7 Apr, 2019

There was a commotion and then there was silence. Many of the guests had gathered around a small stage on which the dancers, and Ezra, were naked. Everyone froze and turned to look at four men wearing fixed, steely gazes.

“This doesn’t feel right,” Ezra recalls thinking. “If they are gay, they are not going to look at us in that way.” Then dozens of policemen stormed the premises.

It was the biggest police raid on a private gay establishment in Indonesia in recent memory. That day, in May 2017, 141 men were arrested at the Atlantis sauna in north Jakarta. It was only after bare-chested images of those who had been detained appeared on the news, along with some of their names, that Ezra’s family became aware he was among them.