The women, who are 32 and 22, pleaded guilty after sharia enforcement officials in the northeastern state of Terengganu found them having sex in a car with a dildo, according to local news outlet Sinar Harian.
They are set to be caned on August 28.
Judge Kamalruazmi Ismail told the women that “adequate punishment must be meted out so that this becomes a lesson and reminder to not just the two of you, but to members of society.”
Justice For Sisters (JFS), a Malaysian LGBT+ rights group, called the punishment “a gross violation” of the women’s “dignity and human rights.”
In a statement on the grassroots organisation’s blog, it added that “the erroneous and prejudicial sentence… amounts to torture.”
Justice For Sisters said that the ruling was “a gross violation” of the women’s “dignity and human rights” (CHAIDEER MAHYUDDIN/AFP/Getty)
It was against Malaysian and international law to impose such a sentence, the group argued.
“The role of the court is to ensure justice is served and upheld, not to increase victimisation of persons based on personal prejudice,” the statement said.
“Punishment cannot be used as lessons for society. Punishment as a means to serve as lessons for others unfairly exploits and burdens the individuals with severe punishments as stand-ins for others.
“Such prejudicial thinking can dangerously allow for the abuse of power and exploitation of innocent people, perpetuating injustices.”
JFS continued: “Criminalisation of consensual sex between adults is a gross violation of human rights, and Malaysia has been called to review and repeal laws that criminalise LGBTQ persons based on consensual sexual acts in many international human rights forums.
“Consensual sex acts between adults is not a crime.”
The Universiti Sains Malaysia, based on the island of Penang, advertised the competition as “a campaign to invite friends who have [a] disorder in [their] sexual orientation to return to their natural nature in a worthwhile way.”
A gay man was left in need of stitches when he and his friend were beaten up by a group in Kiev last weekend in a homophobic attack.
The harrowing incident happened after a group of men took issue with Nikita Ponarin’s choice of jeans and his septum piercing, he said in a post on Facebook.
Nikita Ponarin (Facebook)
Nikita had to get stitches on his head after the event and was left with a few bruises and scratches, but insists that the injuries are not serious.
He said that the incident has been reported to the police, and he is hopeful that it might have been caught on CCTV so that those responsible might be caught.
Despite the harrowing attack, Nikita told PinkNews that he plans to stay in Kiev, and said in his Facebook post that the city is “still beautiful.”
He is determined to remain positive, saying: “we are alive and almost healthy.”
He wanted to share his experience “not for empathy or pity,” but to show that hate crimes are still a reality for many LGBT+ people in 2018.
Recent research from UK charity Stonewall found that one in five LGBT+ people had experienced a hate crime because of their sexuality or gender identity in the preceding 12 months.
The same report revealed that 80% of these incidents go unreported, with younger LGBT+ people less likely than any others to go to the police.
Nikita Ponarin (Facebook)
There have been a number of high-profile hate crimes recently. Last week, gay porn star Wesley Woods opened up in a Twitter video about how he and a friend were beaten up for being gay in West Hollywood while out walking.
In the video, he said: “You’re not always safe in the places you think you are.”
Despite this, attitudes in Ukraine to LGBT+ people are thought to have shifted in recent years, with a 2017 poll showing that 56% of Ukrainian people believing that gay and bisexual people should enjoy equal rights.
The Russian LGBT Network claimed the teen was not allowed to consult his lawyer when the officer was filing the report.
The group also suggested that Neverov could have been targeted because he took part in a highly public protest called “Gays or Putin,” in May.
The performance was discussed in the Russian federal legislative assembly, known as the Duma.
Neverov had previously submitted 12 applications for permission for the performance, and he was refused a permit. The teen also attempted to organise a local pride parade.
According to the network, in the teenagers case materials there was a document which reported that there was a public outcry over the pride parade.
The LGBT Network’s lawyer, Artem Lapov, has appealed the outcome and said the decision violated the right to freedom of expression.
In addition Lapov said the commission did not prove the fact that the discussed posts in the social networks were posted by Neverov, and he himself refused to testify.
The group is awaiting a decision to be made on the appeal.
Russia’s anti-gay propaganda law was passed in 2013 banning “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relationships.”
The country began to crackdown on LGBT+ activism across the country.
In Chechnya, Russia, Amnesty International has called on the Russian authorities to promptly and effectively investigate the reports of abduction, secret detention, torture and killing of men believed to be gay in the Chechen Republic.
Arsonists attacked the Lithuanian Gay League’s office in capital Vilnius. (lgl.lt/Instagram)
The office of the Lithuanian Gay League (LGL) – the country’s only non-governmental organization representing LGBT+ people – has reportedly been targeted in an arson attack.
The front door and door blinds of the organization’s office were set on fire, according to LGL.LGL said that a passing taxi driver stopped to put the fire out.
The group described the incident as a “vicious homophobic attack,” adding: “LGL believe that the incident was motivated by hate towards the local LGBT community and organization which represents their interests.”
“This incident clearly indicates that hate crimes on the ground of sexual orientation and gender identity remain an important issue in Lithuania,” said LGL’s executive director Vladimir Simonko in a statement released to PinkNews.
“It is dissapointing [sic] to see that such horrific crimes still take place in 2018 in the heart of our beautiful capital Vilnius.
“We would like to kindly thank the taxi driver who took the initiative to extinguish the fire and saved our offices from more major damages. We hope that the true motives of the incident will be duly clarified.”
PinkNews has contacted Vilnius’ police department for comment.
Founded in 1993, the LGL works for the progression of LGBT+ rights for people in the country.
Lithuania has a generally poor record on LGBT+ rights.
Although homosexuality was decriminalized in 1993, civil partnerships and equal marriage remain illegal in the country, and there are widespread socially negative attitudes towards sexuality and gender.
Lithuanian Gay League released photos of the damage on social media. (LGL/Facebook)
Same-sex adoption is also effectively illegal in the couple as, generally, parents must be married in order to adopt a child.
Discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation was made illegal in 2005.
It is also difficult to legally change gender in Lithuania, which is normally only permitted following a court ruling and after surgery.
However, a European Court of Human Rights decision in April 2017 has meant that two trans men in Lithuania were allowed by the country’s courts to legally change their gender prior to having surgery.
The country’s LGBT+ groups are calling on the government to scrap the requirement for trans people to have gender reassignment surgery before they can change their gender on official documents.
Lithuania’s government has also taken some steps to show support for LGBT+ people in the country.
In May 2017, the country’s parliament marked International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia by lighting up Vilnius’City Hall in rainbow colors and hosting an exhbition with LGBT+ artists.
The first gay pride parade in the country took place in Vilnius in 2010.
A new report indicates governments around the world are using registration laws to target LGBTI advocacy groups.The report, which OutRight Action International released on Tuesday, indicates 28 percent of the 194 countries surveyed have LGBTI groups that “cannot legally register as LGBTIQ organizations.”
“In these countries disclosing an intention to serve LGBTIQ people sets up a barrier to legal registration,” reads the report’s introduction. “Thus, many organizations pursue registration using more neutral language about their aims and objectives that do not identify that they work with LGBTIQ people.”
The report notes 56 percent of the 194 countries surveyed allow groups to legally register as LGBTI organizations. The report also notes OutRight Action International could not identify LGBTI-specific organizations in 15 percent of the countries it surveyed.
“There’s been talk for a number of years around shrinking civil society space,” OutRight Action International Deputy Executive Director Maria Sjödin told the Washington Blade on Tuesday during a telephone from the Canadian city of Vancouver where she was attending a global LGBTI rights conference. “We wanted to look at this through the specific LGBTIQ lens.”
Sjödin said LGBTI organizations that are allowed to legally register and “become officially recognized” are able to open bank accounts and receive final support, among other things. Sjödin added restricting LGBTI organizations’ ability to register is part of the “tool box” that governments can use to target them.
Singapore sodomy law ‘influences all kinds of policy making’
The report highlights Russia, Nigeria and Singapore as three of the countries in which LGBTI advocacy groups seeking legal recognition face barriers.
A Russian law requires any non-governmental organization that receive funding from outside the country to register as a “foreign agent.” The report also notes Russian authorities under a 2015 law can “ban the operation of foreign organizations deemed to be a risk to national security, public order or national health.”
A law that then-Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan signed in 2014 prohibits, among other things, membership in an LGBTI advocacy group.
Jean Chong, co-founder of Savoni, an organization for queer women in Singapore, told the Blade on Wednesday during a Skype interview the country’s government prevents LGBTI advocacy groups from registering because they are “against national interest.” Chong, who also works for OutRight Action International, also noted consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized in Singapore.
“It influences all kinds of policy making,” she said.
The report notes Morocco, Malaysia and other countries with anti-sodomy laws also prohibit LGBTI advocacy groups from registering. It also notes LGBTI organizations in other countries with homophobic and/or transphobic statutes have been able to legally register.
The report notes a transgender group in Kenya in 2014 was able to register with the country’s NGO Coordination Board. Botswana’s highest court in 2016 ruled Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana, an LGBTI advocacy group, should be allowed to register with the country’s government.
The governments of St. Lucia and other English-speaking Caribbean countries have allowed LGBTI organizations to legally register, even though consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized.
“LGBTIQ communities and LGBTIQ civil society leaders are strong and resilient,” reads the report. “Yet, this data represents entrenched restrictions on LGBTIQ civil society’s rights.”
“While legal registration is not right for every community-based organization, when it is desired, it should be available without discrimination on the basis of the sexual orientation, gender identity or expression and sex characteristics of the populations that the organization serves,” it adds. “Any restrictions based on these factors amounts to discrimination in the fundamental human rights to expression, association and assembly.”
Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan on Monday participated in a global LGBTI rights conference that took place in the Canadian city of Vancouver.Sullivan in video remarks at the 2018 Equal Rights Coalition Global Conference on LGBTI Human Rights and Inclusive Development said the U.S. “looks forward to exploring in concrete terms what we can do together to address criminalization of LGBTI status or conduct and the serious levels of violence and discrimination targeting LGBTI persons.”
“We are eager to discuss ways that the coalition can support and recognize governments and civil society activists who are pressing for positive reforms,” he said. “We encourage discussion on how the coalition can work collectively in global and regional fora and how we can better coordinate donor assistance.”
The Equal Rights Coalition, which officially launched in 2016, seeks to advance LGBTI rights around the world.
Canada and Chile currently co-chair the coalition that includes the U.S. and 38 other countries.
“This coalition, like our societies, is strengthened by our diversity,” said Sullivan in his remarks. “As deputy secretary of state, I have sought to strengthen and advance this issue not only overseas but also within the United States government. I’ve learned that accounting for diversity strengthens our own resolve and enables us to learn about innovative approaches that benefit all. Respectful dialogue yields positive outcomes. We value your active engagement, unique perspectives, and diverse views. Our collective success depends on it.”
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Scott Busby; Deputy Assistant Attorney General Robert Moossy; Anthony Cotton of the U.S. Agency for International Development and three other State Department officials attended the conference. Hundreds of LGBTI rights advocates from the U.S. and around the world were also in Vancouver.
“I’m proud that our delegation from the United States includes senior representatives from the Department of State, Department of Justice and USAID,” said Sullivan. “We are striving to do better by sharing our own challenges, particularly in addressing bias-motivated violence targeting the LGBTI community and ensuring development assistance is truly inclusive.”
“Addressing the threats and unique human rights challenges of LGBTI persons will require our unflagging vigilance,” he added. “As our coalition works to uphold human rights and fundamental freedoms, the United States will remain a steadfast partner. We encourage a frank and honest exchange of views in the coming days and continued collaboration with our coalition partners to ensure that no one is left behind.”
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland also spoke at the two-day conference that began on Monday.
“We are proud to advocate for rights around the world,” she said at the conference’s opening. “But we do that from an understanding that we are far from perfect here, that we have a great deal of work still to do in Canada.”
The conference began a day after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau marched in Vancouver’s annual Pride parade.
Trudeau last November formally apologized to those who suffered persecution and discrimination under Canada’s anti-LGBTI laws and policies. LGBTI activists and members of Canada’s indigenous community are urging the Canadian government to do more to further address abuses committed against them.
Canadian MP Randy Boissonnault, who advises Trudeau on LGBTI issues, on Tuesday announced his government will earmark 1 million Canadian dollars ($765,828.70) for advocacy groups around the world.
The Canadian government late last week urged Saudi Arabia to release women’s rights activists who were arrested. The Saudi government on Monday announced the expulsion of Canada’s ambassador to the country and suspended new trade agreements with Ottawa.
The Trump administration continues to face criticism over a host of issues that include its anti-LGBTI policies in the U.S., its policy that effectively bans the citizens of five Muslim-majority nations from entering the U.S. and the continued separation of migrant children from their parents. The State Department nevertheless continues to publicly support LGBTI rights abroad.
Activists in Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados this month held their countries’ first-ever Pride parades.Hundreds of people took part in a Pride parade in the Trinidadian capital of Port of Spain on Saturday.
Many of the participants were holding Pride flags as they participated in the event. Newsday, a Trinidadian newspaper, reported a health fair took place in a local park named after former South African President Nelson Mandela before the parade.
“The visibility we share here, today, is going to shine a light on the issues that LGBTI people face, that so many people want to stifle and keep us in the closet and don’t want to deal with to find the kind of solutions we are looking for,” Kennedy Maharaj, chief administrative officer of the Silver Lining Foundation, a Trinidadian advocacy group, told Newsday.
More than 100 people took part in Barbados’ first Pride parade that took place Bridgetown, the island’s capital, on July 22.
Donnya Piggott, executive director of Barbados-Gays, Lesbians and All-Sexuals Against Discrimination (B-GLAD), a Barbadian LGBTI advocacy group, told the Washington Blade in an email the Royal Barbados Police Force provided “excellent security.” Piggott also described the parade as “an incident free event full of allies, LGBTQ community and a diverse group of Barbadians from all backgrounds.”
Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago are among the countries in the English-speaking Caribbean in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized.
A judge on Trinidad and Tobago’s High Court in April struck down the country’s sodomy law. Three LGBTI rights advocates in Barbados in June filed a lawsuit with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights against the island’s colonial-era statute that criminalizes consensual same-sex sexual relations.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights in January issued a landmark ruling that recognizes same-sex marriage and transgender rights.
The Organization of American States in 1979 created the Costa Rica-based court in order to enforce provisions of the American Convention on Human Rights. January’s ruling is legally binding in Barbados and the 19 other countries in the Western Hemisphere that recognize the convention.
“We have finally reached a point in our country where we can have an open LGBT pride event that speaks to how far we have come as a country, as a society and more so, as a people,” Maharaj told Newsday after the Port of Spain Pride march. “That is what we value as success here, the fact that we can be out an open and have this kind of event, that is what we are banking on.”
Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination Guyana, an LGBTI advocacy group in Guyana, organized the South American country’s first-ever Pride parade that took place on June 2. J-FLAG, a Jamaican LGBTI advocacy group, is organizing a series of Pride events in the country’s capital of Kingston that are scheduled to begin on Tuesday.
Consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized in both countries.
The Portland Mercury reported that after being threatened by police in the Russian North Caucasus region, near the border of the notoriously anti-gay Chechnya, Dmitri (a pseudonym to protect his identity) decided to flee to the US in spite of knowing neither English nor any people in the states.
“Most asylum seekers fly to the United States on a tourist visa and then, once they arrive, request asylum,” reporter Katie Herzog wrote. “But Dmitri had applied for a tourist visa four times before, and each time his application was rejected.”
Instead, Dmitri “took the long way,” flying from Moscow to France, Cuba and finally Tijuana, Mexico, where he surrendered himself to authorities who detained him. In the past, most asylum-seekers were granted a bond hearing every six months, but in February, Herzog noted, the Supreme Court reversed the decision that gave that entitlement. Asylum-seekers can now be held indefinitely while awaiting hearings, “even if they haven’t committed a crime.”
“The implications of this policy are playing out most visibly on the southern border” with Donald Trump’s family separation policy. In Dmitri’s case, however, it led to him being sent to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington — a place he’d never heard of prior to surrendering to agents at Tijuana.
Herzog noted that although only 37 percent of immigrants nationwide have attorneys due to their cases taking place in civil (rather than criminal) court, Dmitri got lucky and found a lawyer “through fellow detainees at the prison.” He spent five months at the Northwest Detention Center before his hearing, where Portland-based Judge Richard Zanfardino teleconferenced in to preside over his case.
In most cases, the report noted, queer and transgender Russians are able to get asylum in the US because judges “understand that being LGBTQ could get you murdered in Russia.” Zanfardino, however, did not agree with that general consensus and argued that it’s not illegal to engage in homosexual activity in Russia.
Russian law, the judge wrote in his decision, “does not criminalize an individual for being homosexual but instead criminalizes speech considered pro-LGBTI” — leaving out that it is illegal to be out of the closet in the country. Herzog wrote that Zanfardino also denied the claim because Dmitri “also denied the claim because Dmitri had secretly dated men in the past without suffering physical harm.”
Kimahli Powell, the director of the Rainbow Road organization that helps queer and trans people get to safety around the world, said Zanfardino is “is basically condemning [Dmitri] to violence” with the ruling.
The bisexual Russian’s lawyer plans to appeal the claim, a process that could take between six months to a year. When and if that appeal is denied (which is likely, Herzog wrote), the attorney will then take the case to federal court.
In the meantime, Dmitri will remain in a prison where he said he is very cold, playing cards and learning English.
LA UNION, El Salvador — It was nearly 100 degrees in the Salvadoran city of La Unión at 1:15 p.m. on July 14 when Ever Pacheco, director of Colectivo LGBTI Estrellas del Golfo, a local advocacy group, began talking with three of his colleagues in their small office that is located on a quiet residential street.Advertisements about receiving remittances from the U.S. are commonplace throughout the city that is located three hours east of the Salvadoran capital of San Salvador on the Gulf of Fonseca. Pacheco said fear over President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy is increasingly palpable among La Unión’s more than 30,000 residents.
“Everyone has delayed their plans to travel (to the U.S.) because they are afraid of being detained,” he told the Washington Blade.
El Salvador has one of the world’s highest per capita murder rates because of violence that is frequently associated with MS-13, 18th Street and other street gangs. Pacheco and other advocates with whom the Blade spoke this month said this violence is among the main reasons that prompt LGBTI Salvadorans to leave the country.
Ever Pacheco, director of Colectivo LGBTI Estrellas del Golfo, an LGBTI advocacy group in La Unión, El Salvador, and his colleague Valeria at their offices on July 14, 2018. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
‘People aren’t going to the U.S. because it’s cold’
Pacheco said six transgender people from La Unión have migrated to the U.S. in recent years “because of the situation in the country with the gangs.” He told the Blade that discrimination and a lack of economic opportunities because of their gender identity also factored into their decisions to leave El Salvador.
Karla Guevara, president of Colectivo Alejandría, a San Salvador-based advocacy group, pointed out to the Blade last year that 18 trans women were known to have been killed in El Salvador in 2015. Francela Méndez, a Colectivo Alejandría board member, on May 31, 2015, became one of these statistics when she was murdered at a friend’s home in Sonsonate Department, which is about an hour west of San Salvador.
Three trans women were killed in February 2017 in San Luis Talpa, a city that is near El Salvador’s main international airport. Karla Avelar, a prominent activist who the Blade interviewed in San Salvador last September, asked for asylum in Ireland after she and her mother received threats.
“People are not going to the U.S. because it’s cold,” said Andrea Ayala, executive director of Espacio de Mujeres Lesbianas por la Diversidad, an advocacy group known by the acronym ESMULES, as she spoke with the Blade at a San Salvador coffee shop on July 13. “People are not going (to the U.S.) because it’s so beautiful.”
“People migrate because they will die and because they are hungry and because they are in need,” she added.
William Hernández, chief executive officer of Asociación Entre Amigos LGBTI de El Salvador, another Salvadoran advocacy group, echoed Ayala.
Hernández told the Blade on July 13 during an interview at a San Salvador hotel that is less than a mile from the U.S. Embassy that the violence in El Salvador is “worse” now than it was during the country’s civil war from 1979-1992.
He said some gangs target trans people and “obviously gay men.” Hernández also told the Blade the only time residents of one neighborhood that is controlled by two rival gangs can cross the street “without suffering the consequences for the act of crossing the street” is when they need to take public transportation.
“This is the reality in general,” he said.
Salvadoran government urged to forcefully criticize Trump
The Trump administration’s decision earlier this year to end the Temporary Protected Status program for the up to 200,000 Salvadorans who have received temporary residency permits that allow them to stay in the U.S. sparked widespread outrage among immigrant rights advocates.
Ayala and Ámbar Alfaro of ASPIDH Arcoiris Trans, a San Salvador-based trans advocacy group, are among those who criticized the White House’s decision. Pacheco’s mother is a TPS recipient who has lived in Houston for 15 years.
“The impact that it has had has been very clear,” Pacheco told the Blade, referring to the end of TPS for Salvadorans.
The Salvadoran government in January condemned Trump after he reportedly described El Salvador as a “shithole” country. Ayala and Hernández both accused President Salvador Sánchez Cerén of not doing enough to challenge the White House over its immigration policy, which includes the continued separation of migrant children from their families.
“It (the Salvadoran government) has a close relationship with the Trump administration, at the very least, for money,” said Pacheco.
The U.S. Agency for International Aid on its website notes El Salvador received $74,831,935 in U.S. foreign aid in fiscal year 2016. Remittances, which primarily come from Salvadorans who live in the U.S., accounts for nearly a fifth of El Salvador’s GDP.
Hernández said there is a “lack of leadership” from Sánchez Cerén on a host of issues that include health care, LGBTI rights and abortion. Hernández also noted U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador Jean Manes has been “very serious” in criticizing the government’s efforts to reduce gang violence and fight corruption.
“The United States government cannot tell us what to do, but it’s also what are we going to do,” said Hernández. “The honorable ambassador has a very rigid position, but also one of a lot of cooperation.”
A store in La Unión, El Salvador, allows customers to receive remittances from the U.S. Salvadoran government figures indicate remittances account for nearly a fifth of the country’s total economy. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
Group provides information, assistance to LGBTI migrants
Asociación Entre Amigos LGBTI de El Salvador has created an online initiative that seeks to provide information to migrants about where they can seek assistance as they travel from El Salvador to the U.S.-Mexico border. Hernández nevertheless told the Blade that neither he nor his organization encourages LGBTI Salvadorans to leave the country without documents.
“We encourage people not to migrate illegally or undocumented,” he said. “But we know that many times they leave the country with only minutes to spare. So, what we are doing is getting the word out about the safest way to go and how they can receive support along the way.”
A store in La Unión, El Salvador, allows customers to receive remittances from the U.S. Salvadoran government figures indicate remittances account for nearly a fifth of the country’s total economy. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen earlier this month met with the foreign ministers of El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico in Guatemala City. She announced the creation of an office within her agency that will advise their governments about the reunification of migrant children who have been separated from their parents.The Trump administration on June 19 withdrew the U.S. from the U.N. Human Rights Council. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein the day before condemned the separation of young migrant children from their parents along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Ayala told the Blade the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the U.N. Human Rights Council was an attempt to deflect attention away from its immigration policy. She also spoke directly to Americans who continue to support it.
“I invite them to reflect with respect to the pain that this figure is inflicting on not only people from his country,” Ayala told the Blade.
ESMULES Executive Director Andrea Ayala in San Salvador, El Salvador, on Sept. 25, 2017. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
She noted the U.S. provided military aid to the Salvadoran government during the civil war.Salvadoran immigrants who fled the war formed MS-13 in Los Angeles in the 1980s. Gang members who have been deported to El Salvador over the last two decades have been linked to murders and other acts of violence in the country.
“(The war) left El Salvador in ruins with military dictators, with an untold number of disappeared people,” Ayala told the Blade. “We survived 12 years of armed conflict that was, in part, supported by the United States.”
She added Trump continues to use migrants as scapegoats.
“Hate is a very strong word,” said Ayala. “This hatred is the distinction of what is different.”
Ernesto Valle in San Salvador, El Salvador, contributed to this article.
A proposed amendment to Cuba’s new constitution would extend marriage rights to same-sex couples.Francisco Rodríguez Cruz, a gay Cuban blogger who writes under the pen name Paquito el de Cuba, on Friday wrote the proposed amendment would “redefine marriage as a voluntary union into which two people who are legally eligible can enter.” Rodríguez reported the proposed amendment also “incorporates the principle of nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”
Maykel González, an independent Cuban journalist and LGBTI rights advocate who contributes to the Washington Blade, also confirmed the proposed amendment.
Mariela Castro, the daughter of former Cuban President Raúl Castro who directs the country’s National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX), in May told reporters during a Havana press conference that her organization planned to submit proposals to the Cuban National Assembly in support of marriage and other rights for LGBTI Cubans. Her comments came against the backdrop of pro-marriage equality campaigns that several independent LGBTI advocacy groups had previously launched.
Moisés Rodríguez of Corriente Martiana, a Cuban human rights organization told the Blade on May 11 during an interview at his home in Cabañas in Artemisa Province that everyone knows “the damages caused by the lack of marriage equality.” Lidia Romero of Acepto, a group that also supports marriage rights for same-sex couples, made a similar point when she spoke with the Blade later that day in Havana.
“Everyone talks about the need for the recognition of or the legalization of marriage for same-sex couples,” she said.
Five Evangelical church groups last month publicly expressed their opposition to marriage rights for same-sex couples.
The Cuban government denied their request to hold a march in Havana. Pictures posted to social media earlier this month show supporters of these groups holding signs during church services that read, among other things, “I am in favor of original design: The family as God created” with a picture of a man and a woman and two children holding hands.
The debate over marriage rights for same-sex couples in Cuba is taking place nearly six decades after gay men and others deemed unfit for military service were sent to labor camps, known by the Spanish acronym UMAP, following the 1959 revolution that brought Mariela Castro’s uncle, Fidel Castro, to power.
The Cuban government until 1993 forcibly quarantined people with HIV/AIDS in state-run sanitaria. Fidel Castro in 2010 apologized for the work camps during an interview with a Mexican newspaper.
Cuba since 2008 has offered free sex-reassignment surgeries through its national health care system, although only a few dozen people have been able to receive them. Mariela Castro, who is a member of the National Assembly, and CENESEX since that year have organized a series of events across the country each year that commemorate the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia.
A three-judge panel in Havana last October granted Violeta Cardoso custody of her late daughter’s three young children who she is raising with her partner of 32 years, Isabel Pacheco. The ruling is believed to be the first time the Cuban government has legally recognized a same-sex couple.
“There was no problem,” Cardoso told the Blade in Havana on May 11.
The National Assembly will debate the proposed amendment and other changes to the Cuban constitution three months after President Miguel Díaz-Canel succeeded Raúl Castro. Cuba would become the first country in the Caribbean to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples if the proposed amendment becomes part of the new constitution.
Violeta Cardoso, second from right, and her partner, Isabel Pacheco, second from left, attend an International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia march in Havana on May 12, 2018, that the National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX) organized. Cardoso last October received custody of her late daughter’s three children who she is raising with her partner. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)