ENTRY DESCRIPTION
Shinta Ratri (center) an LGBT activist, is the director of Pesantren Waria Al Fatah, a Koranic school for transgender and transexual people in Kotagede, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, the country with largest Muslim population in the world. The school is located in Shinta Ratri’s family home, and is the only school specifically for waria (Indonesian trangender people) in the country. It offers students subjects such as Islamic and transgender studies, Koran reading, and lessons in prayer.
Shinta Ratri opened this center to provide a safe place to pray without discrimination. "Everyone has the right to observe their religion in their own way. Being a transgender is not a sin" says Shinta. She is proud to be a woman and a muslim.
Here she is depicted during a social meeting between the local community and the waria community in Yogyakarta.

AUTHOR
Fulvio Bugani was born in Bologna in 1974.
He started working as a photographer in 1995. After a close collaboration with major photo studios of Bologna, he founded his own studio in 1999. Bugani has been a freelance professional photographer for over 15 years, working with associations and NGOs. He is part of TAU Visual (Italian Association of professional photographers) and NPPA (National Press Photographers Association).

He actively collaborates with MSF (Medecins Sans Frontier), for which he made a reportage of Bubukwanga Refugees Camp, and Amnesty International. With the latter he has participated in several projects on human rights, illegal immigration and the right to housing.

He is teaching photography in his private photographic school in Bologna, and he has been lecturer in seminars an meetings.

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