Berlin police say a central memorial to the gay victims of the Nazis has been vandalized.
The concrete memorial in Berlin’s Tiergarten park, near the memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, features a window into which visitors can look and view a video of a same-sex couple kissing.
Police said Monday that security guards reported that overnight the window had been painted over.
Palestinian police have banned events organized by the LGBTQ rights organization alQaws because they go against “traditional Palestinian values,” the rights group said in a statement Sunday.
“AlQaws condemns the use of prosecution, intimidation and threats of arrest, be it by the police or members of society,” the group wrote on Facebook. “We have always been public and accessible about our work, through maintaining an active website, social media presence and engagement in civil society. However, we have never received threats to this extent before.”
AlQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society emerged as a project in 2001 and formalized in 2007, according to its website. As part of the group’s work, it regularly holds events throughout Palestinian territories and offers support for LGBTQ people through hotlines and partnerships with other civil rights groups.
The statement from the Palestinian police announcing the ban came after alQaws held an event in Nablus, a city in the northern West Bank, in early August. The organization had plans to hold another event there at the end of the month.
Police said Sunday they would “pursue this gathering” and seek charges against anyone involved in it, according to The Associated Press. The Palestinian police are under the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Word of the gathering had sparked fierce debate on social media, with some Palestinians defending the activists and others condemning them for violating religious and traditional norms.
“We have never received threats to this extent before,” alQaws said in its Facebook statement. However, it acknowledged that the “crackdown against the fight for sexual and gender liberation is not new.”
“Throughout modern history, it has served as a powerful card for oppressive regimes and governments,” the group stated. “Sadly, the PA statement and subsequent public responses are well-honed tactics in the game of political gain and smoke-screening, not limited to the Palestinian Authority or to this particular event.”
Despite the crackdown, however, the alQaws said it will continue to work to combat the “social violence against LGBT Palestinians.”
Neither alQaws nor the Palestinian police immediately responded to NBC News’ request for comment.
Sa’ed Atshan, an assistant professor of peace and conflict studies at Swarthmore College and author of “Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique,” said the Palestinian police’s statement about alQaws is an attempt to “score morality points.”
By focusing on LGBTQ people, Atshan told NBC News, the Palestinian Authority can distract everyday Palestinians away from “its impotence in the face of the occupation.”
Being openly LGBTQ in Palestine, though, isn’t easy regardless, according to Atshan. He said unless you’re from a wealthy or secular family or live in a city, it can be difficult being out.
“While increasing numbers of LGB Palestinians are identifying as such, and slowly trans folks in Palestine are coming out, it is still tremendously difficult to live one’s life authentically, particularly as a trans person,” he explained.
Atshan also noted there seems to be an increase in anti-LGBTQ public expressions in Palestinian territories.
“This is a serious problem in our society,” he said, “and we have not grappled with the long-entrenched and ingrained homophobia in our society in a serious or robust, large-scale manner yet.”
And authorities seem to be leading the charge.
“The Palestinian Authority’s police have also been inciting surveillance and violence against LGBTQ Palestinians from their own families, neighbors and co-workers, with a spike now in social media posts calling for assaults against queer people in the West Bank,” Atshan explained.
Homosexuality is taboo in Arab countries, many of which criminalize it. Approximately 70 countries around the world — most in Africa and the Mideast — criminalize homosexuality.
Just months after a Tunisian presidential commission recommended the decriminalization of homosexuality, the North African nation has its first openly gay candidate for president: Mounir Baatour.
Baatour, 48, is a lawyer and president of both the Tunisian Liberal Party and Association Shams, Tunisia’s main LGBTQ rights organization. Baatour’s candidacy is noteworthy because in Tunisia homosexuality is still a crime that is punishable by up to three years in prison. Baatour himself was jailed in 2013 for an accusation of “homosexuality,” and he said prison was “very hard, and the psychological impact is very sad, and after that I was in depression for one year.”
Baatour said he expected to make the ballot for the September 15 election, which was moved up because President Beji Caid El Sebsi died unexpectedly in July. Baatour vowed to go to court to challenge any effort to bar his candidacy, though he said he collected double the number of signatures required to run.
In June, the Committee on Individual Freedoms and Equality, known by its French acronym COLIBE, released a report that recommended an overhaul of Tunisia’s penal code — including ending the country’s criminalization of homosexuality. It also recommended abolishing the death penalty, giving women more rights and dismantling patrilineal citizenship and inheritance.
“The state and society have nothing to do with the sexual life amongst adults … sexual orientations and choices of individuals are essential to private life,” the COLIBE report states. “Therefore the commission recommends canceling [the criminalization of homosexuality], since it violates the self-evident private life, and because it has brought criticism to the Republic of Tunisia from international human rights bodies.”
If elected, Baatour hopes to enact the recommendations in the COLIBE report.
“I am absolutely in favor of the COLIBE report, I will adopt it in my program, and I will do all my best to execute the report,” Baatour said. “The main idea of my candidacy is to fight more for more freedom in Tunisia, more individual rights, and to stop the persecution against LGBT community engaged by the government against all homosexuals in my country.”
Since Tunisia’s 2011 revolution ushered a new period of democracy into the country, the government has actually ramped up its persecution of the LGBTQ community due in part, according to Baatour, to an increase in police recruiting Islamist people to join the force.
“I think because the Islamists were in the older coalition after the revolution, and I think in the police there is a lot of recruitment of Islamist persons,” Baatour said.
Baatour’s run is another historic moment for Tunisia. In 2011, Tunisians took to the streets in massive protests that resulted in the resignation of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who eventually fled in exile to Saudi Arabia. The Tunisian uprising inspired similar movements in Yemen, Libya, and Egypt that also deposed presidents, while an uprising in Syria morphed into the civil war that continues to this day.
Fred Karger, who in his 2012 Republican primary run became the first openly gay American to run for president, congratulated Baatour on Twitter. “He’s very, very courageous for doing what he’s doing in the Arab World, as the first not just in Tunisia but the first in Africa and the Muslim world. He seems to be a very qualified candidate,” Karger said.
“It’s such an important thing to do for so many people around the world,” Karger said, “to see someone to be out and proud and doing what he’s doing.”
Andrei Vaganov and Evgeny Erofeyev have been raising their two sons, now 12 and 14, for nearly a decade. The children were adopted by Vaganov shortly before he and Erofeyev were married in Denmark.
The couple didn’t face any problems until the youngest son, Yuri, was hospitalised due to a stomach ache and doctors realised he had no mother.
This precipitated a sexual abuse investigation that threatened their right to live freely as a family.
Here we live, we are an ordinary family
“We never asked our children to hide anything,” Vaganov told independent Russian news outlet Meduza. “This was our conscious position: why is it somehow stigmatising and so on. Here we live, we are an ordinary family.”
The morning after Yuri was discharged from hospital, Vaganov and Erofeyev were told to report to police for questioning.
What started as a “pre-investigation check” quickly became more serious, and Yuri was ordered to undergo a physical exam to rule out abuse.
“This, frankly, is a very traumatic event for a child,” Vaganov explained, particularly as Yuri had a troubled childhood before adoption. “They inspect Yuri, he swears, cries. 40 minutes, probably this all went on.”
By the time Vaganov and his son were allowed home, the story that a gay couple had ‘raped a child’ was already all over the internet.
Later their elder son Denis was also called in for an interview, and a family law attorney advised them to prepare to flee the country. The couple were told protective services would almost certainly try to place their children in foster care.
“Because in such situations, children are simply removed from the family before further proceedings, which can last for years, since the article is related to the sexual integrity of the child,” Vaganov said.
Shortly afterwards authorities suggested that Yuri be turned over to a state-owned rehabilitation centre while the case was investigated, despite forensic testing showing no signs of physical abuse.
Erofeyev and Vaganov decided the time to leave had come; not long after they did so, investigators demanded they turn themselves in for questioning.
No charges have been made against them yet, but Buzzfeed News reported that the case has only gotten more dire in the last month.
On July 15, a speech in Russian Parliament denounced gay adoptions as the potential end of mankind. The next day, the Investigative Committee opened a case against the agency that allowed Vaganov to adopt his children.
The law bans the “promotion of nontraditional sexual relations to minors” – a reference universally understood to mean a ban on information about LGBT+ lifestyles.
Members of the Russian gay community and gay rights activists from Europe hold flags during a banned gay rally in Moscow (Andrey Smirnov/Getty)
Human rights groups say that the law has exacerbated hostility towards LGBT+ people in Russia, and that in preventing LGBT+ people from accessing inclusive education and support services, it has had detrimental impact on children and young people.
The European Court of Human Rights has found Russia to have violated LGBT+ people’s rights three times in as many years.
he body of a 40-year-old trans woman known as ‘La Gata’ was found by her family in the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas in the South American country.
This is the eighth case of murder or violent death of a trans person in the country this year, according to Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Diane Rodriguez, the first trans woman elected to Ecuador’s National Assembly, told Reuters: “Once again, the LGBT community in Ecuador is in mourning. We thought (the attacks) were going to decrease, but on the contrary, we’ve been surprised by this year’s statistics.”
The killing has sparked fears of a rise in anti-LGBT violence in the country, which has seen progress for the LGBT+ community in recent years.
The constitutional court in the capital Quito voted five-to-four to approve same-sex marriage in the cases of the two, extending gay marriage across the country.
When LGBT activist Yelena Grigoryeva found her name on a hit list of a “gay-hunting” group, she did not appear to take the threat seriously.
The group called itself “Pila”, meaning “saw”, after the series of Hollywood horror films of the same name, in which a serial killer plays games with his victims.
Pila promised “very dangerous and cruel little gifts” to a number of Russia’s gay activists.
“That’s just a threat,” Grigoryeva wrote on Facebook early last month, posting a screen grab of the group’s website on her page.
“This is not how crimes are committed.”
On July 21, her body was found in bushes close to her home in Saint Petersburg, with at least eight stab wounds to her face and back. She was 41.
The murder has horrified Russia’s LGBT community, even though there seems to be no firm evidence linking Pila directly to Grigoryeva’s fatal stabbing.
“I do not know who these people are, but it’s significant that people who think this way live among us,” said activist Mikhail Tumasov, who has also received threats from Pila.
“Many people would like to do in reality what Pila is threatening us with. The idea has emerged that killing people over their sexual orientation is not just normal, but noble,” he told AFP.
Russia’s gays and lesbians are no strangers to violence, hate crimes and even homophobic murders.
But a vigilante group seeking to turn violence against LGBT people into a game and encouraging Russians to hunt them down for sport plumbs new lows, campaigners say.
Activists said the Pila website had been around for about a year, posting names and pictures of their targets and promising “awards” for attacks on them.
– ‘Start protecting citizens’ –
Prominent activist Igor Kochetkov accused authorities of doing little to stop it as he urged police to probe the website and the death threats against Grigoryeva.
AFP / OLGA MALTSEVARussia’s LGBT community is no stranger to violence, hate crimes and even murders
“Dear police and other law enforcement agencies. It’s time to get to work!” Kochetkov, whose name was also on the hit list, said in a recent video address.
“Start protecting all citizens! And if you believe that people like us should not be protected find yourselves a different job.”
Pila’s website has only recently been blocked, as have its channels on the popular encrypted messaging app Telegram.
They say Pila may not be made up of cold-bloodied killers, but that its main goal was to further terrorise Russia’s beleaguered gay community.
AFP/File / Olga MALTSEVARussian riot police detained gay rights activists during World Day Against Homophobia and Transophobia in Saint Petersburg in May
“Pila is dangerous because it sows hatred. It inspires people to commit real crimes,” said Alla Chikinda, spokeswoman for an LGBT support centre in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.
The centre, too, has received threats from Pila, which called for it to be shut down.
Poland’s Catholic Church has doubled down on the anti-gay rhetoric that has become the nationalist ruling party’s dominant theme in recent weeks, drawing a rebuke from liberal politicians who compared an archbishop’s remarks to incitement to genocide.
In a sermon given to mark the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw uprising by Polish resistance fighters against Nazi occupation, the archbishop of Krakow, Marek Jedraszewski, described Poland as under siege from a “rainbow plague” of gay rights campaigners he compared to Poland’s former Communist rulers.
“Our land is no longer affected by the red plague, which does not mean that there is no new one that wants to control our souls, hearts and minds,” he told a mass in the medieval St. Mary’s Basilica, one of the most important churches for Poles.
“Not Marxist, Bolshevik, but born of the same spirit, neo-Marxist. Not red, but rainbow,” he was quoted as saying by private TVN24 broadcaster.
Robert Biedron, an openly gay politician from the progressive Wiosna party, denounced the sermon.
“We already had such people, politicians who used similar words and that lead to huge slaughters, genocide. This is an incitement to crime, to hatred,” he told news website wirtualnapolska.pl.
Ahead of parliamentary elections expected in October, the ruling PiS party has made hostility to gays a central focus of its campaign, depicting LGBTQ rights as a dangerous foreign idea that undermines traditional values in staunchly Catholic Poland.
The issue spilled onto the streets in July when thousands of demonstrators went on a rampage through the provincial city of Bialystok to block the city’s first ever LGBTQ pride parade.
Video showed anti-gay demonstrators, who vastly outnumbered those attending the pride event, chasing people through the streets and beating them. Thirty people were arrested.
RE-ENERGIZING THE BASE
PiS has launched its anti-gay campaign in an apparent attempt to re-energize its mainly rural base, with hostility to LGBTQ rights partly supplanting the anti-immigrant rhetoric that formed the party’s core message in previous elections.
A conservative magazine distributed “LGBT-free zone” stickers last week, while a number of towns have declared themselves “LGBT-free.”
Unlike nearly all Western European countries, which have legalized same-sex marriage and the adoption of children by same-sex couples in recent years, the former Communist countries of the EU’s east have mostly held back on expanding gay rights. Same-sex marriage and adoptions are both illegal in Poland.
The Catholic Church has unusually strong influence in Poland, having been a focus of resistance to Communist rule for decades. One of Jedraszewski’s predecessors as archbishop in Krakow, the Polish Cold War-era Pope John Paul II, remains a beloved national hero.
Nevertheless, Church influence has declined since its heyday in the 1990s, hurt by polarizing political battles over abortion and more recently by a documentary film on priestly sex abuse.
“I have nothing against LGBT people. What the archbishop has said should not be said in a Church,” said Jaroslawa Szczerbinska, 55, pre-school worker in Warsaw.
According to a survey published by state pollster CBOS on Thursday, the share of Poles criticizing the Church rose last month by 4 percentage points to 38 percent while those who asses it favorably fell by 5 points to 48 percent.
A CBOS opinion poll released in April showed that 54 percent of Poles think homosexuality should be tolerated. Less than a quarter think it is abnormal and unacceptable.
The violent Bialystok anti-gay demonstration has energized some liberals, with hundreds of people demonstrating in favor of LGBTQ rights in Polish towns in days that followed.
Agnieszka Kwiatkowska, a sociologist at Warsaw’s private SWPS University, said the Church’s strident anti-gay position “mobilizes radical church supporters but may discourage moderates who are believers, but tolerant.”
“It will also discourage young people who are tolerant of LGBT,” she said. As Church support becomes less universal, its polarizing rhetoric can backfire: “Such a strategy of a besieged fortress works only as long as the fortress is large.”
Transgender activists in Thailand last week proposed a new law to guarantee their rights.
They presented a proposal to the parliament speaker.
The activists, who plan to get 10,000 signatures in support of the law, want to recognized as the correct gender following gender affirmation surgery.
The proposed law covers their name and title, marriage rights, military conscription and being treated as their gender in correctional facilities.
The Transsexual Association of Thailand and The Life Inspired for Transsexuals Foundation led the campaign, according to The Nation.
‘Let the world see that Thailand is among the leaders when it comes to the rights and freedom for LGBTQI people,’ Yollada Suannok, president of the Transsexual Association of Thailand, said.
Well-known singer and LGBTI icon Jern Jern Boonsoongnern backed the petition.
Trans rights in Thailand
People often consider Thailand a haven for transgender individuals.
Transgender women are a visible part of society. But, they are often marginalized. Local law does not guarantee their rights.
LGBTI rights advocates in Nepal have encouraged the government to conduct a census of the LGBTI community.
According to local LGBTI publication Pahichan, the government last conducted a survey 10 years ago.
They found 4,000 people identified as LGBTI.
But, according to Pahichan, Nepal’s population of LGBTI people numbers more than 500,000.
They report that about 300 LGBTI public service sector workers are out. This suggests the number of LGBTI people in the whole country is much higher than 4,000.
Now that the government has shown interest in conducting a census of the LGBTI population, activists are urging the government to conduct the research in a sensitive way.
‘Bureau [of statistics] should arrangement separate forms targeting this community’ Pahichan urges.
It also urged non-governmental LGBTI groups to assist the LGBTI community to partake in the census.
Both the UK and Hong Kong have recently considered collecting census data on the LGBTI community.
In Hong Kong, experts said a census would provide empirical evidence of LGBTI citizens.
Proposals for the United Kingdom’s next census, in 2021, include voluntary questions about sexual orientation and gender identity.
If the questions are approved, it will be the first time the UK has tracked this information in their census.
LGBTI life in Nepal
The mountainous South Asian country also legalized gay sex in 2007.
Theoretically, it has laws to protect LGBTI equality. But, local activists have warned, that is not always the case in practice.
Furthermore, many LGBTI Nepalis have rejected the third gender on citizenship documents. This is because it does not guarantee accompanying rights.
For example, Nepalis are unable to get driving licenses with a third gender ID.
‘There has always been a romanticization of Nepal as being one of the more tolerant countries in Asia; however, the ground reality is very different’ organizer of this year’s pride parade Rukshana Kapali said.
A new criminal code enacted in August last year failed to guarantee equal marriage.
Lawmakers last year promised the LGBTI community parliament would continue to discuss and advocate for LGBTI issues.
These included citizenship issues, same-sex marriage, domestic violence, adoption, and access to health and education.
March in Warsaw to support the LGBT community, after the first pride march in the city of Baiłystok was met with violence. PiS and opposition called out for not doing enough to condemn the attacks.
‘The tension is growing and is tied to the politics of the ruling party’
Those who took to the streets on Saturday’s march carried rainbow-colored flags and banners with pro-LGBTI messages.
‘I am here because of what happened in Białystok and because of the “LGBT-free zone” stickers,’ said 15-year-old student, Amelia Rae.
‘If something is going to change than the government needs to change.’
Analysts say that Poland’s ruling party, PiS, has attempted to energize their voter base by pushing back against ‘western liberalism’.
This includes disapproving of LGBTI events such as Pride marches, which many politicians argue are a public display of sexuality, the Guardian reports.
‘The tension is growing and is tied to the politics of the ruling party, which are hateful and intolerant,’ said Marta Zawadzka, a 17-year-old student who took part in Saturday’s march.
She said that establishment political figures had ‘[blamed] LGBT people and painting them as pedophiles and bad people’.
The decision to hold a Pride parade in Bialystok was highly contested by local religious groups.
A number of Polish politicians, including Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, have condemned the attacks in Białystok.
Police have detained more than 30 people in connection with the violence.
Anti-LGBTI actions across Poland
Recent months have seen a series of high-profile anti-LGBTI actions throughout Poland.
The clashes at Bialystok is not the first time the country has seen Pride events marred by violence.
Last October, far-right counter-protesters attacked the first ever Pride march to take place in the city of Lublin.
Ongoing fight to support LGBTI rights
Poland has become more LGBTI-friendly in recent years. However, the country’s LGBTI community continues to face numerous hurdles in their fight for equality.
Many aspects of Polish society and politics remain staunchly conservative and the Catholic Church remains highly influential.
Due to cultural, religious and political pushback, marriage equality, legal protections in the area of gender identity, and same-sex couples being allowed to adopt remain distant prospects.
In 2018, ILGA-Europe ranked Poland at 38 out of the 49 countries polled in an annual review of human rights for LGBTI people in countries in Europe and West Asia.
