Tribune magazine and blog editors talk about their coverage of homosexuality and the role the internet plays with the nascent LGBT community in Pakistan.
By Hani Taha
At first glance, the PQM’s flag looks like that of any political party. It proudly displays the star and crescent against a rainbow-hued spectrum of reds, purples and blues, depicting a Pakistan that is not simply green and white, but capable of embracing all shades of being and behaviour. But this isn’t the flag of a political party and the acronym PQM stands for the Pakistan Queer Movement, not — as some may imagine — the Pakistan Qaumi Mahaz.
The brainchild of 18-year-old Nuwas Manto, the PQM, in its own words, seeks “respect, equality and freedoms for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community in Pakistan.”
“It depends on what you think a movement is,” says Manto, when asked to explain what the PQM aspires to achieve. “You won’t see us marching in pink underwear, for instance. What we are working towards is something like the Progressive Writers’ Movement who aspire to bring about a mental state of change through writing.”
Simon Tseko Nkoli (November 26, 1957 – November 30, 1998) was an anti-apartheid, gay rights and AIDS activist in South Africa.
Nkoli was born in Soweto in a seSotho-speaking family. He grew up on a farm in the Free State and his family later moved to Sebokeng black township.
His activism started early. At age nine, he locked his parents in a wardrobe so they could escape detection from police enforcing the pass laws, which restricted where blacks could live.
The would-be activist found his boyfriend in 1974, Andre, a white bus driver, when he was just seventeen. Longing for companionship, he wrote to a white man he found in a gay magazine. The two men apparently hit it off and started a clandestine relationship.
When the couple’s parents found out, they forbade the men from seeing one another. Determined to be together, Nkoli and his white lover formed a suicide pact, which Nkoli’s parents also discovered.
Fearing for their son’s life, they begrudgingly allowed him to move to Johannesburg to be with his lover. Even while living together, however, the men had to remain undercover. Rather than going to jail for violating pass laws, Nkoli pretended to be a servant.
Nkoli became a youth activist against apartheid, with the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) and with the United Democratic Front, participating in the 1976 Soweto uprising.
In 1983, he joined the mainly white Gay Association of South Africa, then he formed the Saturday Group, the first black gay group in Africa.
His activism on apartheid led to him being arrested in 1984. He faced the death penalty for treason with twenty-one other political leaders in the 'Delmas Treason Trial'.
Simon came out to his co-defendants and a number of them thought that the state would use Simon’s being gay to undermine the moral stance of the anti-apartheid movement. In the end, his co-defendants accepted Simon’s argument that discrimination based on sexual orientation was just as unacceptable as racism.
His coming out to the men he went to jail with and who would go on to lead in the country has been of great importance for the development of LGBT rights in South Africa.
After leaving jail he observed:
"In South Africa I am oppressed because I am a black man, and I am oppressed because I am gay. So when I fight for my freedom I must fight against both oppressions."
He founded the Gay and Lesbian Organisation of the Witwatersrand in 1988. He traveled widely and was given several human rights awards in Europe and North America. He was a member of International Lesbian and Gay Association board, representing the African region.
Nkoli founded South Africa’s first AIDS advocacy groups, Township AIDS Project and the Gay Men’s Health Forum.
Steven Cohen wrote in 1998 that Nkoli "unified the black and white gay communities, ending faggot apartheid."
"Simon's links with the ANC after his four years of imprisonment and subsequent acquittal, were hugely instrumental in the entrenchment of our gay rights in the constitution."
That constitution, in a world first, included 'sexual orientation' as protected against discrimination.
Patrick “Terror” Lekota, jailed with Nkoli and who became South Africa’s minister of defense, highlighted Nkoli’s contribution to the new constitution:
"How could we say that men and women like Simon who had put their shoulders to the wheel to end apartheid, how could we say that they should now be discriminated against?"
After becoming one of the first publicly HIV-positive African gay men, he initiated the Positive African Men group based in central Johannesburg. He had been infected with HIV for around 12 years, and had been seriously ill, on and off, for the last four. He died of AIDS in 1998 in Johannesburg.
Amongst numerous honors, he was made a freeman of New York by mayor David Dinkins in 1996. In 1999 the City of Johannesburg created 'Simon Nkoli Corner' on the junction of Hillbrow's Twist and Pretoria streets.
Canadian filmmaker John Greyson made a short film about Nkoli titled "A Moffie Called Simon" in 1987. Nkoli was the subject of Robert Colman's 2003 play, "Your Loving Simon", based on his prison letters (I was one of many around the world who corresponded with Simon), and Beverley Ditsie made a film in 2002 called "Simon & I".
Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell worked with him in the 1980s. He said:
"A real pioneer, he was an openly gay campaigner against apartheid who was known and loved by Winnie Mandela and her daughters during the period when Nelson was in jail and Winnie was subject to internal exile in the town of Brandfort."
"Simon was a slight, gentle, soft-spoken man but immensely strong in character, determination and courage. His witness as a black gay anti-apartheid activist inspired many African LGBTs to come out and helped ensure that the ANC embraced LGBT rights."
In this powerful and disturbing video, Nicole recalls the terrible violence that she faced in Cameroon.
She came out to her father when she was a teenager. He arranged for her to be raped by three men to cure her of her lesbianism. When she became pregnant as a result, her father threatened to kill her if she had an abortion. She had the baby, but he forbade her to touch it once it was born.
Later, Nicole moved in with her brother, but they were ostracized by the community and he was killed and burned by a mob because he was a gay. Later, she and her girlfriend were found out, and she was beaten and abused by a mob. Afterwards, she was raped at the police station.
This video was shot in 2008 or 2009, and Nicole is no longer an asylum seeker. However, tragically, her story is still relevant today. If anything, the anti-LGBT violence has become worse in Cameroon. Reports have emerged of at least two attempts to burn gay men in Cameroon this year, on Jan. 28 and May 14.
This video is in French, we provide French and English transcripts below.
How many other Nicoles are out there, I wonder.
ENGLISH TRANSCRIPT
Translated from French by F. Young.
[Top caption:]
Testimony of Nicole, African lesbian asylum claimant
[Bottom caption:]
Documentary made by the Alliàge association and the Merhaba non-profit association, in collaboration with CRIPEL (Liège regional center for the integration of foreigners or persons of foreign origin), with the support of the Fond d'Impulsion à la Politique des Immigrés (impetus funding for immigration policy) and the Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie (Flemish community).
[Opening credits:]
Alliàge non-profit & Mierhaba non-profit present
in collaboration with CRIPEL
organized with the support of Fond d'Impulsion à la Politique des Immigrés
[Title:]
WHEN LOVE TAKES ON COLOURS, Living one’s differences in a multicultural society
[Begin testimony]
It all started when I was 14. My cousin and I started to touch each other. And later, at the age of 18, my father began to harass me to bring a friend home because it is the age when one decides on the marriage of a girl in the family.
And my father had so harassed me to the point where I said that I had no feelings for men. I prefer women. He was shocked, but later he realized I was serious.
And that's when I began to see the bad side of my father. He no longer wanted to see me at home. He forbade everything. He no longer gave me school fees. He no longer gave me food. If he found out at home that someone gave me food, he would beat everyone up.
He said that it was not he who could have that kind of disappointment in his life. He made children and not devils. And if I decide to choose the road of the devil, he will help me to choose it, and he will be the first to kill me.
And it went as far as him sending three guys from my neighbourhood to rape me. I was leaving the church in the evening and they hid. They stopped me. They pulled me into an abandoned house. They tied me. They told me that I must become a woman.
I managed it all. And I noticed a delay [in her period]. I told them; I told my mother first and my father later. He insisted that if he heard that I had an abortion he would kill me. I had to keep the pregnancy. I gave birth. Despite the fact that I gave birth, he forbade me to touch my own child to whom I gave birth.
When I fled, I moved in with my brother. At my brother’s place, I lived. My brother continued to pay for my education, but he was homosexual. He had not come out at home.
I can’t tell you the war [“dette”] that already existed in the neighbourhood. People insulted us. People did not want to see us. Others even forbade us to pass by their yard, because we are gay and thus devils, and we will contaminate this behaviour to the other young people in our neighbourhood.
I found that my brother had already been tied up, because the community had decided to put an end to it. He was caught by surprise with his friend and they decided to be done with him. I found that he had been tied up. Wheels were put on him. [Translator’s note: according to Co-director Valérie Tosolini, he was apparently set on fire with the help of tires] And when [unintelligible] abandoned everything, I fled. I was told later that my father refused mourning, since we chose the road of the devil, we continued on it, he [unintelligible].
I went to Douala [Cameroon]. I moved there. I made the acquaintance of a girl and we lived long and well. We went to her home one day. Her mother was away on a trip. And we were surprised by her, because we did not expect her return.
When she surprised us like that, it was a whole other ordeal. She undressed, she threw herself down outdoors, she started to roll on the ground, saying that I came to spoil her daughter, and they must arrest us and put an end to us too.
She screamed. The people came. When the people came like that, they immediately decided to tie us up. I was tied to a pole. They started to beat me up. I got injuries left and right, fresh pepper and everything [Translator’s note: Tosolini says some fresh peppers were put in her vagina], and I saw only death before me.
When they called me like that for the statement, he had just two questions. I must show where the others are, and then I must tell them that I stopped being homosexual. And me, I was not hesitating to tell them that I am homosexual, and it is God who created me this way. I cannot give up what I am.
They began to rape me. The first night, it was my investigator himself who came. He took me, he led me into an office. This is where it started. He ripped my clothes off while saying that I must absolutely give up being a lesbian, and he'll prove to me that I have other feelings other than those I believe I have with women.
One morning, I decided [unintelligible], I picked up everything, I went to [unintelligible] I climbed the gate that was at the side. I climbed it. I fled. As I fled like that, I crossed the drain waters [“les eaux d’évacuation”]. I ended up at the goat market. At the market, I took the bike [motorcycle taxi] and I went to our president. Because we had a secret association, and that's where they decided to help me travel.
The day I applied for asylum, I was sent to the Broechem center [in Belgium]. And that's where I am, and I keep waiting to be called. [video cut] ...to live in the same anxieties and fear. I am not at ease. I have permanent headaches, and I feel my head is not right. Every once in a while I have to stretch out because it's as if I am carrying a load. It's like my head is heavy. It's like ... in the end, I don’t recognize my body anymore.
[Closing credits]
Direction Catherine Gouffau Valérie Tosolini Eric Lumay
Music "Barzakh" Anouar Barhem "Ghulubt Asalih" Oum Kalthoom Afrika Moyo "Lennas Aideen" Ghalia Benali
TRANSCRIPTION EN FRANÇAIS (French transcript)
(transcribed by F Young with the assistance of Co-director Valérie Tosolini)
Tout a commencé quand j'avais 14 ans. J'ai commencé à avoir des attouchements avec ma cousine, et, plus tard, à l'âge de 18 ans, mon père a commencé à me harceler pour que j’amène un ami à la maison parce que c'est l'âge auquel on peut décider du mariage d'une fille dans la famille.
Et mon père m'avait tellement harcelé, jusqu'au point où je lui ai dit que je n'avais pas de sentiment pour les hommes. Je préférais les femmes. Il a été scandalisé, mais plus tard il a compris que j'étais sérieuse.
Et c'est là où j'ai commencé à voir la mauvaise face de mon père. Il n'aimait plus me voir à la maison. Il a donné interdiction à tout. Il ne me donnait plus de frais de scolarité. Il ne me donnait plus à manger. S'il trouvait à la maison qu'on m'a donné à manger, il se mettait à bastonner tout le monde.
Il disait que ce n'étais pas lui qui pouvait avoir ce genre de déception dans sa vie. Il a fait des enfants et non des diables. Et si je décide de choisir la route du diable, il va m'aider à la choisir, et c'est lui qui sera le premier à me tuer.
Et, jusqu'au moment où il a envoyé trois gars de mon quartier me violer Je sortais de l'église le soir et ils se sont cachés; ils m'ont arrêté; ils m'ont entraîné dans une maison abandonnée; ils m'ont attaché. Ils me disaient que je dois devenir une femme.
J'ai géré tout çà. J'ai constaté un retard [dans sa période]. Je leur ai dit; j'ai dit d'abord à ma mère, et puis à mon père plus tard. Il m'a exigé que si il entend que j'ai fait l'avortement de cette grossesse, il va me tuer. J'ai été obligé de garder la grossesse. J'ai accouché. Malgré le fait que j'ai accouché, il a interdit que je touche mon propre enfant que j'ai accouché.
Quand j'ai fuit, je suis allé m'installer chez mon frère. Chez mon frère, j'ai vécu. Mon frère a continué à me payer la scolarité, mais lui il était homosexuel. Il ne s'était pas annoncé à la maison.
Je ne peux pas vous dire la dette [guerre] qui existait déjà au quartier. Les gens nous insultaient; les gens n'aimaient pas nous voir; d'autres interdisaient même qu'on passe devant leur cour, parce que nous sommes des homosexuels, donc des diables, et on va contaminer ce comportement aux autres jeunes gens dans notre quartier.
J'ai trouvé qu'on avait déjà attaché mon frère, parce que la communauté a décidé d'en finir. On l'a surpris avec son ami et ils ont décidé d'en finir avec lui. J'ai trouvé qu'on l’avait attaché. On a mis les roues sur lui [Note du traducteur : d’après la co-réalisatrice Valérie Tosolini, apparamment, on l’a mis en feu à l’aide de pneus.]. Et quand [j’ai vu ça, j’ai?] tout abandonné, j'ai fuit. On m'a dit plus tard que mon père a refusé le deuil, que, comme on a choisit la route du diable, qu'on continue dedans, il ne peut [pas mettre ses pieds?].
Je suis allé à Douala [au Cameroun], je me suis installé là bas. J'ai fais la connaissance d'une fille et on a vécu longtemps et bien. On s'est rendu chez elle un jour. Sa mère avait voyagé, et elle nous avait surprises parce qu'on s'attendait pas à son retour. Quand elle nous a surprises comme ça, c'était tout un autre calvaire. Elle s'est déshabillée, elle s'est jetée dehors, elle a commencé à rouler par terre, disant que je suis venue gâter sa fille, et qu'on nous arrête, et qu'on en finisse également avec nous.
Elle a crié. La population est venue. Quand la population est venue comme ça, on a immédiatement décidé de nous attacher. On m'a attaché au poteau. On a commencé à me bastonner. J'ai reçu de part et d'autres des blessures, du piment frais, et tout [Note du traducteur : d’après Tosolini, on lui a mis du piment frais dans le vagin], et je ne voyais que la mort devant moi.
Quand on m'appelait comme ça pour le procès-verbal, il avait juste deux questions. Je dois montrer là où sont les autres, et puis je dois leur dire que j'ai cessé d'être homosexuelle. Et moi je n'hésitais pas de leur dire que je suis homosexuelle, et c'est Dieu qui m'a créé ainsi. Je ne peux pas renoncer à ce que je suis.
Ils ont commencé à me violer. La première nuit, c'est mon enquêteur-même qui est venu. Il m'a prise, il m'a menée dans un bureau. C'est là où il a commencé. Il m'a déchiré les habits en disant que je dois absolument renoncer le fait d'être lesbienne, et il va me prouver que j'ai d'autres sensations autres que celles que j'estime avoir avec des femmes.
Un matin, j’ai décidé [de tout abandonné?], j'ai ramassé tout, je suis allé jusqu’à [inintelligible] J’ai escaladé la grille qui était à côté dehors. J’ai escaladé. J'ai fuit. Comme j'ai fuit comme ça, j'ai traversé les eaux d'évacuation. Je me suis retrouvé au marché des chèvres. Au marché, j'ai pris la moto [taxi] et je suis allé chez notre président. Parce que l’on avait une association secrète et c'est là où ils ont pris la décision de m'aider à voyager.
Le jour où j'ai demandé l'asile, on m'a envoyé au centre de Broechem [en Belgique], et c'est là où je suis, et je continue à attendre à ce qu'on m'appelle. [coupure de scène] ...à vivre dans les mêmes angoisses et la peur. Je ne suis pas à l'aise. J'ai des maux de tête permanents, et je sens ma tête ne va pas. De temps en temps il faut que je m’étire parce que c'est comme si je porte une charge. C'est comme si ma tête pèse. C'est comme si...enfin, je ne reconnais plus mon organisme.
Since June, the Hong Kong Government Social Welfare Department has been using the Christian SOCT organisation New Creation, to train the department's social workers in ”converting” their young clients' sexual orientation.
The concept has long been promoted by US evangelical groups. Now it is reaching around the world with 'conversion' a major component of anti-gay efforts by evangelicals in Africa and hundreds of 'Christian' clinics in Ecuador inflicting physical and psychological torture on lesbians to try to “cure” them.
In the Bavarian city of Munich the Union of Catholic Physicians in Germany recently announced it had found a cure for homosexuality.
Germany's LSVD gay and lesbian association executive director, Klaus Jetz, says conversion therapists are a growing problem in Germany.
"They are copying what has been going on in the US for a long time, and now they're coming to Germany," he told Deutsche Welle.
Mainstream medical associations universally pan the idea that you can 'pray away the gay' and the movement has lost ground in the US due to media exposure and general mockery of some of its more patently absurd elements.
This followed the news that a 21 year veteran of the primary American 'ex-gay' group Exodus International, with 11 years on the board of directors, John Smid just wrote that:
I also want to reiterate here that the transformation for the vast majority of homosexuals will not include a change of sexual orientation. Actually I’ve never met a man who experienced a change from homosexual to heterosexual.
In Hong Kong a coalition, Tongzhi Community Joint Meeting, was formed to launch a global petition campaign against the Hong Kong government paying for 'pray away the gay' training. More than 20,000 signatures have been collected. In addition, a solidarity protest led by LGBT Asian American groups took place in New York back in August.
They say that the government is violating the Guidelines on Code of Practice for Registered Social Workers, the World Health Organization's position on sexual orientation, the Hong Kong Bill of Rights, the Convention of the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Guidelines on Sex Educations in Schools issued by the Curriculum Development Council of HKSAR, the Code of Professional Conduct by Medical Council and the Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders.
The Social Welfare Department refused to publicize the details of what they were planning, but LGBT activists managed to collect a list of related documents which they published on a webpage “WiGayLeaks” [zh]. The documents show that the efforts are based on the “sick model” assumption with an attempt to convince the attendees that “same sex attraction is curable” and draw co-relation between homosexuality with AIDS and other sexual transmitted diseases.
In Ecuador, activists have managed to get numerous 'pray away the gay' clinics shut down. Hopefully the people in Hong Kong will have similar success.
When the Liberal-Conservative coalition led by Lars Lokke Rasmussen came to power in Denmark in 2001, it relied on support from the right-wing and staunchly anti-immigrant Danish People's Party (DPP). As a result of that union, Denmark passed some of the strictest immigration and asylum laws in Europe.
Among other things, its policies restricted benefits to immigrants, limited their ability to work and required Danes marrying a foreigner to post an $11,600 bond. The number of asylum seekers and relatives of immigrants applying for entry into the country dropped by nearly 70% over nine years, and the DPP moved closer to its goal: a complete end to immigration from non-Western countries.
But Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark's new prime minister, has plans to change all that. Thorning-Schmidt, who led a left-leaning, three-party alliance to victory on Sep. 15 and formed her government on Oct. 3, has already announced bold policy moves that will dramatically alter the tone of Denmark's debate on immigration.
The government's common policy outlines a number of concrete changes. They include automatic citizenship for children born and raised in Denmark, regardless of their parents' citizenship; equal welfare rights for immigrants and Danes; vast reductions in application fees and cash securities; expanded work benefits for asylum seekers; and the possibility of dual citizenship, which will ease the naturalization process.
The coalition also plans to ease family reunification rules, which have seen 800 children denied residency permits since 2005, frequently leading to the separation of children and their parents. (In March, the immigration minister resigned after it emerged 36 stateless Palestinians had been wrongly denied citizenship. The government subsequently contacted 400 Palestinian young people who had not been informed of their rights and entitlement to apply.)
Thorning-Schmidt has also binned the previous government's plans to erect permanent customs control points along the Danish border. The previous government had, at the behest of the DPP, insisted on the checkpoints to curb crime and reduce illegal immigration. But the European Commission and Germany, Denmark's neighbor to the south, complained they would violate the continent's visa-free travel rules.
"In cooperation with our neighbours, Denmark will carry out an effective customs control based on a mobile, flexible and intelligence-based effort in keeping with the common rules in effect in the E.U.," the government's policy plan says. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who had criticized Denmark's border plans, praised the about-face. "This is a decision in favour of liberty for European citizens," he said in a statement.
Denmark's coalition will abolish the Immigration Ministry—a strong signal that the far-right's grip on immigration really is over. Its functions and its 300 employees will be divided between the Ministry of Social Affairs and the Ministry of Justice. That reallocation of responsibility hints that asylum and immigration should be dealt with against a backdrop of justice and not separate from it. Just as symbolic, perhaps, is the appointment of Indian-born Manu Sareen as the head of the Equality Ministry, making him the country's fist minister of immigrant origin.
Symbolism, of course, will do little to dampen resentment from the moderate and right-wing politicians who oppose the government's more open approach. Speaking to Denmark's Berlingske newspaper, Søren Pind, the outgoing immigration minister, suggested that the new policies will unleash a flood of problems. "This is open borders and an open till," he said. "We will see an increase in people on public assistance who do not come from Denmark. And abolishing the point system will just bring the Anatolian Plateau that much closer. This is certainly not what they promised during the election."
Last month I got some disturbing news. A group of gay Ugandans were trapped in Libya.
One described being gay and black African as "a double crime here". As a number of news outlets have reported, African migrant workers have suffered abuse by the forces fighting Muammar Gaddafi.
The gay Africans eventually got back home safely but for thousands more the triumph of the National Transitional Council (NTC) and its revolutionary fighters remains a cause for grave concern.
Human Rights Watch has reported that thousands of black Libyans and African migrants have been held on suspicion of having fought as mercenaries for Gaddafi.
Refugees International's Matt Pennington has just returned from Libya. He says that the NTC and its allies have failed to protect the most vulnerable in Libya, including sub-Saharan migrants and minority Libyans.
“With Gaddafi gone the eyes of the world are on Libya’s new leadership,” he says. “And having finally achieved its revolution, the NTC must now deliver on its promises of freedom and dignity for all.”
Pennington says that many of the NTC’s supporters still see black Libyans and migrants as allies of Gaddafi – their perceptions skewed by reports of Tawerghan fighters’ involvement in the siege on Misrata, and sub-Saharan mercenaries brought in to quell the initial uprising.
Black Libyans forced to flee Gaddafi-allied towns have been abused, harassed, and detained by rebel forces and the NTC has done virtually nothing to stop these abuses.
New policy implemented by the U.S. Agency for International Development “strongly encourages” businesses contracting with the organization to have non-discrimination policies in place for their LGBT workers.
The new policy, spelled out in an executive message dated Oct. 11, encourages companies contracting with USAID to go beyond mandatory non-discrimination protections — including protections based on race, religion and gender — and put in place additional policies to prohibit job bias against LGBT employees and other workers.
According to the memo, the agency is making the change to “encourage all USAID contractors and recipients, including those performing solely overseas, to apply comprehensive nondiscrimination policies that include sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, marital status, parental status, political affiliation, and any other conduct that does not affect performance.”
The memo notes that the change isn’t mandatory, so contractors aren’t bound to have the policies to continue working with USAID. Still, the policy is likely the first from any U.S. agency encouraging federal contractors to have non-discrimination policies for LGBT workers.
LGBT advocates said the memo is an important step in addressing workplace discrimination, but noted the change doesn’t have a lot of teeth.
Nan Hunter, a lesbian law professor at Georgetown University who first posted the new policy on her blog, called the change a “breakthrough,” but noted it can’t be enforced.
“Technically it isn’t enforceable in the sense that a contractor who fails to adopt these policies could be cited as out of compliance,” Hunter said. “However, it sends a strong signal that such policies are favored, and creates an incentive for any private company that contracts with USAID to conform its policies to this guidance.”
Tico Almeida, president of Freedom to Work, said USAID “deserves credit” for observing that taxpayers “should not have to subsidize anti-LGBT discrimination and harassment,” but also noted the change isn’t binding.
“If a USAID contractor fires a qualified employee just because she is lesbian or because he is transgender, those employees will still not be allowed to file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor seeking enforcement of the workplace protections encouraged under this new symbolic policy,” Almeida said.
Mark Bromley, chair of the Council for Global Equality, said the new policy is a step in the right direction and could encourage other agencies to follow USAID’s lead.
“I’ve heard that new language in USAID contracts and grants will encourage the agency’s program implementers to follow USAID’s existing policies by extending nondiscrimination provisions to include sexual orientation and gender identity,” Bromley said. “I think USAID deserves a lot of credit for their leadership and hope others will follow.”
Asked to comment on the USAID policy, Shin Inouye, a White House spokesperson, said, “We welcome it.”
LGBT advocates have been pushing President Obama to issue an executive order prohibiting all federal contractors — not just those doing business with USAID — to have non-discrimination policies in place based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Such a policy change would be binding and enforced by the Department of Labor. The Obama administration hasn’t said one way or the other if it will issue the order.
Almeida said the executive order is the best way for the Obama administration to ensure federal contractors have non-discrimination policies for LGBT workers in place and called on the president to issue the order before 2013.
“In order for LGBT workers to have the same workplace protections as all other Americans, President Obama needs to sign an ENDA executive order covering government contractors for all federal agencies,” Almeida said. “Freedom to Work respectfully urges the President to do so during his first term.”
~~~
According to the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (DAC/OECD), the United States remains the largest donor of "official development assistance" at $23.53 billion in 2006. DAC/OECD reports that the next largest donor was the United Kingdom ($12.46b).
Relative to its economy, the U.S. is the second lowest provider, among the DAC countries, with a 0.17% of GNI in aid. Only Greece provides a lower percentage of GNI in the form of aid.
Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's support for LGBT rights, in comments to the BBC this week has been a major issue with spokespeople for his MDC party keen to play it down.
But the ruling Zanu-PF party of Robert Mugabe have an obvious interest in playing it up and that's what's been happening. On October 25 half the government-run TV news bulletin was devoted to slamming Tsvangirai's backing of gay rights.
“He thinks Zimbabwe is Europe. This is Africa,” said Zanu-PF spokesman Rugare Gumbo. “He is misguided and unfortunately he does not understand what is happening in Zimbabwe.”
At the first Prime Minister's Question Time in Zimbabwe's parliament on Thursday ruling party MPs lined up to declare Tsvangirai "misguided” and “out of sync with reality on the ground.”
But when an MDC MP asked whether the PM was advocating for gay rights in the constitution there was wild laughter when Tsvangirai said:
“Perhaps I am speaking here kuda mumwe musi mungangodai muringochani panapa (we may be talking while some of you may be gays here). What you do in your private sphere is your private problem.”
Guma asked if his statement to the BBC was, as widely reported and as I examined earlier in the week, a 'U-turn' and whether Tsvangirai wasn't "opening yourself to political point scoring?"
Tsvangirai repeated the line he gave the parliament:
"My attitude towards gay rights has never changed. I’m not gay and therefore I don’t prescribe anyone’s sexual preferences. What you should understand is that this is a diversion, the real issue is that the people of Zimbabwe are writing a constitution and that it is the people of Zimbabwe who are going to define what society they would like."
"Including the fact yekuti (that) if the majority don’t like gays, they will not reflect it in their constitution, but it’s up to Zimbabweans, it cannot be written just to satisfy one individual just because at one stage in their life they’ve been traumatized."
"So one has to say that the issue of gay rights is a diversion, an elitist project to avoid the poor people who are around the country who don’t have anything. So let’s concentrate, let’s not try to bring to the forefront an issue which is definitely inconsequential."
Whether Tsvangirai's 'personal views' can be successfully exploited by Zanu-PF remains to be seen. In neighbouring Zambia's recent Presidential election the attempt to use LGBT rights as a wedge issue clearly failed.
And in the SW Radio Africa interview Tsvangirai pointed to one of those issues LGBT rights could be seen as a diversion from. Asked about another recent violent Zanu-PF disruption of a public hearing, this one on new electoral laws he said:
"Well I mean it’s not a perfect society, it’s not a perfect situation. I mean we have always said that Zanu PF’s character of violence, intimidation, coercion, it’s not something they will wake up one morning and try to discuss, it’s part of their culture but it doesn’t mean necessarily that our people must also not be determined to make their views be heard."
Gays and Lesbians Association of Zimbabwe (GALZ) have urged Tsvangirai "to have the courage to stand by his laudable respect for human rights in the face of the propaganda and unpopularity that will be generated by the Zimbabwean media around his position."
"True leadership remains steadfast in the pursuit of justice and equality,” they say.
Russian gays have upset the Orthodox church with a satirical cartoon. And not for the first time.
Last week I published on how the Northern Russian Arkhangelskaya Oblast [region] had passed a law banning 'gay propaganda' - outlawing support for LGBT human rights, the second region to do so and a move which the Russian Supreme Court has previously allowed. That story was also about the hypocrisy involved, with the former mayor of the capital, Arkhangelsk, Aleksandr Donskoi, saying that many politicians and business people in the city use the services of transsexual prostitutes.
That story was illustrated with the regional coat of arms, which shows the Archangel killing the Devil with a sword.
The cartoon published by GayRussia.ru mocking the ‘gay propaganda’ law reverses this, with the Devil - personifying homophobia - killing the Archangel.
Orthodox homophobes feel themselves insulted by such a “blasphemous, mocking cartoon”. This is the claim of the co-president of the “Narodnyi Sobor” movement, Oleg Kassin, in his letter to Russian General Attorney Yuri Chaika. Kassin wants the website closed down and its owners punished.
Apparently the cartoon “extremely disturbs Christians, humiliates their dignity and insults their feelings”.
The extreme religious nationalists group has used Russian law before to get artists fined. They have an English language website called 'deviant art' which well illustrates their nationalist politics
In 2007 they pushed for scientist Vitaly Ginzburg's prosecution for publicly criticizing the influence of the resurgent Orthodox Church in Russian schools
Fortunately, following previous online attacks which have shut down the website, GayRussia.ru is no longer physically located in Russia, so it can't be shut down by Russian authorities. However its owners are in Russia, so the threat to them is real.
The website has been here before. Another clerical nationalist group previously asked the authorities to investigate a cartoon published on the website picturing an orthodox priest and a neo-Nazi shaking hands.
That cartoon illustrated the sort of crowds which appear at violently anti-gay demonstrations, approved by the authorities in Russia when pro-gay rallies are banned, which call for the death of homosexuals, amongst other things.
An Italian-Uruguayan gay couple married in Spain has denounced the judicial nightmare they're in in Italy.
The couple, whose identity was not revealed, met in Spain, where they married in 2010.
The problems began when the Italian spouse decided to return home due to the economic crisis. His husband applied for a residence permit, but he has been denied and is in danger of being deported.
The couple has filed an appeal to the civil court of Reggio Emilia, which should be decided within a month. According to gaynews.it, that court may decide to pass the case to the constitutional court.
This couple did not ask for their marriage recognized in Italy (as Italian and Spanish couple Ottavio Marzocchi and Joaquin Nogueroles have done). They just want to be allowed to live together.
Emilia Bardini - Director of the San Francisco Asylum Office within the Refugee, Asylum and International Operations Directorate of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security - and LeRoy Potts - Chief of Research for the San Francisco Asylum Office within the Refugee, Asylum and International Operations Directorate of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security - provide unique governmental views on the interpretation of LGBTI claims for asylum.
Interview with Belarus gay activist Sergey Yenin. Yenin was attending a screening of the documentary 'East Bloc Love' in the UK - he begins by referring to the film.
Call for Immigration Canada to stop the deportation of gay refugee claimants who are living with HIV and face extreme violence if sent home!
To show support for Herberth and call for him to stay, friends of Herbeth, concerned community members, Latinos Positivos and AIDS ACTION NOW! will be holding a support vigil of at Yonge and Dundas Square on November 8, 2011 at 6pm.
Herberth Menendez is a 30 year old Mexican citizen who immigrated to Canada in 2007. He left Mexico to claim refugee status in Canada because he feared for his life due to the intense discrimination and threats of physical violence he faced for being openly gay and living with HIV. Despite having submitted detailed proof of the homophobia and HIV discrimination he has faced in Mexico, Herberth is currently in the final stages of his Pre-Removal Risk Assessment Application. His lawyer has told him there is very little likelihood of his application will be accepted.
Canada has a record of deporting immigrants from many Spanish speaking countries, including Mexico, despite the fact that they have proof they will face violence in their home country if they return.The Mexican Government continues to put up a façade for Canada that homophobic murders do not take place there. However, we sadly hear of cases very often where gay men have been assassinated in Mexico for their sexual orientation or HIV status.
Herberth left Mexico to escape persecution from his neighbors and his own father because he was openly gay and is living with HIV. He was thrown out of his family home by his father and told never to return or he would personally kill him. When Herberth found out he was HIV positive, he suffered discrimination by friends and family and dealt with the intense stigma that exists in the medical community when he sought out health care in Mexico. Nurses and doctors would disclose his HIV-positive status without Herberth’s consent in front of other patients in the clinic without any conscious effort of respecting his confidentiality.
Herberth came to Canada to try and get support and leave a climate of fear and stigma he faced in Mexico. In Toronto, he found Latinos Positivos, an organization dedicated to supporting members of the Latin community who are living with HIV. Members of Latinos Positivos have now become Herberth’s family in Canada. He has volunteered for Latinos Positivos since his arrival and in 2011, Herberth’s drag persona Ashanti Silman was crowned Miss Latinos Positivos. In this role, Herberth has performed at and supported several fundraisers for the organization and helped raise funds for and awareness of their programming. Most recently he contributed efforts towards the production of a pamphlet about HIV and stigma in the Latin community with the Centre for Spanish Speaking Peoples and Latinos Positivos.
Email you concern to Canadian Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Jason Kenny: Minister@cic.gc.ca and to the Ontario Minister of Citizen and Immigration, Charles Sousa: csousa.mpp@liberal.ola.org
Latinos Positivos aims to help empower Latino People Living with HIV and AIDS to move beyond their diagnosis and establish a supportive and accepting Latino community within the AIDS movement.
A man carries the scars after a gang tried to hack his arms off with pangas and another was almost murdered by his own mother. Their crime? Being gay and born in countries that view homosexuality as an abomination. They have come to South Africa for refuge in fear of such persecution.
Complaints filed this week show that some LGBT detainees in the United States who are refugees, asylum seekers or undocumented are being subjected to inhuman, degrading and in some cases life-threatening treatment.
Heartland Alliance's National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) has filed four more complaints with the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), taking it to 17 filed since April.
All of these individuals are seeking protection from persecution in their native countries.
In one new case, a detainee was denied HIV treatment, which can be life-threatening.
Alexis* was detained at Boone County Jail, Kentucky, for two weeks in September then moved to Tri-County Detention Center, Illinois, where he remains. He immediately informed nurses that he was HIV+ and that he believed he had herpes. He has been seen by one doctor but in a public setting where it was unsafe to discuss his HIV status and a private exam was refused. He has still not been given HIV medication despite repeated requests to nurses and at Boone he was denied toothpaste, a toothbrush and soap for a fortnight.
Another new complaint tells of a transgender individual who was arbitrarily held in solitary confinement for 49 days.
The 13 complaints filed in April by NIJC detail instances of rape, sexual violence, misuse of segregation and punitive conditions in solitary confinement, denial of HIV treatment and hormone therapy, as well as pervasive discrimination and humiliation by guards on account of individuals' sexual orientation and gender identity.
"These latest reports highlight that abuse of vulnerable populations remains a systemic, pervasive problem in the immigration detention system," said NIJC Executive Director Mary Meg McCarthy.
"It is unlawful for the U.S. government to detain individuals that it cannot protect."
One transgender woman detained in California was abused and singled out for public searches where guards forced her to remove her outer clothing and mocked her exposed breasts.
Both transgender and lesbian or gay people in immigration detention are often segregated and kept in cells for 22 hours per day. They have far less access to recreation compared with the general detainee population. When this transgender woman asked why she could have recreation access for only a couple of hours she was abused by a guard, told it was to "teach her not to be transgender." When she asked for toilet paper she was abused.
Transferred to a Jail she suffered further mistreatment and discrimination, including denial of access to a doctor.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released government documents this week containing 185 allegations of sexual abuse against female immigration detainees in federal detention centers since 2007.
Many of these women are refugees fleeing persecution including torture and rape.
ACLU has provided detailed narratives by three women describing sexual assaults by guards whilst they were being transported in prison vans.
Human Rights Watch released a report last August that documented sex crimes committed in detention centers across eight states.
Since 9/11, the detainee population has increased from 7,500 people per day in 1995 to approximately 33,000 per day in 2010. With few dedicated immigration detention centers available to house the growing number of detainees, authorities began renting out beds in a variety of facilities primarily used for housing criminal convicts under very restrictive conditions. Often these facilities are in remote areas, restricting access to legal help. The intermingling and eventual conflation of civil and criminal detainees pushed immigration detention towards the highly punitive model prevalent today. Today nearly 400,000 undocumented immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers are detained every year.
Until now, EU asylum law foresaw that “gender related aspects might be considered” by national asylum authorities when examining the potential persecution of specific social groups in their country of origin.
The resolution adopted today has replaced this text, and now specifies that “gender related aspects, including gender identity, shall be given due consideration”. The text now refers to gender identity specifically, and obliges Member States to consider gender-related aspects. Before, EU countries could still choose not to consider aspects linked to the applicant’s gender in asylum claims.
The text applies to all EU Member States except the United Kingdom [and Denmark and Ireland], which opted out of EU asylum policies. The resolution was successfully drafted and negotiated by Jean Lambert, a British Member of the European Parliament in the Greens/EFA group.
This is the first time a binding EU Directive includes gender identity.
Dennis de Jong MEP, Vice-president of the LGBT Intergroup and responsible for asylum policies in the GUE/NGL group, commented:
“Around the world, transgender people can be persecuted for who they are. This reviewed Directive will recognise the danger they face, and it will commit EU Member States to taking gender identity into account in asylum claims. I hope in a future revision it will also become mandatory to consider the sexual orientation of applicants.”
“I am very proud that my colleagues from the centre-right EPP group supported this change, regardless of the views they hold on asylum in general. The European Union is only starting to recognise gender identity as a ground of persecution, but I hope today’s vote will help protect more lives.”
The binding rules will apply after they are transposed into EU Member States’ national law, except for the United Kingdom. Due to access the EU in July 2013, Croatia is also expected to adapt its asylum laws.
We are pleased to announce another success in our Asylum cases. Gamini’s (not his real name) excited Skype message reached us on 4th October 2011 and read:
“I am very happy to inform you, that I was granted my gay asylum in Belgium. As I know I am the first [Sri Lankan] person who was granted an asylum based on my sexual orientation in Belgaum. As GaySriLankan and you personally helped me a lot on this matter. I am thanking you very much, because you helped me in every way not only giving supportive documents, but also personally taking your own time and advising me on skype about my problems which happen to me because of my gay life in Sri Lanka…”
We are happy for Gamini and wish him all the luck for his new life in the Belgium.
He personally contacted us and asked for help for his gay asylum in Belgium. When we go through his life story we came to know that he was going through lot of trauma and depression.
We did counsel with him a lot to come out of his current situation because he was a closeted gay person when he was living in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan community around him had discriminated, harassed and threatened him because of his sexual orientation. One police officer had done death threats to him too.
When he was 10 years old he was raped by a man and the entire villagers pointed finger at him that he was responsible for being raped because of his feminine appearances. When he was going to a reputed College in Kandy, he was discriminated and exterminated from the leadership of his College debate team because of his girly voice. At that time he was the leader and their debate team was about to participate in all island level finals which was scheduled to be telecasted on national television.
He was kick out of his two jobs because of his feminine appearances and discriminated when some of his co-workers found out that he was a gay person. When he was in a relationship, his partner’s friend; a police officer found out about them.
Police officer had threatened him to death and told about his sexual orientation to his family and made them kick him out of his own home. When he was working overseas, these people made telephone threats at his work place and made his job discontinued.
Most of the gay people living in Sri Lanka, when found out that they are gay, are going through situations like this because of the discrimination and persecution from their own community. They are helpless and most of them have to fight for their lives or have to live in fear.
We sincerely hope that there will come a time when wonderful people such as Gamini don’t have to flee Sri Lanka because of the way they are treated there for being (gay) who they actually are. We hope in time, the laws will change in Sri Lanka and people are more accepting.
In the meanwhile, we will do our utmost to assist those who need our help.
At a press conference in Kingston today, 26 October, Jamaican attorney Maurice Tomlinson announced that the organization AIDS-Free World has presented a first-ever legal challenge to the country’s anti-gay laws.
The group has submitted a petition at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), on behalf of two Jamaican gay men whose names are being withheld to protect their safety.
Representing the petitioners will be a very high powered legal team including Lord Anthony Gifford, who practices in both Jamaica and the UK and was counsel on a similar and successful case before the European Court of Human Rights, and pro bono attorneys from the US firm Thompson Hine and the Law Center at Nova Southeastern University.
Their argument will be that by criminalizing homosexuality Jamaica is in violation of international human rights laws which it is a signatory to, such as the American Convention on Human Rights.
Although the Jamaican so-called “anti-sodomy law” is not enforced, the argument is that it nevertheless casts a destructive pall over the lives of gay Jamaicans. It feeds a homophobic society in which gays and lesbians are harassed, mocked, vilified, beaten and killed simply because of their sexual orientation. It encourages vigilante justice by private citizens, most of whom believe that the “anti-sodomy” law grants them permission to commit acts of violence against sexual minorities
Driven underground, many fear that seeking an HIV test will brand them as homosexual, and therefore criminal. The national prevalence of HIV is over 30 percent among men who have sex with men, compared to a rate of 1.6 percent in the general population. The IACHR petition establishes clear ties between the country’s active promotion of discrimination and its AIDS epidemic.
In a statement, Tomlinson said that if the Commission decides favorably "other countries in the region with similar anti-homosexuality legislation will be forced to take notice."
"In fact, it is the conviction of AIDS-Free World that a favorable outcome will have a dramatic impact on all countries that persist in the medieval persecution of their citizens on the grounds of sexual orientation."
A new London based group the Human Dignity Trust which includes a powerful group of experts of international law has set itself the task of systematically challenging the sodomy laws which remain in some 70-odd nations.
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