Do we like Anggun?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Consistent public support for LGBTQ+ people and anti-hunger work, with one online accusation she denies and no harmful words or company found.
Anggun is the Indonesian singer who built her career in France and flew the French flag at Eurovision in Baku in 2012. Indonesian press still claims her as one of their own, and French telly treats her as a proper local star. She sits in that rare spot of being a pop name in two countries.
The off-stage résumé is the stronger part. She was named spokesperson for the UN's International Year of Microcredit in 2005, then an FAO Goodwill Ambassador in 2009, when she pledged tireless support for the campaign against hunger. That's real campaigning work, not just a photo op with a sash.
On the harm check, it's a clean sheet. In May 2017 she posted on Instagram with the tags #StopHomophobia and #LoveIsLove, and a second post noted that dozens of countries criminalise same-sex relations. Some followers sneered at her for it, and she didn't engage. In a 2020 interview she said gay and lesbian people are disregarded in Indonesia and elsewhere. No anti-vax, climate-denial or dodgy-company stories turned up, though there's little on trans issues specifically.
The one real stoush is online. In February 2025 an X account called @zionistsinmusic accused her of being a Zionist, citing her old tweets about Eurovision, in which Israel was one of the entrants. She says she was commenting on the music contest and has never backed Israel's politics against Palestine, and said she'd report the accusation through her lawyers. Where you land depends on whether you read those tweets as song-contest chatter or as politics, but nothing she has said or done in the sources we read backs the label.
She has also copped flak for sticking her neck out. In April 2015 she sent an open letter to President Jokowi asking him to reconsider the death sentence of French national Serge Atlaoui, saying it violated humanitarian values. Critics asked why she hadn't spoken up for Mary Jane Veloso, another person on death row. It's a fair question, but she was at least taking a public stand against executions.