’s place. But the shelter has become something constant in her life as a place to rest, to talk, to exist without fear.
At the shelter, she found not just safety, but a sense of shared understanding. “Everyone has their own problems, and yet people here still smile,” she said. “That made me feel something again.” Her housemates even helped walk her to work one morning. It was a small gesture, but to Diana, it felt like care or something she hadn’t felt in a while.
She says that being in the shelter gave her structure. “It was the first time in a long time I managed to wake up early again,” she laughed softly. Still, Diana doesn’t claim things are all better. “I’m not healed yet,” she said, “but I’m learning to be patient with the process.” She knows recovery isn’t instant, and that the pain doesn’t heal overnight but she also knows she’s not walking through it alone anymore.
Diana hopes more people in Bandung and across West Java will learn that shelters like this exist. “There are many young people with stories like mine,” she said. “They just need to know where to go.”
This community shelter initiative demonstrates the ability of young queer communities to find concrete responses to the structural violence they face. These shelters ideas from direct experiences of displacement, discrimination, and insecurity that young queer people face in both private and public spaces. Within the framework of Indonesia Healthy Cities with Pride, which aims to strengthen the capacities of young LGBTQI+ organizations to develop collective solutions to reduce inequalities, including stigma, discrimination, violence, and criminalization, such a shelter is an effective response that creates a safe space that directly addresses inequalities that hinder access to a better life. The shelter is proof that the community is capable of taking action, providing support, and building its own protective structures, in line with the goal of creating meaningful participation within a more inclusive urban framework.
Alkar and Diana’s stories show that for many queer youth in West Java, safety is not something that can be taken for granted. Safety is a thing to be fought for, and often built from scratch together with our own community. For Alkar and Diana, to be safe is to have somewhere to go or some people to share the same struggle. Shelter became a place where people who face difficulties like Alkar and Diana were able to sit and rest for a moment, while preparing themselves to continue their life collectively.
In the midst of structural pressures from discriminatory policies, social stigma, and domestic violence, community shelters like the one managed by Inti Muda West Java are present not only as a place of shelter, but also as a proof that collective care can be the answer when the state is absent. Shelter like this is the breath of many young queer who are tired of staying with the oppression still wanting to survive. Shelter like this, is a learning that true protection is sometimes born from caring each one to another.
The Indonesia Healthy Cities with PRIDE project (IHCP) aims to strengthen capacity for movements of young LGBTQI+ people across Indonesia to promote increased access to HIV services, reduction of stigma, discrimination, criminalisation and violence against young LGBTQI+ people, including young people living with HIV. This blog is part of a series showcasing the successes and change stories of IHCP, and on how our 100% community-led decision making approach has worked and how important it is for young LGBTQI+ people to be in charge of charting their own future.
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