Lady Gaga Is Defended by U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia

Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga has a friend in the U.S. — the ambassador to Indonesia has spoken out and is encouraging officials to let Gaga’s June 3 show in Jakarta go on as originally scheduled. Little monsters know the gig was sold out but canceled when national police pulled the permit since an extremist Muslim sect threatened to cause chaos if the show took place.

Scot Marciel has publicly asked Indonesian authorities to let the show take place, since it is a small but vocal minority causing the problem and inciting the protest.

The Jakarta Post reports that Marciel said, “This is a matter for Indonesia to decide. Our hope would be of course that it’s the Indonesian community as a whole to be heard on the views and not the views of a small group. The U.S. believes in freedom of expression and tolerance. And you know I think that Indonesia as I said has a long tradition of support for freedom of expression and tolerance as well.”

Marciel said that the U.S. has not been involved any further in terms of trying to get the gig to happen, saying, “Well, we had our people with the security talking about the security side of it. That’s true indeed. But otherwise we have not been engaged with the police on this,” referring to the permit being yanked.

Gaga herself spoke out on the drama via Twitter, suggesting that she might perform without the salacious parts of the show. There seems to be a glimmer of hope that the canceled gig could be reinstated. Popcrush