A leading Malaysian LGBT activist has accused the authorities of intimidation after a statement he read to the UN Human Rights Council led to him being questioned by police. Numan Afifi, an openly gay Muslim man and prominent advocate, travelled to Geneva last month to read out a statement from a coalition of LGBT groups to the Council for its Universal Periodic Review of Malaysia. The 27-year-old was questioned by police for an hour in Kuala Lumpur last Friday, after an online backlash against statements given at the Council, which reviews the human rights record of each United Nations member state every five years. “It was typical by the police,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “They tend to intimidate human rights defenders – we’ve seen that with organisers of other causes too.