A trans soccer playing first

By Paul Canning

In what is believed to be a world-first, a transgender soccer player has played in an international game.

Jonny Saelua took to the field last month for American Samoa in the first winning international game for the tiny Pacific country. They've lost 30 international games before this one, accumulating a 229-12 goal score against them.

Saelua is actually fa’afafine, part of the traditional 'third sex' recognised throughout many Pacific cultures for hundreds of years.

Fa’afafine means “to be a woman” in Samoan. According to 30-year-old Alex Su’a, who heads the Samoa Fa’afafine Society, there are 1,500 fa’afafine in Samoa and American (Western)  Samoa.

“To be fa’afafine you have to be Samoan, born a man, feel you are a woman, be sexually attracted to males and, importantly, proud to be called and labeled fa’afafine,” Su’a said.

“The fa’afafine are culturally accepted,” he said. “They have a role in Samoan society. They are the caretakers of the elders because their brothers and sisters get married, but the fa’afafine traditionally don’t.”

Saelua agreed:

“In Samoa the fa’afafine are very reliable. We can do what the boys do and what the girls do.”

A study last year of the fa’afafine in Samoa suggested that homosexuality in humans - from an evolutionary point of view - may convey an indirect benefit by enhancing the survival prospects of close relatives.
Samoa's communitarian culture may be representative of the environment in which male same-sex sexuality evolved in ancient times, the researchers said.

However intense religiosity in the island nations has undermined this tradition.

A Samoan newspaper recently reported how a fa’afafine visited their office, saying that he’d been getting death threats from his former boyfriend and he “wants help before it is too late.”

The United Nations Human Rights Council has called on various Pacific countries to decriminalize homosexuality, and several Pacific Island nations have pledged to do so, including Palau and Nauru. But Samoa, Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea have said that they intend to keep their laws, which are vestiges of the colonial era. Samoan lawmakers, as in many other countries, have cited 'Christian tradition' as a reason why sodomy laws will not be abolished.

Homosexuality was decriminalised in the US territory of Western Samoa in 1979.

Saelua's teammates “make me feel like a part of them”, he says.

“They don’t make me feel different because I am the way I am,” she said. “It is what anybody needs to feel wanted within a team. That is why I always do my best. I can’t let them down.”

“I just go out and play soccer as a soccer player. Not as transgender, not as a boy and not as a girl. Just as a soccer player.”

Related articles

• Gay rights: a world of inequality (guardian.co.uk)
• Decriminalization of Sex Laws in PNG (mcminnala.com)

Overview: The fight for LGBT rights in Indonesia

A brave band of queer activists defied a rising right-wing climate of intimidation to celebrate the International Day Against Homophobia on May 17, 2008, in Jakarta. Photo: Irwin Fedriansyiah

Source: Freedom Socialist Party

By Alison Thorne

To Australia’s north lies Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation, where queer rights activists are showing a new combativeness.

In May, delegates from organisations representing workers, women, farmers, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, sex workers, and refugee organisations met in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta for the Civil Society Conference of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). They released a statement demanding that their governments “recognise, promote and protect” LGBT rights. This milestone resulted from vigorous organising by gay rights groups across Southeast Asia, including 15 in Indonesia. The conference also produced the first ASEAN Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer People’s Caucus.

The same month, activists mobilised for the International Day of Action Against Homophobia (IDAHO), which included rallies in Jakarta. Sixty-two organisations released a statement demanding protection for everyone regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Developments in Indonesia make this a much-needed protection for LGBT people there. Several years ago, the government began allowing provinces and regions to locally adopt sharia (a reactionary legal code based on Islamic religious laws), and many areas have done so. And a sweeping “anti-pornography law” that labels homosexuality as deviant took effect in 2008.

The archipelago’s LGBT movement is amongst the oldest in Asia; the country’s first openly gay organisation, Lambda Indonesia, launched in 1982. Now, however, the queer movement there is experiencing the same thing as others around the world: as it makes new advances, it is coming into sometimes violent conflict with a rising religious right.

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In Australia, refugee protection needs ignored in rush to 'stop the boats'

Image by .M. via Flickr

A joint statement by Australian non-government organisations

The Australian debate about asylum policy has now degenerated to the point where the central argument seems to be about which inhumane policy will cause the least suffering. Neither indefinite detention in the Pacific nor sending asylum seekers to uncertainty in Malaysia can be presented as a just or credible response to the needs of people seeking refugee protection in Australia.

The inconvenient truth for Australia’s political leaders is that the majority of asylum seekers who have entered Australia by boat have been found to need protection from persecution.

Today, in Australian immigration detention facilities, there are asylum seekers who bear the physical scars of torture, children and adults who have witnessed family members being killed and many people who have had direct threats against their lives. The vulnerability of many asylum seekers must be a primary consideration in any government response to people movement.

Between 2001 and 2007, we saw that sending people to indefinite detention on Nauru or Manus Island [Papua New Guinea], under conditions which violated well-recognised principles of international protection, resulted in a high incidence of acute psychological harm and trauma. Asylum applicants were effectively denied access to legal assistance.

Many people were pressured to return home without an independent and thorough review of their protection needs, some of them tragically being killed upon return. Few governments were prepared to assist Australia to find resettlement options for those granted refugee status, as those subject to the Pacific Solution were rightly seen internationally as Australia’s responsibility.

The Australian Government’s plan to send 800 asylum seekers to Malaysia in return for the resettlement of 4000 refugees has been criticised because of the absence of basic legal protections for asylum seekers and refugees in Malaysia.

Currently in Malaysia, asylum seekers are subject to arbitrary detention in appalling conditions and to caning. Refugees are left without legal status and have little choice but to work illegally to support themselves. People who are living or have lived in Malaysia as refugees report that they struggle to protect themselves from harassment, physical abuse, sexual assault and extortion.

While Australian political leaders continue to ask “How do we stop the boats?”, the solutions put forward will almost inevitably result in highly vulnerable people being punished as an example to others. Each policy alternative will rightly be criticised for the devastating impacts on those being punished.

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Southeast Asian LGBT organise, come together, demand their rights

ASEAN flag image via Wikipedia  

Statement of the first ASEAN Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer (LGBTIQ) People’s Caucus

From May 2 to May 5, 2011 over forty lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgenders, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) activists representing 8 out of ten Southeast Asian countries came together in a historic assembly for the ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] People’s Forum to tell their governments that the status quo is not acceptable and that the recognition, promotion, and protection of LGBTIQ rights is long overdue.

ASEAN is the cradle of the Yogyakarta Principles, a landmark articulation of internationally recognized human rights instruments in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI), and yet LGBTIQs in ASEAN countries consistently face criminalization, persecution, discrimination and abuse because of who they are.

In Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, and Burma, authorities arrest, detain and persecute individuals because of colonial laws that criminalize their sexual orientation or gender identity. In other ASEAN countries, certain laws are abused with impunity to harass or persecute individuals whose sexuality or gender is deemed unacceptable, immoral, or unnatural: anti-prostitution, anti-trafficking, or anti-pornography laws in Indonesia and the Philippines are applied to conduct illegal raids in gay establishments or to nab transgenders, oftentimes subjecting them to humiliation and extortion. The anti-kidnapping law in the Philippines is likewise used to forcibly break apart lesbian couples living under consensual and legitimate relationships.

We are part of the people of ASEAN, and yet across the region we are treated as criminals and as second class citizens.

Instead of representing the interests of all citizens, many governments and state institutions become instruments of religious and sectarian prejudice. In Surabaya, Indonesia, the police was complicit in an attack by an intolerant religious group against the participants of an international LGBTIQ conference.

A climate of stigma and discrimination prevails in most, if not all, ASEAN countries. From Vietnam to Brunei Darussalam, social stigma persists. Sexual orientations and gender identities outside heterosexuality and patriarchal gender norms are considered as a sickness that can be corrected through rape, reparative camps like in Besut, Malaysia, only one of several camps in the country, and other damaging psycho-social measures.

Access to basic services, from health to education, is denied on the basis of one’s presumed or actual sexual orientation or gender identity. Stigma has contributed to the steep rise in HIV infection among at-risk populations like men who have sex with men and transgenders, making it difficult for preventive interventions to reach them.

But our movements are growing. In various parts of the region, pride is unraveling and we will not take exclusion sitting down. LGBTIQ activists and organizations continue to actively engage government institutions, mass media, and civil society for equal rights and basic fairness. It is in this spirit of pride and dignity that we are reclaiming our rightful space in our respective countries and demand our governments to:

• Immediately repeal laws that directly and indirectly criminalize SOGI, recognize LGBTIQ rights as human rights, and harmonize national laws, policies and practices with the Yogyakarta Principles.
• Establish national level mechanisms and review existing regional human rights instruments (e.g. AICHR, ACWC) to include the promotion and protection of the equal rights of all people regardless of SOGI with the active engagement of the LGBTIQ community.
• Depathologize SOGI and promote psychosocial well-being of people of diverse SOGI in accordance with the World Health Organization (WHO) standards, and ensure equal access to health and social services.

We will not be silenced by prejudice. For a people-centered ASEAN, LGBTIQ rights now!

The ASEAN LGBTIQ Caucus:

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In Southeast Asia, no longer silence on LGBT issues

Source: Aid Netherlands

Dalam Botol cast

By Dr. Jason Abbott

Last week 66 young boys in the conservative largely Muslim state of Terengganu, Malaysia, were sent to a special ‘re-education’ camp for displaying signs of effeminacy which if left ‘unchecked’, state official argued, could “reach the point of no return”. In other words they could ‘become’ gay or transsexual.

While the women’s minister, Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, criticized this move, neither the state government nor the Federal government has yet acted to do anything about this. But we should not be either shocked or surprised since gay rights in Malaysia are largely non-existent.

Only a month earlier for example, Malaysian radio stations chose to deliberately ‘garble’ the line, “No matter gay, straight or bi, lesbian or transgendered life, I’m on the right track, baby” in the Lady Gaga song “Born this Way” for fear of being fined by the government for breaking rules on ‘good taste… decency.. [or for being] “offensive to public feeling”.

Indeed as the current trial of the opposition leader, and former deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim visibly demonstrates, the country’s religious and political elite continue to regard homosexuality as a morally repugnant way of life. Thus in Anwar’s case putting him on trial for sodomy (which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison) has proven a ‘convenient’ and sadly rational tactic by the government to destroy his political career and tarnish his public image.

But Malaysia is by no-means on it’s own in the region in its staunchly conservative stance. When it comes to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender rights, Southeast Asia is found severely wanting.

While Thailand might be infamous for its transsexual ‘lady boys’, same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption remain illegal, and there are no anti-discrimination laws nor laws concerning gender and identity expression.

Arguably the most gay-friendly country in Southeast Asia (perhaps surprisingly given that it is overwhelmingly Catholic) is The Philippines, where same-sex adoption is permitted and since 2009 openly gay men and women have been allowed to serve in the military. However even here anti-discrimination law is largely absent nationally, while same-sex marriages or civil partnerships are not officially recognized.

And yet Thailand, Cambodia and The Philippines are in a veritable league of their own compared to the rest of the region.  In Burma, Brunei, and Malaysia homosexuality remains illegal with harsh prison sentences the normal punishment; none of the ten Southeast Asian countries recognize neither same-sex marriages or partnerships; only two allow same-sex adoption (Cambodia and The Philippines); three allow gay men or women to serve in the military (The Philippines, Thailand and Singapore) and none have passed anti-discrimination laws.

To defend this appalling track record, arguments have been made about ‘cultural and spiritual pollution’ from the decadent (sic) West, and about the incompatibility of homosexuality with the teachings of Islam and other religions. In most cases the opposition is pure bigotry and drawn from the view that regards LGBTs as nothing more than deviant ‘life-style’ choices.

The head of Malaysia’s controversial Islamic Affairs department in an interview with Time magazine in 2000 epitomized this view when he remarked that homosexuality “is a crime worse than murder”. When asked if it was wrong for two people of the same sex to love each other he rebuked the questioner replying, “Love? How can men have sex with men? God did not make them this way. This is all Western influence”.

In even starker terms former Prime Minister of Malaysia Dr. Mahathir Mohamad warned in a national day speech in 2003 that “if there are any homosexuals in Malaysia they had better mend their ways.” In the same speech he also criticized the West saying that, “they are very angry — especially their reporters, many of whom are homos — when we take legal action against these practices.”

But it is not simply Malaysia where such views remain widespread. For example, a crowd of extremists shut down the 4th International Lesbian and Gay Association Asia conference that was supposed to take place in Surabaya, Indonesia between 26th and 28th March 2010. In addition all 150 participants had to evacuate the conference hotel.

However perhaps there are the first signs of change. This year the first gay movie to be made and shown in Malaysia has proven to be a box-office success. Despite being required to make some 30 minutes of editing by the country’s film censorship board, the movie “Dalam Botol” (In a Bottle) tells the story of a young man who has a sex-change operation to please his male lover, although he later regrets the decision.

While there are no love scenes, nudity or kissing, the movie does open with a bare-chested male couple massaging each other on a beach at night.

Ironically perhaps the movie has been slammed not just by conservative Muslim groups but also by gay rights activists because the main character eventually regrets his decision. One activist remarked in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian that, “The ending is very negative. Having the main character regret being gay and falling in love with a woman is not going to help our image problem here.”Pang Khee Teik of Sexuality Independence echoes this view arguing that, “Many of us Malaysian gays, lesbians and transgenders have absolutely no regrets being who we are.”

While the plotline was clearly influenced by Malaysia’s film production code, which states that LGBT characters when depicted on screen must realize they are at fault for their sexuality, and reform themselves, the film’s producer Raja Azmi Raja Sulaiman defends the movie arguing that:

”If my film has a message, it’s please don’t change yourself for love. My friend [on whom the movie was based] has suffered so much, and I don’t want other people to suffer like him.” 

Nevertheless the fact that the movie was made, made it to the screen, and took over $350,000 in its first five days (recouping its cost), is quite remarkable. As the film’s producer remarked in an interview with Associated Press, “Even five years ago we wouldn’t have been able to make it”.

If from small acorns mighty oaks do indeed grow, then Dalam Botol may just represent the first few vulnerable shoots of attitudinal change on LGBT rights.

Related articles

• Malaysia's 1st gay film makes profit in five days (miamiherald.typepad.com)
• Action alert: In Malaysia, effeminate kids forced into 'sissy camp' (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Video: LGBT rights in Asia

Source: LGBTHumanRights

Courage Unfolds is a documentary film that forms a central part of the Courage Unfolds Campaign of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC).

The film, produced by IGLHRC's Asia program (partnered by Lesbian Advocates Philippines (LeAP)), is part of a call for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people to be protected by law, respected by society, and accepted by family. It is a call for the use of the Yogyakarta Principles as a tool to ensure the respect, protection and promotion by governments of the human rights of all people - including LGBT people. This set of international legal principles addresses the application of international law to human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

The film highlights the issues faced by LGBT people in Asia and how the Yogyakarta Principles are a relevant and effective tool that LGBT activists can use in their advocacy for human rights.



Film release date is 17 May 2011. It can be ordered by emailing courageunfolds@iglhrc.org.

Related articles

• Using the Yogyakarta Principles for LGBT Human Rights Activism (iglhrc.org)

Historic UN vote on 'gay killings' sparks international reaction

By Paul Canning

Updated, see end.

The reversal last month of a UN vote to exclude sexual orientation from a resolution against extrajudicial killings has sparked reaction around the world.

The vote followed a move by the United States to reverse action led by Islamic and some African countries to strip LGBT from a resolution urging States to protect the right to life of all people, including by calling on states to investigate killings based on discriminatory grounds. For the past ten years, the resolution has included sexual orientation in the list of discriminatory grounds on which killings are often based. These included persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, persons acting as human rights defenders (such as lawyers, journalists or demonstrators) as well as street children and members of indigenous communities.

It was the latest attempt by Islamic and some African countries to reverse gains made for LGBT at the United Nations.

Dan Littaeur, reporting for Gay Middle East, says these countries object to the idea of any legal definition to sexual orientation, call sexual orientation a “personal choice” and an “individual sexual interest” which has no legal foundations in International Human Rights Instruments. The no vote was lead by Tajikistan on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on behalf of the Arab Countries, and Benin on behalf of the African countries.

UAE and OIC signaled that member countries will now seek to fight the issue through the “defamation" of religious ideas resolution, also passed at the UN, as a human rights violation. OIC further cryptically added that adoption of sexual orientation will lead to less flexible voting on “other issues."

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For LGBT Asian-Americans, immigration is the most important issue

Source: International Examiner

By Kevin Minh Allen


With the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act of 1998, Washington state banned marriages between people of the same sex within its borders. The Act was upheld in 2006 by the Washington State Supreme Court after appeals were lodged and oral arguments were heard to overturn the law. But, the fight for equal marriage for same-sex couples is not only an issue for gay rights activists but also for Asian Pacific American activists because gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered persons, and anyone else who chooses to veer from the ‘straight’ and narrow path, are members of the Asian Pacific American community as well.

Helen Zia and George Takai are two prominent living icons in the Asian Pacific American community; both of them also identify as queer – Zia as a lesbian and Takai as gay. Ironically, if they chose to marry each other, every state in the union would wholeheartedly recognize their marriage as legal and confer upon them the rights and responsibilities of any other married couple. However, as it stands now, if they wished to marry someone of their own gender, they could only legally do so in either Massachusetts, Iowa or the District of Columbia.

So far, 44 states have instituted their own so-called “Defense of Marriage” acts in order to ban equal marriage for same-sex couples. One by one, these states have argued that marriage between opposite sexes is in a society’s best interest because of procreation and the raising of children. However, people like Crystal Jang, co-founder of Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women’s Transgender Community, would beg to differ with such a narrow interpretation of marriage. She has been married to her partner of 15 years in California and they are raising a teenage daughter together. Jang wants to impress upon the Asian Pacific American community that the struggle for equal marriage rights for queer couples is aligned with Asian American activism: “Unfortunately, many in the more conservative religious Asian communities view us as different, outsiders or not like them. Unless they have a personal connection with someone who is affected by Prop 8, I don’t think it’s important to them to really think about it. They don’t see the connection of discrimination to their own history…that inter-marriage was not possible in the not-too-distant past and that the challenges facing Asian LGBT people are not too different from what our ancestors faced before us.”

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In Asia and the Pacific Islands, LGBT suffer massive injustices

Image via Wikipedia

Source: IGLHRC

By Grace Poore

Lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender (LGBT) people in Asia and the Pacific Islands experience extra-judicial killings, torture, violence and rape, as well as discrimination in employment, education, housing and health services.

These are the preliminary findings of the Advisory Council of Jurists (ACJ) of the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions (APF) that met August 3-5, 2010 in Bali, Indonesia. This independent body of legal experts has found that at least 17 API governments1 have failed to provide protections for LGBT people because their national laws, policies and practices are inconsistent with international human rights law.

In response to these realities for LGBT people in the region, the APF has begun the process of addressing discrimination and violence on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity as a legitimate human rights issue requiring the attention of its member institutions that are National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs).

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UK: Malaysian transsexual woman married to Englishman wins asylum, couple can stay together

By Paul Canning

Fatine Young, a Malaysian transsexual in a civil partnership with an English man, Ian Young, has won her asylum claim. The couple had been told by the Home Office they had no right to live together in the UK and instead should live in Malaysia.

Fatine told us:

After nearly a year struggling I am so relieved that the Home Office has approved my asylum claim, knowing that I am safe from the prosecution back home - my plight, known through the media in the UK, has touched a nerve amongst the Muslim community in Malaysia.

Honestly I'm not angry at the UK government for keep on rejecting my application, I'm just confused and scared. I don't know what have I done wrong as I know I follow everything by the book. I called my family in Malaysia to tell them the news but received no reaction from them. Ian's family and friends are happy that I got to stay here in UK.

Fatine's forced asylum claim was based on the strongly negative media reaction in Malaysia, where she is referred to by her former, male name Mohammed Fazdil Min Bahari, and because she is in a 'same-sex marriage' and could face action under sharia law. She also received death threats in Malaysian on the Facebook page set up to support the couple. An article in the Malay Mail in December spoke of claims she had "shamed Malaysia".

They first met in 2006 and fell in love in Malaysia. Fatine Young told This Morning in December that when they first applied with a company used by the UK High Commission in Kuala Lumpur in 2008 for a visa for Fatine and officials saw her passport, where because she is a pre-op transsexual she is listed as a man, she received a "terrible reaction". Fatine told us:

I was treated badly and humilated by the staff at the Visa processing centre because I look like a women but my passport is a male.

She came to the UK on a tourist's visa in December 2008, Ian proposed and they were allowed to enter a civil partnership last June and, following that, Fatine tried to regularise her situation. Her first leave-to-remain-visa was refused last September, on the grounds of an incorrect passport photo. His second bid was rejected as it was received after the visitor's visa had expired as was another using the 'Right to Family Life' provision under the Human Rights Act. Fatine was then told to return to Malaysia but by this point she had become the focus of local media attention and had no option but the asylum claim.

Though the couple say they've been accepted by Ian's family and their neighbours in Derbyshire, Ian was forced to move from his job as a school caretaker earlier this year after parents' complaints supposedly because of the media coverage in Derbyshire.

Now that the couple know they can stay together in the UK Fatine says that she wants to "start a new chapter in my life":

As soon as I've got my paperwork from Home Office, I will look for work. I know it may be a bit difficult to gain employment but I will try my best, I want to contribute something back to the government.

No HIV care for 90% of gay men in Asia Pacific: UN

Image by United Nations Development Programme via Flickr

Source: AFP

More than 90 percent of gay men in the Asia Pacific region don't have access to HIV prevention and care services, as levels of the disease soar to "alarming levels", a UN report said Monday.

The study, conducted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said discriminatory laws in many countries are exacerbating the "critical situation" with abuse and human rights violations commonplace.

"If countries fail to address the legal context of the epidemic, this already critical situation is likely to become worse," said the report jointly produced with the Asia Pacific Coalition on Male Sexual Health.

Many national HIV policies now accord a priority to men who have sex with men, the report said, "even though the legal environment remains repressive."

"HIV prevalence has reached alarming levels among men who have sex with men and transgender populations in many countries of Asia and the Pacific," the report said.

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