World
In-person Pride events to take place around the world
Activists have scheduled marches, galas, forums

Activists around the world are planning to hold in-person Pride events this year.
Organizers of Tijuana GLBTI Pride in the Mexican border city say a decrease in coronavirus cases has allowed them to hold a march on June 19. Participants will be required to wear masks and socially distance. Tijuana GLBTI Pride organizers also plan to distribute condoms at a gay bar in downtown Tijuana.
“The GLBT community and owners of entertainment venues and establishments in the region have also suffered a blow with the arrival of the pandemic caused by the coronavirus a year ago,” wrote Tijuana GLBTI Pride Coordinator Lorenzo Herrera on his group’s website, noting the decrease in coronavirus cases in Mexico’s Baja California state has allowed businesses to reopen. “It allows for the reopening of establishments like bars and cantinas.”
“This new normality and opening of spaces allowed us to resume planning for the 2021 Pride march,” added Herrera.
The Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration, a Minnesota-based organization that works with LGBTQ migrants and refugees around the world, and Alight on June 13 will hold a digital Pride brunch on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border with Jardín de las Mariposas, a shelter in Tijuana for LGBTQ migrants and asylum seekers. Frenchie Davis is among those who are scheduled to perform at ORAM’s #RefugeePride Gala on June 17.
Rainbow Sunrise Mapambazuko, an LGBTQ advocacy group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is scheduled to hold a Pride event in the city of Bukavu on June 26.
The Spanish Embassy in D.C. commissioned London Kaye, a Los Angeles-based artist, to create a crocheted mural that features Federico García Lorca, a gay Spanish poet and playwright who Spanish Nationalists executed in 1936 shortly after the country’s Civil War began. The mural is currently displayed above the entrance to the Spanish ambassador’s former home in Columbia Heights.
Tbilisi Pride on July 5 is scheduled to hold a march in the Georgian capital. The group on its Facebook page says the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on LGBTQ Georgians.
“Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and gay people experience oppression and discrimination on a daily basis,” it notes. “Hate groups are constantly trying to stir up hostility in society towards us. By weaponizing homophobia, these groups try to sow discord and divide society or social movements, to discredit various just demands. The state often leaves the criminal activities of violent groups and their leaders unpunished, thereby normalizing violence against (LGBTQ) people and, at the same time hinders development and justice-oriented social, political and economic change.”
“We need to make our voices heard by our family, friends, colleagues, fellow citizens and the state,” proclaimed Tbilisi Pride.
WorldPride 2021, which will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Malmö, Sweden, from Aug. 12-22, will feature both virtual and in-person events. Uganda Pride will hold their Pride events in October, as opposed to this month, because the government has imposed a partial lockdown in response to an increase in COVID-19 cases.
Thousands attend Jerusalem Pride march
Israel is among the countries in which in-person Pride events have already taken place.
Thousands of people attended the annual Jerusalem March for Pride and Tolerance on June 3.
The in-person event took place less than two weeks after a cease fire between Israel and Hamas militants that govern the Gaza Strip took effect. The future of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and tensions over the eviction of several Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood also loomed large over the Jerusalem March for Pride and Tolerance.
Cuba’s National Center for Sexual Education last month held a series of virtual events that commemorated the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia.
CENESEX Director Mariela Castro, who is the daughter of former Cuban President Raúl Castro, during a May 4 press conference in Havana announced a bill that would amend the country’s family code will be introduced in Parliament in July. Tremenda Nota, the Washington Blade’s media partner in Cuba, reported Mariela Castro said this year’s IDAHOBiT events are part of the aforementioned effort and will help make Cubans more receptive to LGBTQ rights.
“I was able to appreciate that the majority of the population … is in favor of recognizing the rights of LGBTI+ people and especially the rights in the family sphere that include the possibility, the option, of marriage,” Mariela Castro told reporters on May 4.
U.S. embassies fly Pride flags
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power are among the American officials who have publicly acknowledged Pride month.
Blinken in April said U.S. embassies and consulates can once again fly the Pride flag.
The U.S. Embassy in the Bahamas this month is flying the Pride flag for the first time. Alexus D’Marco, an activist who is a member of LGBTI Bahamas, a Bahamian advocacy group, on Monday referred to Eleanor Roosevelt when she discussed the impact the gesture has had on LGBTQ Bahamians.
“It’s not in protest,” D’Marco told the Blade. “It’s a lead by example effort that may be saying, yes we admit that we may have flaws as countries and in some cases former colonists, but we do this to dissuade you from making the same mistake of thinking that some are better than others. It’s an open invitation to join the changing world, for us the older generations to listen to the voice of the youth who are telling us very clearly and loudly that the future they envision is not one of stigma and discrimination, instead it is one with human rights and dignity for all in a land that is sustainable and full of that ‘the-ness.'”
Uganda
World Bank resumes lending to Uganda
New loans suspended in 2023 after Anti-Homosexuality Act signed

The World Bank Group has resumed lending to Uganda.
The bank in 2023 suspended new loans to the African country after President Yoweri Museveni signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act, which contains a death penalty provision for “aggravated homosexuality.” Reuters reported the bank decided to resume lending on June 5.
“We have now determined the mitigation measures rolled out over the last several months in all ongoing projects in Uganda to be satisfactory,” a bank spokesperson told Reuters in an email. “Consequently, the bank has prepared three new projects in sectors with significant development needs – social protection, education, and forced displacement/refugees – which have been approved by the board.”
Activists had urged the bank not to resume loans to Uganda.
Richard Lusimbo, director general of the Uganda Key Population Consortium, last September described the “so-called ‘mitigation measures’ are a façade, designed to provide the illusion of protection.”
“They rely on perpetrators of discrimination — the government of Uganda — to implement the measures fairly,” said Lusimbo. “How can they be taken seriously?”
South Africa
South African activists demand action to stop anti-LGBTQ violence
Country’s first gay imam murdered in February

Continued attacks of LGBTQ South Africans are raising serious concerns about the community’s safety and well-being.
President Cyril Ramaphosa in May 2024 signed the Preventing and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill into law that, among other things, has legal protections for LGBTQ South Africans who suffer physical, verbal, and emotional violence. Statistics from the first and second quarters of 2025 have painted a grim picture.
Muhsin Hendricks, the country’s first openly gay imam, in February was shot dead in Gqeberha, in a suspected homophobic attack. Authorities in April found the body of Linten Jutzen, a gay crossdresser, in an open field between an elementary school and a tennis court in Cape Town.
A World Economic Forum survey on attitudes towards homosexuality and gender non-conformity in South Africa that Marchant Van Der Schyf conducted earlier this year found that even though 51 percent of South Africans believe gay people should have the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts, 72 percent of them feel same-sex sexual activity is morally wrong. The survey also notes 44 percent of LGBTQ respondents said they experienced bullying, verbal and sexual discrimination, and physical violence in their everyday lives because of their sexual orientation.
Van Der Schyf said many attacks occur in the country’s metropolitan areas, particularly Cape Town, Durban, and Johannesburg.
“Victims are often lured to either the perpetrator’s indicated residence or an out-of-home area under the appearance of a meet-up,” said Van Der Schyf. “The nature of the attacks range from strangulation and beatings to kidnapping and blackmail with some victims being filmed naked or held for ransom.”
The Youth Policy Committee’s Gender Working Group notes South Africa is the first country to constitutionally protect against discrimination based on sexual orientation and the fifth nation in the world to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples. A disparity, however, still exists between legal protections and LGBTQ people’s lived experiences.
“After more than 20 years of democracy, our communities continue to wake up to the stench of grief, mutilation, violation, and oppression,” said the Youth Policy Committee. “Like all human beings, queer individuals are members of schooling communities, church groups, and society at large, therefore, anything that affects them should affect everyone else within those communities.”
The Youth Policy Committee also said religious and cultural leaders should do more to combat anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.
“Religious institutions seem to perpetuate the hate crimes experienced by queer individuals,” said the group. “In extreme cases, religious leaders have advocated for killings and hateful crimes to be committed against those in the queer community. South Africa’s highly respected spiritual guides, sangomas, are also joining the fight against queer killings and acts of transphobia and homophobia.”
“The LGBTQIA+ community is raising their voice and they need to be supported because they add a unique color to our rainbow nation,” it added.
Steve Letsike, the government’s deputy minister for women, youth, and persons with disabilities, in marking the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia on May 17 noted Ramaphosa’s administration has enacted legislative framework that protects the LGBTQ community. Letsike, however, stressed the government still needs to ensure its implementation.
“We have passed these policies and we need to make sure that they are implemented fully and with urgency, so that (LGBTQ) persons can self-determine and also have autonomy without any abusive requirements,” said Letsike. “We need families, faith leaders, traditional authorities, and communities to rise together against hate. Our constitution must remain respected.”
Siphokazi Dlamini, a social justice activist, said LGBTQ rights should be respected, as enshrined in the constitution.
“It is terrible to even imagine that they face discrimination despite the fact that this has been addressed numerous times,” said Dlamini. “How are they different from us? Is a question I frequently ask people or why should they live in fear just because we don’t like the way they are and their feelings? However, I would get no response.”
Dlamini added people still live in fear of being judged, raped, or killed simply because of who they are.
“What needs to be addressed to is what freedom means,” said Dlamini. “Freedom means to have the power to be able to do anything that you want but if it doesn’t hurt other people’s feelings while doing it. There is freedom of speech, freedom from discrimination, freedom of expression, of thought, of choice, of religion, of association, and these needs to be practiced. It is time to take such issues seriously in order to promote equality and peace among our people, and those who do not follow these rules should be taken into custody.”
Van Der Schyf also said LGBTQ South Africans should have a place, such as an inquiry commission, that allows them to talk about the trauma they have suffered and how it influences their distrust of the government.
Chile
Gay pharmacist’s murder sparks outrage in Chile
Francisco Albornoz’s body found in remote ravine on June 4

The latest revelations about the tragic death of Francisco Albornoz, a 21-year-old gay pharmacist whose body was found on June 4 in a remote ravine in the O’Higgins region 12 days after he disappeared, has left Chile’s LGBTQ community shocked.
The crime, which was initially surrounded by uncertainty and contradictory theories, has taken a darker and more shocking turn after prosecutors charged Christian González, an Ecuadorian doctor, and José Miguel Baeza, a Chilean chef, in connection with Albornoz’s murder. González and Baeza are in custody while authorities continue to investigate the case.
The Chilean Public Prosecutor’s Office has pointed to a premeditated “criminal plan” to murder Albornoz.
Rossana Folli, the prosecutor who is in charge of the case, says Albornoz died as a a result of traumatic encephalopathy after receiving multiple blows to the head inside an apartment in Ñuñoa, which is just outside of Santiago, the Chilean capital, early on May 24. The Prosecutor’s Office has categorically ruled out that Albornoz died of a drug overdose, as initial reports suggested.
“The fact that motivates and leads to the unfortunate death of Francisco is part of a criminal plan of the two defendants, aimed at ensuring his death and guaranteeing total impunity,” Folli told the court. “The seriousness of the facts led the judge to decree preventive detention for both defendants on the grounds that their freedom represents a danger to public safety.”
Prosecutors during a June 7 hearing that lasted almost eight hours presented conservations from the suspects’ cell phones that they say showed they planned the murder in advance.
“Here we already have one (for Albornoz.) If you bring chloroform, drugs, marijuana, etc.,” read one of the messages.
Security cameras captured the three men entering the apartment where the murder took place together.
Hours later, one of the suspects left with a suitcase and a shopping cart to transport Albornoz’s body, which had been wrapped in a sleeping bag. The route they followed to dispose of the body included a stop to buy drinks, potato chips, gloves, and a rope with which they finally descended a ravine to hide it.
Advocacy groups demand authorities investigate murder as hate crime
Although the Public Prosecutor’s Office has not yet officially classified the murder as a hate crime, LGBTQ organizations are already demanding authorities investigate this angle. Human rights groups have raised concerns over patterns of violence that affect queer people in Chile.
The Zamudio Law and other anti-discrimination laws exist. Activists, however, maintain crimes motivated by a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity are not properly prosecuted.
“This is not just a homicide, it is the cruelest expression of a society that still allows the dehumanization of LGBTQ+ people,” said a statement from Fundación Iguales, one of Chile’s main LGBTQ organizations. “We demand truth, justice, and guarantees of non-repetition.”
The Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation (Movilh), meanwhile, indicated that “since the first day the family contacted us, we have been in conversations with the Prosecutor’s Office so that this fatal outcome is thoroughly investigated, including the possible existence of homophobic motivations or components.”
The investigation into Albornoz’s murder continues, and the court has imposed a 90-day deadline for authorities to complete it.
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