Japanese artist Gengoroh Tagame donated this artwork to participate in the campaign. He draw Ahmet from a picture by Caner Alper. Arigatou!
Ali must travel!
Iraqi LGBT is being blocked from advocating for the group by the UK government — find out how you can help.
Thursday, 9 September 2010
Video: Remembering Ahmet Yildiz
Japanese artist Gengoroh Tagame donated this artwork to participate in the campaign. He draw Ahmet from a picture by Caner Alper. Arigatou!
US man already knows everything he needs to know about muslims
Source: The Onion
SALINA, KS—Local man Scott Gentries told reporters Wednesday that his deliberately limited grasp of Islamic history and culture was still more than sufficient to shape his views of the entire Muslim world.
Gentries, 48, said he had absolutely no interest in exposing himself to further knowledge of Islamic civilization or putting his sweeping opinions into a broader context of any kind, and confirmed he was "perfectly happy" to make a handful of emotionally charged words the basis of his mistrust toward all members of the world's second-largest religion.
"I learned all that really matters about the Muslim faith on 9/11," Gentries said in reference to the terrorist attacks on the United States undertaken by 19 of Islam's approximately 1.6 billion practitioners. "What more do I need to know to stigmatize Muslims everywhere as inherently violent radicals?"
"And now they want to build a mosque at Ground Zero," continued Gentries, eliminating any distinction between the 9/11 hijackers and Muslims in general. "No, I won't examine the accuracy of that statement, but yes, I will allow myself to be outraged by it and use it as evidence of these people's universal callousness toward Americans who lost loved ones when the Twin Towers fell."
"Even though I am not one of those people," he added.
In Malaysia, the LGBT community slowly gets active
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| Reverend Ouyang Wen |
When Malaysia's only openly homosexual pastor announced he was establishing the nation's first gay church, the proposal was met with a torrent of outrage and criticism.
Reverend Ouyang Wen Feng faced down threats to block the plan by government and religious leaders who said it would encourage homosexuality -- still a crime punishable by 20 years in jail in the Muslim-majority nation.
The church he co-founded has however been operating quietly in suburban Kuala Lumpur for the past three years, drawing a group of gay Christians for Sunday services and bible studies.
Ouyang's battle is part of a campaign being fought on many fronts in Malaysia, where there is a growing sense of activism among the gay community which is beginning to mobilise to fight for its rights.
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
Analysis: Labour's leadership candidates on LGBT asylum, Balls the winner
Ed Balls image by Downing Street via Flickr
LGBT Labour has released the leadership candidates final answers on LGBT asylum.
Although the winner will be either Ed or David Miliband, the others are likely to either take up senior shadow cabinet positions or positions of influence. Overall, the statements reflect the sort of information they have been paying attention to during the campaign as well as during their time as politicians. It's a fair measure of their knowledge of the subject and that's also a fair measure of the importance that the gay community and gay Labour people place on the issue.
On both of those measures mostly it's not good and overall the answers reflect badly on whether Labour as a party is prepared to look out for the most marginalised LGBT in the UK. They fail to correct the idea, which undoubtedly did lose them some votes in the last election, that they don't think there was any problem either with their treatment of LGBT asylum seekers or the pandering by some Labour people (such as Woolas and Blunkett) to anti-foreigner, anti-migrant sentiment (which backgrounded the LGBT asylum issue) or that this all happened because they were prepared to put votes before principals.
Starting with the answer from the leading candidate, David Miliband.
UK Labour leadership candidates final answer on LGBT asylum
Image via WikipediaHow can we ensure a fair asylum system to help LGBT people who face persecution in their countries of origin?Their answers are as follows.
Diane Abbott
I understand the many problems with the immigration system better than any of my rivals and I frequently meet asylum seekers within my constituency. The application process is flawed in many ways and lets down LGBT people and many others.
New NGO aims to protect LGBT refugees
By Matthew S. Bajko
A little known agency founded two years ago in San Francisco is helping to shine a spotlight on the plight of LGBT refugees around the globe who are fleeing persecution in their home countries.
The Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration, called ORAM for short, is the brainchild of Neil Grungras, an openly gay lawyer who specializes in immigration and refuge law whose career has included stints with the State Department and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
Since founding ORAM in 2008, Grungras has devoted himself full time to growing the nonprofit. He oversees its program in Turkey for LGBT Iranians seeking to immigrate to Western countries and lobbies United Nations officials in Geneva about the needs of LGBT asylum seekers and refugees from around the globe.
"No one had touched on the issues of LGBT refugees, period, from a legal perspective. No one had confronted the reason why the international system does not protect LGBT refugees," said Grungras when asked why he started ORAM in an interview with the Bay Area Reporter .
UNHCR concerned at ongoing deportations of Iraqis from Europe
Image via WikipediaUNHCR is very concerned by on-going forced returns of Iraqi citizens from Western European countries. On September 1st, a chartered flight with 61 people on board, mainly Iraqis who had been residing in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the United Kingdom, landed at Baghdad airport. UNHCR has so far not been able to confirm reports that three Iranians were among those on board.
UNHCR's guidelines for Iraq ask governments not to forcibly return people originating from the governorates of Baghdad, Diyala, Kirkuk, Ninewa and Salah Al-din, in view of the serious human rights violations and continuing security incidents in these areas. Our position is that Iraqi asylum applicants originating from these five governorates should benefit from international protection in the form of refugee status under the 1951 Refugee Convention or an alternative form of protection.
UNHCR considers that serious risks, including indiscriminate threats to life, physical integrity or freedom resulting from violence or events seriously disturbing public order, are valid reasons for international protection.
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