"NewsWrap"
for the week ending April 14, 2007
(As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #994, distributed 4-16-07)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Graham Underhill, and Rex Wockner
with Bill Kelley]
Reported this week by Don Lupo and Charls Hall
There have been both ups and downs as European activists prepare for the
beginning of Pride season.
Latvia's queer community celebrated a court ruling this week that a ban on
last year’s Pride march in the nation’s capital of Riga was illegal. Kristine
Garina, who leads the lesbigay rights group Mozaika, told reporters that the
ruling by a regional appeals court "shows that freedom of speech and freedom of
assembly do exist in Latvia."
Homosexuality was only legalized in the former Soviet nation in 1992 after
the fall of the USSR. Lawmakers there have banned same-gender marriage and
refused to comply with European Union regulations that sexual orientation
discrimination be prohibited in the workplace.
The Riga City Council banned last year’s Pride march, claiming that it could
not ensure marchers' safety.
In 2005, about 50 activists tried to hold the country’s first-ever Pride
parade, but had to barricade themselves inside a church as over a hundred times
their number violently protested outside. The marchers eventually left under
police protection.
After last year's march was banned, Mozaika replaced it with a church
service, press conference and private party in a Riga hotel. People at all three
venues were attacked by protesters, who pelted suspected participants with eggs,
garbage, and excrement.
Municipal authorities in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, have banned a
Pride parade planned for April 27th. It was supposed to be part of the
country’s 6th LGBT Pride festival, according to a press release issued this week by
the European branch of ILGA, the International Lesbian and Gay Association.
This is the third time the city has banned the parade, despite a Moldovan Supreme
Court ruling last December that bans on LGBT Pride marches are illegal. "We
are gravely concerned with the situation in Moldova," Christine Loudes, Policy
Director of ILGA-Europe, said in a written statement. "Not only [do] the
Chisinau city authorities openly disregard the rights enshrined in the European
Convention on Human Rights, but they act illegally in breach of the decision of
the supreme judicial body of their own country."
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov's press secretary, Sergei Tsoi, is warning that
activists planning to hold a pride parade on May 27th, even though it’s been
banned, are "play[ing] with fire." Tsoi told a local newspaper that "they will
assume overall responsibility for all possible consequences -- and it is
dreadful to predict what they may be."
Participants at two small events planned as alternatives to the banned Pride
parade last year were violently attacked by neo-fascists, skinheads, Christian
fundamentalists, and riot police.
Meanwhile, Tsoi's wife, pop singer Anita Tsoi, told the same newspaper that
she loves to sing in gay clubs. "They have good jobs, they have normal
positions in different professional domains," she said. "And they don't look like
monsters."
Mrs. Tsoi also said she might attend the Pride parade. "If it takes place,
perhaps I will," she said. "But currently, as I see, it is not very likely
now."
In Britain, however, the rainbow flag will fly over the city of Brighton as
it observes the International Day Against Homophobia or IDAHO â– on May
17th. A variety of events in several countries are planned for the third annual
observance, intended to call attention to abuses against LGBT people around
the world. It’s held on May 17th to commemorate that date in 1990 when
homosexuality was removed from the World Health Organization's list of mental
illnesses.
According to Brighton & Hove City Council leader Simon Burgess, "It's
terrible in this day and age to know that 77 governments still persecute people
because of their sexuality or gender identity." The city plans several related
events to mark the day.
But three Jamaican gay men were attacked by a mob at Montego Bay's MoBay
Nite Out carnival on April 2nd, according to a report in the "Jamaica Observer."
The men provoked other attendees when they took to a stage and gyrated on
each other, the newspaper said. The crowd threw rocks and bottles at the men
and, when they returned fire while running from the stage, the three were chased
down and beaten. One required hospitalization.
The attack is only the latest in a seemingly continual pattern of violence
against gays and lesbians in the Caribbean nation. It follows a much-reported
February 14th incident in which a mob of more than 200 people surrounded a ph
armacy in Kingston and demanded that four gay men inside come out and face
punishment for being homosexuals. The crowd formed after another shopper took
exception to the men's presence and began screaming that "battymen," or faggots,
must be killed. Police response was slow, but the four were finally rescued.
However, officers disparaged the men en route to and at the police station,
according to the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays. One of the
rescued men, J-FLAG leader Gareth Williams, said officers hit him in the head
and struck him in the stomach with a rifle for complaining about the insults.
Honduran gay activist Donny Reyes was beaten by police and raped by fellow
detainees at a police station in mid-March, according to a statement issued
this week by Amnesty International. The global human rights organization said
Reyes, treasurer of the Central American country’s Rainbow Association, was
grabbed from a taxi stand by police in Tegucigalpa and kept for six hours in a
cell, where other detainees, egged on by a policeman, repeatedly sexually
assaulted him. "Look, I'm bringing you a little princess," Amnesty says the police
officer told the other prisoners, and "you know what to do." Another of the
six officers who took Reyes into custody reportedly told him, "We have to
disappear these queers from here."
"Attacks against LGBT people in Honduras are a scourge the police should
confront," said Ariel Herrera of Amnesty International USA's OUTfront Program,
"yet the police are part of the problem."
Two young lesbians who were held against their will for almost a month by
Maoist guerrillas in southern Nepal finally managed to escape last week,
according to the country’s LGBT rights group Blue Diamond Society. The "Times of
India" reported that the women were told during their initial six-hour
interrogation that they would have to "undergo a blood test to check if they were
lesbians," and were repeatedly beaten until they renounced their homosexuality.
16-year-old Dukhani Choudhary and 20-year-old Sarita Choudhury, each from
impoverished families and practically illiterate, told Blue Diamond that they were
on their way to work as custodians at a local HIV/AIDS prevention office when
they were abducted.
Nepal has come under increasing international condemnation for its treatment
of LGBT people. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour
criticized the new coalition government of Nepal earlier this year for not ending
discrimination against sexual minorities. LGBT people there are arbitrarily
arrested, held without hearings, and beaten and tortured by prison guards. Last
year police arrested 26 transsexuals in one raid. According to Blue Diamond,
they were taken to the central police station in Kathmandu and held for weeks
without being allowed to contact anyone. Blue Diamond also says that police
routinely harass HIV prevention workers in the capital city.
But lawmakers in the U.S. state of Washington have passed legislation to
create domestic partnerships for same-gender couples. Governor Chris Gregoire
is expected to sign it into law.
The bill, approved in the Senate last month, passed the House this week by a
wide margin. It creates a domestic partnership registry that would provide s
ome rights for the state’s lesbigay couples, including hospital visitation, the
ability to authorize autopsies and organ donations, and inheritance rights
when there is no will. Queer advocates called the measure a good first step on
the road to equality for same-gender couples and their families.
Registered partners would have to share a home, not be married or in another
domestic relationship, and be at least 18 years of age. Unmarried
heterosexual senior couples, who may risk losing pension rights and Social Security
benefits if they remarry, would also be eligible for domestic partnerships if one
partner is at least 62.
And finally, hundreds of families took part in the annual White House
Easter Egg Roll this week - among them, for the second consecutive year, several
dozen same-gender couples’ families.
The Easter Egg Roll has been a tradition at the executive mansion since it
was inaugurated by President Rutherford Hayes in 1878. Children compete in
gaily-colored egg roll races on the White House lawns using giant spoons.
Unusually cold weather didn't dampen the spirits of about 50 queer couples,
who lined up for tickets more than 48 hours before the event. With the help of
volunteers, another 50 tickets were secured for families who could not be in
the line. About 18,000 tickets were reportedly sold overall.
With her husband out of town, First Lady Laura Bush read to the children in a
covered area, but was gone by the time the first same-gender couples and
their kids got onto the lawns.
This year's participation by the rainbow lei-wearing families didn’t prompt
the same vocal outcry by social conservatives as last year, who at the time
were pushing for a constitutional amendment to ban same-gender marriage. They
called the lesbigay participation a publicity stunt and a protest. But Cathy
Renna, a spokeswoman for Family Pride, an organization which advocates for
lesbigay families and helped organize the queer contingent, said it’s never been
about protest at all, but to highlight LGBT inclusion at the event. First Lady
Laura Bush's office issued a statement to quell any conservative outrage this
year, saying that all families were welcome to attend.
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