The UK indie rock band The 1975 have canceled their upcoming shows in Taiwan following nationwide outrage in Malaysia after vocalist Matty Healy kissed bass player Ross MacDonald during the Good Vibes music festival in Kuala Lumpur.
Protesting Malaysia’s anti-LGBTQ laws, Healy said: “I do not see the point of inviting The 1975 to a country and then telling us who we can have sex with.”
The band’s performance was cut short and the following day, the organizers announced that the Malaysian Ministry of Communications and Digital had canceled the festival.
Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country, and government officials have openly spoken against LGBTQ communities on many occasions. In April 2014, Muhyiddin Yassin, who later served as Malaysian prime minister, publicly stated that LGBTQ is “poisoning the minds of Muslims with deviant practices.”
Homosexuality is illegal in Malaysia and punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
The 1975 was scheduled to play in Jakarta on Sunday and Taipei on Tuesday, but the band decided to cancel both concerts.
Homosexuality is not illegal in most provinces in Indonesia, except the highly conservative Aceh Province. However, LGBTQ communities are largely ostracized and shunned. Canceling the Jakarta concert was thus understandable, but canceling the one in Taipei is questionable.
Taiwan is one of the most liberal countries in Asia, and perhaps the most LGBTQ-friendly nation in the region. On May 24, 2019, Taiwan became the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage. The support for the LGBTQ community in Taiwan has continued to increase over the years. For many young people, being a supporter of the LGBTQ movement is considered an important aspect of their Taiwanese identity.
Taiwanese identity has been a long-debated topic that plays a defining role in cross-strait relations. Are they Taiwanese or Chinese, or both? Gradually, Taiwanese have formed a consensus that they are citizens of a democratic country that has achieved full autonomy.
I would argue that Taiwan’s political democratization is a catalyst for this identity formation, hence the popularity of the support for LGBTQ rights, often synonymous with liberal democracy and especially common among young Taiwanese.
Despite this, The 1975 still canceled their show in Taipei and without much explanation from the band, there is only speculation regarding the rationale behind this decision. Support for LGBTQ rights varies widely in Asia, but for the most part, LGBTQ topics are still considered taboo in most countries.
Countries like Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and Singapore have made significant progress by gradually recognizing LGBTQ individuals and securing their rights. On the other end of the spectrum, there are countries like Iraq and Afghanistan where LGBTQ rights are in constant decline, especially after the Taliban’s takeover.
Without prior research, it is easy to put all governments under one spectrum as being anti-LGBTQ.
From Healy’s protest about inviting The 1975 to a country and then “telling us who we can have sex with,” it can be concluded that he and the band attempted to promote an LGBTQ narrative at their concert. It is therefore counterproductive to cancel their concert in Asia’s most LGBTQ-friendly country.
Unfortunately, despite decades of effort and a progressive civil rights movement, to some groups, Taiwan still falls into the anti-LGBTQ Asian stereotype.
Patrick Kurniawan is a graduate student at National Chengchi University.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS