World
Global Pride events in full swing
Activists plan to demand rights, protest inequalities
Pride events are in full swing around the world.
Thousands of people on June 5 attended Bangkok’s first official Pride parade in 16 years.
Openly gay Lithuanian MP Tomas Vytautas Raskevičius and U.S. Ambassador to Lithuania Bob Gilchrist are among those who participated in Baltic Pride 2022 that took place in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, on June 4. Jerusalem’s annual Pride parade occurred two days earlier against the backdrop of the arrest of a man in connection with death threats made against its organizers.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on June 1 helped raise the Progress Pride flag over his country’s Parliament. “This is a time to celebrate our differences and support one another and to make sure that ever day we are building a Canada where everyone is free to be who they are and love who they love,” he said in a video he posted to his Twitter page.
Today, we raised the Pride flag on Parliament Hill. The flag is a symbol of hope, solidarity, and diversity – and raising it is a symbol of our ongoing commitment to building a country where everyone can be who they are and love whom they love. Happy Pride season, everyone! 🏳️🌈 pic.twitter.com/lCjonmxw31
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) June 2, 2022
Olena Shevchenko, chair of Insight, a Ukrainian LGBTQ rights group, told the Washington Blade that she and other activists from her war-torn country plan to attend Warsaw Pride in Poland on June 25.
This year marks London Pride’s 50th anniversary.
The British government was to have hosted a global LGBTQ rights conference in London from June 29-July 1, but it cancelled it in April after advocacy groups announced a boycott in response to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to support a bill to ban so-called conversion therapy without gender identity. The London Pride parade is scheduled to take place on July 2.
The Cayman LGBTQ Foundation in the Cayman Islands will hold its annual Pride parade on July 30. The event will take place less than five months after the Privy Council’s Judicial Committee in London ruled same-sex couples in the British territory don’t have a constitutional right to marry.
Jamaica is among the upwards of 70 countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized. J-FLAG and other Jamaican LGBTQ rights groups will hold a series of Pride events during the first week of August, which coincides with the country’s Emancipation and Independence Days.
“It’s always been incident free,” J-FLAG Associate Director of Marketing and Communications and Engagement Elton Johnson told the Blade on Tuesday from Kingston, the Jamaican capital. “We get support from the police. We get support from many organizations, schools.”
African LGBTQ groups to continue decriminalization push
LGBTQ activists in Africa are also planning to commemorate Pride.
The government of Botswana in January said it will abide by a ruling that decriminalized homosexuality in the country. A plethora of other African countries still outlaw same-sex relations and those found guilty of homosexuality in places where Sharia law exists face the death penalty. Advocacy groups on the continent plan to use Pride to further push for decriminalization.
“The 2SLGBTQIA+ community has made dramatic strides in recent decades that absolutely should be celebrated, [but] there is still much more work to do to ensure intersectional equality and justice for all but as we prepare to commemorate the 2SLGBTQIA+ Pride, let us be cognizant that the discrimination of 2SLGBTQIA+ persons in the country is still rife,” said the Rock of Hope, an LGBTQ rights group in Eswatini. “These events or awareness activities should bring meaning and strengthen the movement such that one day we can reside in a country free of hate, stigmatization and discrimination of individuals based on their sexual orientation and gender identity expression.”
Beit el-Meem, an Egyptian LGBTQ rights group, echoed the Rock of Hope.
“The road is not easy, but not impossible, and what distinguishes us is that each individual of us excels with the power of love and acceptance, and with this energy we will give to everyone around us,” said Beit el-Meem.
LGBT+ Rights Ghana has been at the forefront of the campaign against a bill that would criminalize LGBTQ identity and allyship in the country.
The U.S. Embassy in Ghana on Tuesday tweeted a picture of President Biden speaking in support of LGBTQ rights. The tweet also said the U.S. “reaffirms that LGBTQI+ rights are human rights and that no group should be excluded from those protections, regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, sex characteristics, disability status, age, religion or belief.”
The U.S. reaffirms that LGBTQI+ rights are human rights and that no group should be excluded from those protections, regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, sex characteristics, disability status, age, religion or belief. #Pride2022 pic.twitter.com/UTdh9cFWYE
— U.S. Embassy Ghana (@USEmbassyGhana) June 7, 2022
LGBT+ Rights Ghana said it plans to mark Pride with its virtual Color Dialogue conversations it holds every year.
“This year promises to be fun, hopeful and filled with lots of love,” said the group. “Join us everyday at 6 p.m. GMT on our Instagram page as we discuss the struggles, hopes and joy of the Ghanaian Queer community.”
Brazil presidential election overshadows São Paulo Pride
São Paulo’s annual Pride parade, which is one of the largest in the world, will take place on June 19.
Brazilian activists will mark Pride against the backdrop of their country’s presidential election campaign. HIV/AIDS service providers and LGBTQ activists with whom the Washington Blade spoke while on assignment in Brazil in March said they are afraid of what may happen in their country is President Jair Bolsonaro wins a second term later this year.
“He represents a danger to the environment,” Mariah Rafaela Silva, a transgender woman of indigenous descent who works with the Washington-based International Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights, told the Blade on March 21 during an interview at a Rio de Janeiro restaurant. “He represents a danger to diversity. He represents a danger to Black people. He represents a danger to indigenous people.”
Activists in other South American countries plan to use Pride events to demand further rights.
Organizers of the annual Pride parade that will take place in Santiago, Chile, on June 25 plan to call for additional reforms to the country’s Penal Code and anti-discrimination law and demand an end of violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The event will take place less than a month after a trans woman, Yuridia Pizarro, was killed in Iquique, a city in northern Chile.
Pride parades are also scheduled to take place in the capitals of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia respectively on June 25.
Somosgay, an LGBTQ rights group in Paraguay, is planning to hold a Pride march in Asunción, the country’s capital, on July 2. A Pride march dedicated to León Zuleta and Manuel Velandia, the founders of Colombia’s LGBTQ rights movement, will take place in Bogotá, the country’s capital, on the same day.
A Pride march is scheduled to take place in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas on July 3. Activists in Argentina and Uruguay will hold Pride marches later this year.
Iran
Grenell: ‘Real hope’ for gay rights in Iran as result of nationwide protests
Former ambassador to Germany claimed he has sneaked ‘gays and lesbians out of’ country
Richard Grenell, the presidential envoy for special missions of the United States, said on X on Tuesday that he has helped “sneak gays and lesbians out of Iran” and is seeing a change in attitudes in the country.
The post, which now has more than 25,000 likes since its uploading, claims that attitudes toward gays and lesbians are shifting amid massive economic protests across the country.
“For the first time EVER, someone has said ‘I want to wait just a bit,” the former U.S. ambassador to Germany wrote. “There is real hope coming from the inside. I don’t think you can stop this now.”
Grenell has been a longtime supporter of the president.
“Richard Grenell is a fabulous person, A STAR,” Trump posted on Truth Social days before his official appointment to the ambassador role. “He will be someplace, high up! DJT”
Iran, which is experiencing demonstrations across all 31 provinces of the country — including in Tehran, the capital — started as a result of a financial crisis causing the collapse of its national currency. Time magazine credits this uprising after the U.N. re-imposed sanctions in September over the country’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
As basic necessities like bread, rice, meat, and medical supplies become increasingly unaffordable to the majority of the more than 90 million people living there, citizens took to the streets to push back against Iran’s theocratic regime.
Grenell, who was made president and executive director of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts last year by Trump, believes that people in the majority Shiite Muslim country are also beginning to protest human rights abuses.
Iran is among only a handful of countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain punishable by death, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Venezuela
AHF client in Venezuela welcomes Maduro’s ouster
‘This is truly something we’ve been waiting for’ for decades
An AIDS Healthcare Foundation client who lives in Venezuela told the Washington Blade he welcomes the ouster of his country’s former president.
The client, who asked the Blade to remain anonymous, on Thursday said he felt “joy” when he heard the news that American forces seized Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at their home in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, during an overnight operation on Jan. 3.
“This is truly something we’ve been waiting for for 26 or 27 years,” the AHF client told the Blade.
Hugo Chávez became Venezuela’s president in 1999. Maduro succeeded him in 2013 after he died.
“I’ve always been in opposition,” said the AHF client, who stressed he was speaking to the Blade in his personal capacity and not as an AHF representative. “I’ve never agreed with the government. When I heard the news, well, you can imagine.”
He added he has “high hopes that this country will truly change, which is what it needed.”
“This means getting rid of this regime, so that American and foreign companies can invest here and Venezuela can become what it used to be, the Venezuela of the past,” he said.
The AHF client lives near the Colombia-Venezuela border. He is among the hundreds of Venezuelans who receive care at AHF’s clinic in Cúcuta, a Colombian city near the Táchira River that marks the border between the two countries.
The Simón Bolívar Bridge on the Colombia-Venezuela border on May 14, 2019. (Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
The AHF client praised U.S. President Donald Trump and reiterated his support for the Jan. 3 operation.
“It was the only way that they could go,” he said.
The Venezuelan National Assembly on Jan. 4 swore in Delcy Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president, as the country’s acting president. The AHF client with whom the Blade spoke said he is “very optimistic” about Venezuela’s future, even though the regime remains in power.
“With Maduro leaving, the regime has a certain air about it,” he said. “I think this will be a huge improvement for everyone.”
“We’re watching,” he added. “The actions that the United States government is going to implement regarding Venezuela give us hope that things will change.”
Colombia
Colombians protest against Trump after he threatened country’s president
Tens of thousands protested the US president in Bogotá
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Tens of thousands of people on Wednesday gathered in the Colombian capital to protest against President Donald Trump after he threatened Colombian President Gustavo Petro.
The protesters who gathered in Plaza Bolívar in Bogotá held signs that read, among other things, “Yankees go home” and “Petro is not alone.” Petro is among those who spoke.
The Bogotá protest took place four days after American forces seized now former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at their home in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, during an overnight operation.
The Venezuelan National Assembly on Sunday swore in Delcy Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president, as the country’s acting president. Maduro and Flores on Monday pleaded not guilty to federal drug charges in New York.
Trump on Sunday suggested the U.S. will target Petro, a former Bogotá mayor and senator who was once a member of the M-19 guerrilla movement that disbanded in the 1990s. Claudia López, a former senator who would become the country’s first female and first lesbian president if she wins Colombia’s presidential election that will take place later this year, is among those who criticized Trump’s comments.
The Bogotá protest is among hundreds against Trump that took place across Colombia on Wednesday.
Petro on Wednesday night said he and Trump spoke on the phone. Trump in a Truth Social post confirmed he and his Colombian counterpart had spoken.
“It was a great honor to speak with the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, who called to explain the situation of drugs and other disagreements that we have had,” wrote Trump. “I appreciated his call and tone, and look forward to meeting him in the near future. Arrangements are being made between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the foreign minister of Colombia. The meeting will take place in the White House in Washington, D.C.”
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