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WORLD
IDAHO Events Around the World
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A round-up of IDAHO events in UK and around the world. United Kingdom In Liverpool the International Day Against Homophobia was marked for the first time. Merseyside Police flew a rainbow flag from their headquarters in Liverpool and distributed information on reporting hate crimes at two film showings at Fact. The first of these was Beyond Hatred, a documentary about a French man who is beaten up and killed by Nazi skinheads on a night out. The second was Queer Duck, an animated feature about a gay duck turned straight by an evangelical preacher. With an almost full capacity of 100 people, the film was certainly a success. The most vocal event however, was a minute of noise outside St. Luke’s Church, known as the bombed out church after being hit by an incendiary bomb in 1941. Over 30 people were joined by the openly gay former MP Stephen Twigg. Catching the attention of many passers-by, this event was undoubtedly a triumph, not just for Liverpool, but as one event of many being held all over the world. In the South East, a protest was staged at the Dover Detention Centre to highlight the plight of gay men and women who are at risk of being deported back to homophobic regimes around the world. Some seeking refuge in the UK are detained in such Centres. There were a host of events in London.
There was a demonstration outside the Polish Embassy in the West End protesting the state-inspired homophobia in Poland. Organised by youngsters from the British Youth Council, the demonstration was attended by Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP and Peter Tatchell of Outrage!. Well over 50 young people turned up to express their feelings to the Polish Government. IDAHO UK coordinator Derek Lennard said that the Polish government had “shown a total disregard for human rights, especially affecting the gay community”. In Croydon, activists ‘made a bang’ for IDAHO when they burst balloons at the Town Hall - a symbolic gesture to ‘bang homophobia out of Croydon’. “But beating homophobia isn’t like bursting a balloon,” said Nick Hughes, the community representative of the organising group, Aurora. “We’ve had to find ways to address the deeply felt issues of many LGBT people.” Aurora, a consultation group involving the local LGBT community and the police, has taken initiatives to protect gay asylum seekers, transsexual people, LGBT kids, gay Asian people, gay and transgendered Christians, and gay men still wrongly included on the sex offenders register. AUSTRALIA A candlelight vigil was held in Tayolor Square, Sydney. Organised by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) Network of Amnesty International and Community Action Against Homophobia (CAAH), the vigil focused on the plight of Ali Humayun, a gay refugee from Pakistan who has been held in the Villawood immigration detention centre for more than two years. “It is clear that the Refugee Review Tribunal has been homophobic against Ali,” said CAAH spokesperson Farida Iqbal. “For Ali to be deported to Pakistan would be a death sentence. He can’t stay in detention. It is injurious to his mental health. So there is no other option but to free him.” CANADA In Canada, the Mayor of Edmonton, Stephen Mandel, issued a proclamation declaring May 17 as International Day Against Homophobia in the Alberta province capital. This was coupled with the launch of an anti-homophobia campaign at City Hall Acting deputy police chief Chris Kellett said that hate crimes are underreported because victims are often reluctant to come forward. “They’ve been involved in institutions they couldn’t trust, they couldn’t rely on – and that’s why they didn’t come forward in the first place,” he pointed out At the centre of the campaign is a poster with the theme “Hate imprisons everyone” and uses the word “HATE” spelled out in prison bars. “We'll know we’ve dealt with (these issues) when we don’t need to have posters that say don’t hate,” Mayor Mandel told the Edmonton Sun. In Halifax, IDAHO coordinator Hugo Dann read the names of the nine gay men murdered in the Maritimes since 1990. As Dean Lisk of the Halifax Daily News reported: “The silence between each name - each life taken - was punctuated with the sound of a woman crying”. See: You Can't Go Into Hiding In Montréal, former Seoul and Barcelone Olympic gold medal swimmer Mark Tewksbury, who is openly gay, was given the 2007 Fight Against Homophobia Award by Fondation Émergence. Mark Tewksbury became a role model in the fight against homophobia. His career as an Olympic swimmer ended in 1993. Afterwards, he decided to come out to the public about his gay orientation, a rare feat by athletes. He then went on to become a convincing spokesperson for the gay and lesbian movement. Moreover, he became involved in promoting the 1st World Outgames, which were held in Montréal in 2006. He is always seen as being comfortable with his sexual orientation. Unashamed, he can speak publicly and is even a sought-after conference speaker. Mr. Tewksbury joins past recipients Ms. Janette Bertrand (2003), Father Raymond Gravel (2004), Former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau (2005 - awarded posthumously) and Members of Canadian Parliament who voted in favour of the Civil Marriage Act as defenders of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (2006) ■ Canada effectively “invented” a day against homophobia on June 4, 2003. With the idea of an ‘international day’ catching on in Europe and across the world in 2005, thanks to Louis-Georges Tin, the Canadians switched their ‘day’ to May 17, in line with the rest of the world. While Canada continues with its original domestic campaigning, especially in the field of homophobia in the education field, they now include the international dimension. GUYANA There was a screening of the film Songs of Freedom by Jamaican born director Phillip Pike ahead of the Lesbian and Gay Film Festival next month. And members of Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD) had a letter explaining IDAHO published in the Guyana Chronicle and Stabroek News. MEXICO The government of Mexico City issued a decree recognising IDAHO – and the city was the venue for a conference attended by Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO) representatives, activists and Mexican officials. Figures presented at the conference showed that in Brazil 2,511 people were the victims of homophobic murders between 1980 and 2005. In Mexico over 1,000 were killed in the last nine years. Latin America and the Caribbean is the region with the largest number of homophobic crimes in the world, a PAHO report on anti-homophobia campaigns carried out in the past few years in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico states. Activists in Latin America want the United Nations and cities and countries in the region to officially recognise the international day – May 17, the date in 1990 when the World Health Organisation removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. “[It] is a very important date, because it is the occasion to recognise that our rights are still being violated, that we are still being killed, and that there is a long way to go before we achieve respect for our rights,” Sophia Valero, an activist with the Mexican Citizen Front for the Rights of Transsexual and Transgender persons, said. UNITED STATES IDAHO is largely ignored in the United States – May is Idaho Potato Month. But Human Rights Watch did publish their homophobic “Hall of Shame” list to mark IDAHO. Veteran journalist Doug Ireland point out on his Direland ‘blog’ on Thursday: “Today, May 17, is the third annual International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO), and it is being observed all over the world -- EXCEPT in the United States.” He went on to ask: “Why should U.S. activists be lagging so woefully far behind our British comrades in using IDAHO to call attention to the plight of LGBT people less fortunate than ourselves? Why should our national gay organizations -- e.g., the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), and even the International Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) -- be so reluctant to follow the example of activists across Europe …”
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