The side event will explore grave and extreme human rights violations and discrimination occurring on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Such violations include attacks on the security of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the practice of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, and arbitrary arrest or detention.
Moderator:
Hans Ytterberg, Director-General, Swedish Ministry of Integration and Gender Equality
Panelists:
Vivek Divan, Consultant with the UN Development Program, formerly with the
Lawyer’s Collective in India, on the team that won the anti-sodomy law case in Delhi.
The Rev. Kapya Kaoma, Anglican priest from Zambia now leading churches in the
Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts and PRA Project Director.
Indyra Mendoza, Director of the Honduran lesbian and feminist organization Cattrachas.
Victor Mukasa, Program Associate, International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights
Commission, and co-founder of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG).
Sass Rogando Sasot, Activist, one of the founding members of the Society of Transsexual
Women of the Philippines.
In collaboration with a coalition of non-governmental organisations defending the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.
Today is the 21st annual World AIDS Day, held on December 1st each year to raise awareness of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic and to honor the memory of those who have died from HIV/AIDS and those who continue to live with the disease. This year’s World AIDS Day theme is Universal Access and Human Rights.
According to the World AIDS Campaign, the global incidence of HIV/AIDS is on the rise. There are over 33.4 million people living with HIV today and there were 2.7 million new cases in 2007. There were also a total of 2 million HIV-related deaths in 2007.
The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission is committed to combating stigma-based discrimination in HIV/AIDS healthcare for all people, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.
IGLHRC also continues to fight discriminatory laws that would accelerate the spread of HIV. Burundi is one of a few countries in Africa receiving funds from the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) to expand their HIV intervention to include MSM. After Burundi’s National Assembly passed a provision criminalizing same-sex activity, IGLHRC and the Association pour le Respect et les Droits des Homosexuels (ARDHO) issued an appeal, asking the entire membership of Burundi’s Senate to vote against the legislation, arguing that it would accelerate the spread of HIV, by preventing MSM and other sexual minorities from accessing HIV prevention, treatment and care. On February 17, 2009, 36 out of 43 Senators voted to strike down the provision.
Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill would effectively ban any kind of community or political organizing around non-heteronormative sexuality and would seriously compromise HIV prevention activities and treatment in Uganda, which rely on the ability to talk frankly about sexuality and provide condoms and other safer-sex materials.
Under international human rights law, everyone has the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, without discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Sexual and reproductive health is a fundamental aspect of this right and includes the right of full access to HIV/AIDS prevention, counselling, treatment and care. International organizations and national governments must take all necessary legislative, administrative and other measures to ensure that all sexual and reproductive health, education, prevention, care and treatment programmes and services respect the diversity of sexual orientations and gender identities, and are equally available to all without discrimination.
To ensure that LGBT people living with or at risk of HIV/AIDS have access to the resources they need, the international community must continue to pressure governments to uphold their national and international human rights obligations and to respect, protect, and promote the lives and dignity of HIV positive and LGBT people everywhere.
November 20th, 2009 marks the 10th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. On this day we remember those who have been killed by hatred and prejudice against transgender people and raise public awareness to combat violence against transgender people.
On this Transgender Day of Remembrance, we also celebrate the tremendous work of transgender activists and human rights defenders committed to promoting and protecting the human rights of transgender people. This is a powerful opportunity to insist that transgender rights are human rights, and that all members of the global community have an obligation to stop violence against transgender people.
Every year, transgender people face the omnipresent threats of murder, violence, imprisonment, and pervasive discrimination. The tragic deaths of over 200 trans people reported in the last two years alone-and the countless others that go unreported around the world–are sobering reminders of transgender people’s vulnerabilities to individual and state-sponsored violence and discrimination because of their gender identity and gender expression.
Between January 2008 and June 2009, according to the Trans Murder Monitoring Project, the highest rates of murder reports of transgender people came from the Americas: 82 murders were reported from Brazil, 20 from Venezuela, 16 from the US, 11 from Colombia, 10 from Guatemala, 10 from Mexico, 5 from Honduras, 4 from Venezuela, 3 from Argentina and 3 from the Dominican Republic. Murders of transgender people have also been reported in seven European countries in the same period (Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Serbia, Russia and Turkey), four Asian countries (Iraq, Malaysia, Singapore and India), and two Oceanic countries (Australia and New Zealand).
Governments must not only investigate these crimes fully and fairly, but also actively employ measures and programs that will prevent violence and discrimination against transgender people in the future, such as training police to protect and work respectfully with LGBTI communities.
In addition to the direct threat of violence, transgender people around the world face extensive discrimination in every sphere of life, including in access to basic human necessities such as education, housing, and health care. In 2008, for example, police in Bangalore, India sent a notice, accompanied by verbal threats, requiring 40 homeowners in Bangalore to evict 100 hijras who rented rooms or apartments from them and in October 2009, Jose Garcia, a 19-year-old student in Belmopan, Belize, was expelled from school because he dressed and acted in what was considered to be a feminine manner.
Transgender activist Nairobi Castillo, from the Dominican Republic, also emphasizes the significant difficulties of transgender people in accessing health care in the video to the left:
The health issue is one of the most serious we have in our country. We don’t have primary health service for trans women. When a trans woman goes to a hospital she is treated like an alien from space.
To ensure the human rights of transgender people, the international community must continue to pressure governments to uphold their national and international human rights obligations and to respect, protect, and promote the lives and dignity of transgender people everywhere.
The Current, a radio show in Canada hosted by Anna Maria Tremonti, did a piece on the current situation of LGBT people in Uganda in light of new proposed legislation that would further criminalize homosexuality and create penalties for people who support the rights of LGBT people.
The Current’s summary: Pt 3 – Gays in Uganda
A proposed new law would require Ugandans to report gays and lesbians to police. The proposed law has left the LGBT community outraged but also afraid.
Anna spoke to Julius Kagwa from SMUG, the blogger from GayUganda, Jeff Sharlet who wrote “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power” and Monica Mbaru, IGLHRC’s Africa Program Coordinator.
Caster Semenya has done the unthinkable in women’s sports: she runs “like a man.” Besting her sister runners by a longshot in the 800 meters in the World Championships in Berlin a few weeks ago, she drew the instant condemnation that girls across the decades have drawn whenever they are too smart in class, too forceful in the board room, too strong in the gym, or too accomplished in the workplace.
You don’t have to be a world class runner to recognize this moment – whether you came into womanhood at the height of the women’s movement or the hip-hop era, not much has changed. Women exceeding gendered expectations of achievement are often forced out of the game at the suggestion that their drive to accomplish exceeds the boundaries of genteel femininity. The only worse epithet than being called a “feminist” these days is to be called a man.
From Babe Zaharias to Hillary Clinton, women who refuse to be limited by what-has-been must endure a public that is deeply ambivalent about women trailblazers.
She also stands in a long line of gender variant people who threaten the very definitions of “man” and “woman” and call into question the ways that we organize our sports, our toy stores, and even the pink and blue cribs in our nurseries.
Over and over this week, I have read various commentary that distinguishes between “sex,” a supposed biological fact and “gender” which is socially constructed. The Olympic committee, according to this wisdom, must conduct a multi-layered examination – physical, psychological, and hormonal – to determine if Semenya is “objectively,” “biologically” female. For while the characteristics we arbitrarily assign to masculine and feminine genders obviously vary greatly across cultures, races, and centuries, the biology of sex is put forth as a fixed, unwavering truth.
All of which is non-sense. Social beings embedded in certain cultures, traditions, and scientific eras create the list of “qualifiers” for being biologically female or male. I find it interesting that I couldn’t find the all-important “list” in any of the dozens of articles I read this week on Semenya’s trial. A vagina apparently isn’t sufficient to qualify a person as biologically female. Testosterone figures into the calculus – how much is too much? There’s a mysterious, undefined psychological aspect to the testing. What characteristics trump others in the quest to qualify as biologically female?
Shortly after the medal ceremony, Semenya submitted herself to a public exam on her “sex,” dimming a moment that should have been a shining celebration of her stunning achievement. In response, the South African government, family and friends stood behind their gender non-conforming daughter, noting that a long history of racialized sexism in the Olympics includes a chapter in which efforts were made to separate all Black women athletes from competing against their white counterparts because Black women were regarded as not-quite-female due to their race.
While whispers of high levels of testosterone and ambiguous genitalia light up the blogosphere, we must ask ourselves – why isn’t anyone listening to Caster Semenya? She was raised a girl, has competed as a girl for years before this great victory on the international stage, and most importantly — Semenya identifies as a woman.
If there’s no other lesson that the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights movement has taught the larger culture over the past forty years, I hope it is this one: the right to self-determination is paramount. Gender variant people around the world are watching Semenya’s struggle with a mixture of pride, anxiety and hope. No authority – religious, parental or in this case Olympic – should trump one’s right to self-determination, identity and expression.
by Jamie Grant
Director of the Policy Institute at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
The night before Budapest’s LGBT Pride march, the tension was real. Annual LGBT Pride festivals have been held no fewer than 14 times in this Eastern European city, but in 2007 and 2008, marchers were verbally and physically attacked by counter-demonstrators—skinheads and far-right extremists—and assaulted with eggs, firecrackers and petrol bombs. Riot police used water cannons and tear gas to separate rioters from marchers and detained 45 people. At least eight people were wounded in the clashes, including two policemen. Demonstrators charged that police were not adequately prepared and had not provided enough protection.
This year, march organizers were buoyed by an amazing video message from U.S. celebrity Whoopi Goldberg and a statement of support signed by 13 foreign embassies, including South Africa and the United States—two countries often conspicuously silent on international LGBT issues. A representative of the Dutch Gay and Lesbian Police Officers’ Association, who was coincidentally staying at the same guesthouse as me, had come a few days earlier to train Hungarian LGBT leadership on responding to hate crimes during a Pride march.
I woke up early on the morning of the march, wanting to be alert and prepared for whatever the day might hold. I walked the length of the march corridor, watching workers set up two-meter tall fencing along the whole route. Hundreds of policemen, in full Kevlar riot gear and gas masks, were deploying along the main maarch route and the side streets feeding onto Andrassy Street, one of Budapest’s main boulevards.
The march was scheduled to start at 1 pm. The organizers—Rainbow Pride Hungary—recommended that children, people with disabilities and the elderly not attend the march for their own safety. The crowd seemed small at the starting site. Fewer than 200 of us milled about in a small space between the fences that had been set up in the impressive Hösök Ter (Heroes Square). Hungarian activists had chosen the starting site and the march route to forge a historical connection to the heroes of the Hungarian Revolution against Soviet domination. The nervousness in the small crowd was palpable—a balloon popped and everyone jumped. But the crowd was nothing if not committed and there was a sense of determination and maybe just a bit of the stoic realism for which Eastern Europe is famous.
The march stepped off fashionably late. But by 1:30 the ubiquitously unflappable club anthems were booming from huge speakers on the lead truck and we were marching. The crowd had swelled to 2,000 by the time we were a third of the way down the march corridor. I was proud (and relieved) to be marching side-by-side with Juris Lavrikovs of Latvia, and Paata Sabelashvili, of Georgia, two gay men who are on the staff and board (respectively) of ILGA-Europe. In addition to being lovely, committed, sophisticated activists, these guys were also a lot of fun to spend the day with. ILGA-Europe is a tremendously important organization, based in Brussels and providing support to the LGBT movement in Europe.
As the march moved through the streets of Budapest, I learned the importance of the term “throwing distance.” The police had established the march corridor so that anti-gay demonstrators were corralled on the side streets, at all times at least a city block from the marchers. I had to strain to hear their taunts. Some gay men I met later at the guest house told me that the demonstrators numbered no more than 200, seemed disorganized and aimless, and that their taunts seemed less directed at the LGBT community than at some nameless, faceless threat to Hungarian nationalism. The media reported that anti-gay demonstrators burned a rainbow flag, and several dozen were arrested for disorderly conduct during the course of the day. One British national was reported to have been attacked by skinheads.
The police seemed committed to ensuring that the violence of previous years would not be repeated. But for most of the activists that I met, there was a sense that while the security was appreciated, we had been cut off from the rest of the city. We may have been out of the closet, but we weren’t necessarily in the streets. One of the goals of LGBT Pride should be increased visibility—that’s the difference between a Gay Pride march, which invites, cajoles and demands a political interaction from spectators, and a Gay Pride parade, which is mainly a celebration of pride and done for our own self-actualization and enjoyment.
But still the march was great. At 49, I thought I’d lost my gusto for the very special ping that comes from marching down the middle of a street and claiming my queerness in the company of my fellows. There’s still something wildly empowering about it. Special recognition must go to some of our steadfast allies. Amnesty International’s delegation was strong and visible, as was the Hungarian Humanist Movement. For the most part, these two groups are key allies of the LGBT movement worldwide.
The march ended in a small park called Diak Ter, and again the organizers wisely decided to not hold a big rally or party that could have ultimately become a target for skinheads intent on finding an outlet for misdirected anger. Instead, dozens of well-trained volunteers carefully dispersed the crowd toward public transportation hubs. Katherine Fobear, a very cool young American from Detroit, who is studying lesbian social anthropology in Amsterdam and had come to Hungary for Pride, informed me that a lesbian volunteer had been one of the few casualties of the day. Three skinheads caught this woman, still wearing her Pride T-shirt, on her way to the train and assaulted her. We’re trying to get in touch with Labrisz, the Hungarian lesbian group (www.labrisz.hu) to get more information on her well-being.
My friend from the Dutch LGBT police officer’s association suggested that while the Hungarian police had done a good job, more effective crowd control techniques would have enabled them to contain the protesters rather than the marchers, while still maintaining order and security. Perhaps the relative success of this year’s march will allow both the organizers and the police to feel more secure about their ability to protect the marchers when they are in closer proximity to their opponents. Maybe next year the march can be a more interactive dialog between LGBT people, our supporters, and the small minority still obsessed with shouting down freedom.
IGLHRC’s Executive Director, Cary Alan Johnson, will march in Budapest’s 2009 Gay Pride parade, which will be held on September 5th in the Hungarian capital. Cary’s report, along with multimedia files from the event, will be posted on IGLHRC’s blog next week.
Last year’s pride parade in Budapest turned violent when right-wing extremists attacked marchers with stones and Molotov cocktails, and clashed with security forces. During those riots, eight people were injured; police took forty-five people into custody and used water cannons and tear gas to break up the neo-Nazi assailants.
Watch images from last year’s gay pride in Budapest, including scenes of violence, on Youtube:
In the days prior to this year’s pride parade, tensions have been growing between both sides of the debate. On August 28th, thirteen embassies in Hungary issued a joint press release to express their “support for and solidarity with” the event. The countries whose missions supported the march are Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The statement of thirteen embassies came on the same day as Ilona Ekes, a member of the Hungarian parliament’s Human Rights, Minorities and Religious Affairs Committee, called on police to ban the gay parade, and instead organize a social and professional dialogue on homosexuality, which she referred to as a “mental injury.”
Earlier last month, renowned American comedian Whoopi Goldberg posted a Youtube message in support of the gay pride parade in Budapest. Whoopi’s message, addressed to the Hungarian people, can be viewed below:
Yesterday I had a very interesting conversation with a police officer who works with refugees in Kayseri. I asked her about the relationship between the local police and members of the LGBT refugee community. She said that the police have only one problem with the refugees: “Some of them dress very provocatively. Their hairstyles, their heavy make-up and their revealing clothes make the locals uncomfortable.” Then she paused for a few seconds and said, “Even I, as a female police officer, will be harassed if I wear flashy lipstick. People around here are very hospitable, but traditional.”
I shared the police officer’s concerns with a group of Iranian refugees that I met last night. They disagreed: “I can’t even wear sunglasses. They think sunglasses are too erotic,” one gay man commented. Another said: “I tried. I swear I tried to look like the locals. But they can spot us a mile away. As soon as they notice we don’t walk like macho straight men, they start chasing us and laughing at us.”
A transgender woman told me that:
Every time I walk down the street, schoolboys throw trash at me. And once, when I was walking downtown, the police wanted to arrest me because they said I looked like a Russian prostitute. Police officers made fun of me and called me names. As they were forcing me into their car, I screamed and hit them with my handbag. I said: “You have no right to treat me like dirt because I am trans.” Finally, other officers intervened. They said it was a case of mistaken identity and I could go. I complained about how I was treated by their colleagues. They told me: “Quit making a big deal out of it. Nothing happened. They didn’t rape you, did they? Now go home!”
A social worker from a local NGO that supports refugees tells me how difficult it is to get assistance for LGBT Iranians:
We have a couple of well-organized faith-based Islamic charities. They mainly support the local needy population but occasionally also reach out to refugees…. The party line is that they don’t discriminate but when I send gay people their way, they say: “We will review you case and call you back.” Then after giving them a good run around, they say: “Sorry, we have no resources”…. I had one case of an Iranian gay man who really needed help. I told him go to those charities, but act straight so they might feel sorry for him and give him some help. It worked.
The local NGO does what it can to coordinate the minimal local support that is available and distribute it among the refugees. But with only one full-time staff member, the organization is ill-equipped to deal with the needs of close to 1,000 refugees in Kayseri.
As I get ready to leave this beautiful city and its forgotten refugee population, I can’t help wonder who, in Turkey, will look out for my fellow LGBT Iranians. To many locals, they are a bunch of moral degenerates en route to the sinful West. To many Turkish officials, they are a financial burden only adding to the problems of this country’s fragile economy. To many local and international relief and refugee agencies, they are yet another part of the endless flow of migrating people needing assistance. But to me, they are decent, inspired, and extremely courageous human beings. Despite on-going challenges, they have consistently fought for dignity and human rights. And they are willing to keep fighting as long as needed. I should know; I am a gay Iranian refugee myself.
Imagine you are taking a leisurely stroll through a farmer’s market, examining the produce at different fruit stands. Suddenly you hear a stranger behind you screaming. You look back and see that a middle-aged man is pointing his finger at you and shouting to the crowd: “This whore is a lesbian. You can screw her for 2 dollars.”
This is what happened a few days ago to Leila (not her real name), a very attractive lesbian refugee from Iran who has been in Kayseri for the last year. Leila used to be a nurse at a hospital in Iran. Then her male colleagues found out about her sexual orientation. Sexual harassment and blackmail followed: men asked her to have sex with them and threatened to report her “sexual perversion” to government or hospital officials if she refused. Life became unbearable. Leila, who also faced harassment from her neighbors, decided that she could no longer live in Iran.
Now Leila lives a modest life in Turkey. She spends 12 hours a day, 6 days a week washing dishes at a wedding reception hall. She told me that after 16 months of living in exile in this conservative community, she has lost her morale: “There are days I don’t want to get out of bed. I just want to die…What kind of life is this? I have a university degree, but now I’m working illegally for hours on end, minding my business and people still stop me on the street and harass me. What have I done to deserve this cruel punishment?”
Leila is so depressed that she often cries at work. Her Turkish colleagues try to comfort her. But Leila can’t tell them about her problems. She knows that as soon as she tells them about her sexual orientation, her co-workers will stop caring about her and her boss will likely ask her to leave. So instead she responds to their inquiries by describing a paralyzed husband who is dying at home. Lying flat-out about the most important part of her identity bothers Leila to no end: “I fled Iran because people there were judgmental and I had to constantly lie about who I am. Now here I am: a refugee in another prejudiced community, working like crazy to make minimum wage, and telling lies again to protect myself… Is this life worth living?”
Leila left Iran with Sima (not her real name), another lesbian friend. Both women are in their early 30’s. Sima’s own story is harrowing. Her father caught her with a girlfriend when she was in high school, and in punishment forbade her to go to school. Instead, since her teenage years, Sima has supported herself by working. Her family forced her into a heterosexual marriage, which ended in divorce. On the verge of being forced into a second marriage, Sima couldn’t take it any more. She fled to Turkey. Now in Kayseri, she works 10 hours days as a day laborer for the meager sum of 10 dollars a day. “I can’t even get sick,” she says. “One doctor’s visit will cost me a full month’s worth of my salary. Who will pay the rent then?”
Sima considers herself lucky to have escaped Iran: “I know lesbians who have no financial means to get out of that hell hole. Their families beat them up, their husbands abuse them, and their neighbors joke about their appearance…. At least I managed to get my life and run.”
Sima lives with two other Iranian lesbian refugees. When I arrived at their house, they had just returned from work. The water supply had been temporarily cut off and they kept apologizing for not having water to make tea for me.
Sima and Leila’s stories touched me. I told them I wanted to write about them. Leila thought for a few seconds and said: “I hope people who read your story don’t feel sorry for us. We don’t want anybody’s pity. I have worked all my life to make it on my own…. We are capable people…. All I am asking is to be treated fairly. Is there anywhere on the planet where people would respect me as a human being, and not judge me on my sexuality?”
Hossein Alizadeh
Click here to follow this story and read Hossein’s next blog from Kayseri.
Last night was a sleepless one: I spent the night in a small, rather uncomfortable hotel room filled with the lingering aroma of cigarette smoke. But as I tossed and turned, I remembered that many LGBT refugees would find my room in this rather run-down hotel to be a luxury. Most of them share a humble place with several people, and consider themselves lucky if they can go to bed with food in their stomachs.
Yesterday, one of the refugees told me how he ended up living for a whole month on bread and tea, which he could afford to buy only once a day. Another person was thrilled that the UNHCR gives him and his partner 81 Turkish Lira (about $55 US a month) to live on. In a country where the official poverty line is $450 US, this is peanuts. But most refugees are not even able to get this much cash to survive on. This refugee told me that he went through so much hardship and humiliation both in Iran and Turkey, that when the UNHCR interviewed him about his case, his story brought the UN officer to tears.
Yet another refugee told me how degrading it was to report his status as an asylum seeker to the local Turkish police station in a small conservative town. As soon the translator found out he was gay, he summoned other police officers to the interview room to laugh at the “freak case.” The translator asked him intimate questions about his sex life, and then laughed out loud as he told the other officers that, “the fags take it up their ass.” The police recorded the “hilarious asylum interview” on their mobile phones and sent the audio files around for the entertainment of other police officers. Soon the gay refugee discovered that, thanks to the authorities, everyone in the small town knew about his sexual orientation and his asylum case.
I asked the refugees to join me for a meal in a buffet-style restaurant filled with middle-class Turks. There was nothing fancy about the restaurant and the food was simple and delicious. As I invited my guests to help themselves to whatever they liked, I saw them hesitate. After a few seconds, one turned to me and said: “Thanks for the offer, but we really don’t know what these dishes are.” I reminded myself that those who can’t afford to buy even a loaf of bread a day are hardly capable of treating themselves to what is considered “everyday Turkish cuisine.”
Over the meal, I learn how difficult it is to find—and keep—a job in Turkey. One gender conforming gay man was fired from his job because he didn’t look like a Muslim (even though he is). Another worked for a week, was fired, and was paid only two days wages. A third had to work for 8 hours a day but could only make 200 Turkish Lira ($120) a month washing dishes. When you are a gay refugee, people exploit you, call you names, even physically assault you, and then ask you to leave the job, refusing to pay you what you earned.
After the meal I got a chance to take a walk in downtown Kayseri. It is a beautiful city, bounded by snow-covered mountains. To me, the people are warm and friendly. But I know this is not how many gay refugees experience this city. To them, society is often hostile and inhospitable. I wonder how my life would have been if I was in their place—without money in my pocket or travel documents to give me freedom of movement. It is a chilling thought.
Hossein Alizadeh
Click here to follow this story and read Hossein’s next blog from Kayseri.
