Europe
Poland LGBTQ ‘Free Zones’ tossed, UK ranking drops, Pussy Riot singer escapes
Maria Alyokhina fled Russia disguised as a food delivery driver
LGBTQ news from Europe this past week saw a major development in Poland after a court annulled actions taken previously to declare ‘LGBT Free Zones’ by provincial governments.
Large parts of Poland were labelled “LGBT-free zones,” where regional governments declared they were against LGBTQ ideology. Last fall the executive branch of the European Union, the European Commission, sent letters out last week to the governors of five of Poland’s voivodeships, (provinces) warning that pandemic relief funds totaling over 126 million euros ($150 million) will be withheld over anti-LGBTQ measures passed in their jurisdictions.
Poland has seen a resurgence in the past three years of rightwing religious ultra-conservative groups backed by nationalistic extremists in this heavily Catholic country of 38 million, which have led to passage of measures to restrict pride parades and other LGBTQ-friendly events from taking place.
Proponents of these measures claim the necessity of the provinces to be “free of LGBTQ ideology” saying this is mandated by average Poles as well as by the anti-LGBTQ views of the Catholic Church.
The majority of Polish people support LGBTQ rights surrounding marriage and family, according to research by Miłość Nie Wyklucza (Love Does Not Exclude.)
The survey found 56 percent of respondents believe same-sex marriage should be legal to ensure the safety of their children. Even more, 65 percent, said they felt “a biological parent raising a child with a same-sex partner” fits the definition of family. And 58 percent of people said a same-sex couple is a family even without children.
Lublin Regional Assembly passed a resolution in April 2019 declaring that LGBTQ rights aim to “annihilate” the “values shaped by the Catholic Church” PinkNewsUK reported.
In the same month, Ryki County, a district in Lublin, passed a resolution voting to protect “children, young people, families and Polish schools” from an apparent wave of “homoterror” being unleashed by “left-liberal groups.”
PinkNewsUK also reported that the Provincial Administrative Court in Lublin found the resolutions were “adopted without legal basis and in gross violation of the law” after a legal challenge by the Polish Ombudsman.
They become the eighth and ninth “LGBT-free zones” voided by the courts following interventions by the Polish Ombudsman. Municipal councils in Istebna, Klwów, Serniki, Osiek, Lipinki, Niebylec and the Tarnowski County Council all scrapped such measures in 2019.
This past June, the leaders of 17 European Union countries had signed a letter that urges the EU to fight anti-LGBTQ discrimination. The EU has also called out the anti-LGBTQ measures taken more recently in Hungary.
ILGA-Europe, a Brussels based advocacy group promoting the interests of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people, at the European level, in a statement it sent to the Blade in June after the EU letter was issued, notes that both Hungary and Poland, another EU country in which lawmakers have sought to restrict LGBTQ rights in recent years are at odds with the EU position on LGBTQ+ people.
“For quite some time now, we’ve been informing EU ministers about systematic breaches of EU law committed by Hungary and Poland, which impact on LGBTI rights and the lives of LGBTI people,” says ILGA-Europe.
The UK has dropped to 14th in the ILGA-Europe’s rankings for LGBTQ rights, scoring 53 out of a possible 100
ILGA-Europe, which produces a yearly “rainbow map” of 49 countries across Europe, revealed this past week that the United Kingdom had the most significant drop in ranking for LGBTQ equality rights this past year falling from 10th to 14th place.
Leading contributors to the loss in ranking and standing on the ILGA annual listing was due in part to the ongoing battles over transgender rights with a failure by the Tory-led government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson to set gender recognition policies especially in regard to a total ban on LGBTQ conversion therapy.
ILGA-Europe’s advocacy director, Katrin Hugendubel, described the UK’s plunging status to The Guardian newspaper as “a sad reminder that when governments don’t stand strong on their commitments to advance minority rights, a powerful opposition can use that space to spread hate and division”.
The chief executive of Stonewall UK, Nancy Kelley, warned that “years of progress on LGBTQ+ policy that was achieved under successive administrations has been rapidly eroded by a UK government that has taken its foot off the pedal”.
The ILGA highlighted the UK government’s failure to extend a ban on conversion practices to transgender people, as well as abandonment of promised reforms on gender recognition and its equality action plan. It added that the UK also lost points because the government’s equalities watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), was “not … effectively protecting on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity” the Guardian reported.
Kelley called on the prime minister to “step back into the game” as a leader in protecting and promoting LGBTQ rights.
“As we approach the 50th anniversary of the first Pride in the UK, we call for his active leadership to rebuild our human rights institutions and to deliver a strategic policy programme that enables all LGBTQ+ people in the UK to live their lives in freedom and safety.”
Maria Alyokhina of Pussy Riot escaped from Russia disguised as a food delivery worker
In what could be best described as a story worthy of a Cold-War era spy novel, the leader of the Russian activist band Pussy Riot fled Russia disguised as a food-delivery worker. Maria V. Alyokhina in an interview with the New York Times that she was able to get to her girlfriend’s home in Vilnius, Lithuania, after evading Russian Federal Security Services agents.
The queer singer-songwriter musician and human rights activist who was on house arrest at the time of her escape was set to be transferred to a penal colony in the Russian Far East after being arrested six times in the past year protesting the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin and more recently his order for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
According to the account in the New York Times, Alyokhina left her apartment in the food-delivery worker disguise, and an unnamed friend drove her to the Belarusian border. The problem then became exiting from Belarus to Lithuania as she was turned away at the border twice by Lithuanian border agents.
The Times reported that Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson eventually helped Alyokhina acquire the necessary travel documents from an unnamed country that in turn assisted her entering into Lithuania, where many Pussy Riot members had already escaped to, including Alyokhina’s girlfriend, Lucy Shtein.
The band has now kicked off their European tour in Berlin.
Pussy Riot concert with activist after escape from Russia
Netherlands
Tens of thousands take part in World Pride March
Event capped off two weeks of celebrations in Amsterdam.
AMSTERDAM — Tens of thousands of people on Saturday participated in the World Pride March in Amsterdam.
Outright International Executive Director Maria Sjödin and Paolo Rondelli, who in 2022 became the world’s first openly gay head of state when he became Captain Regent of San Marino, are among those who participated alongside Massachusetts state Rep. Jack Lewis and Olena Shevchenko, chair of Insight, an LGBTQ advocacy group in Ukraine, and others.
Members of D66, the centrist Dutch political party that Prime Minister Rob Jetten heads, also marched.
Jetten in February became the Netherlands’ first openly gay prime minister. He participated in the opening of the World Pride Human Rights Conference on Aug. 5 and spoke on a panel with Rondelli, former Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, and other gay and lesbian current and former heads of government.
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)
The march took place a week after hundreds of thousands of people lined Amsterdam’s canals for the city’s annual Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade.
A terrorist attack at Berlin’s Christopher Street Day on July 25 left one person dead and more than two dozen others injured.
The incident overshadowed World Pride, which began hours earlier and ended on Saturday.
Dutch authorities increased security measures in the aftermath of the July 25 attack. No incidents were reported during World Pride.
Netherlands
Dutch PM: More needs to be done to defend trans rights
Rob Jetten on Friday was on World Pride Human Rights Conference panel
Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers and Photo Editor Michael Key will be on assignment in Amsterdam until Aug. 10.
AMSTERDAM — Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten on Friday said more needs to be done to defend transgender people and their rights.
“Everywhere in the Western world, it’s definitely the group that’s the most vulnerable in the moment and it’s rather well-picked also by our advisories,” he said during a panel at the World Pride Human Rights Conference in Amsterdam that Ying Xin and Diego García Blum of Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights Policy moderated. “They’ve chosen the smallest group within our broader community (trans people) to attack them, to ensure that we can strip their rights and if they’ve done with that, they’ll go after the next group within our community, so we shouldn’t be naïve about what’s behind it.”
“It’s very well-funded. It’s very well-organized and we have to organize as well to fight back and to win this fight,” added Jetten. “We also need to be more open in conversations that we are having within the community and also dive into it much deeper and maybe even have more difficult and annoying conversations.”
Jetten in February became the Netherlands’ first openly gay prime minister.
He appeared on the panel alongside former Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who in 2017 became his country’s first openly gay head of government, and former San Marino Captain Regent Paolo Rondelli, who was his country’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2007-2016.
Several other current former heads of government who are gay or lesbian also participated in the panel. They include former Icelandic Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, former Luxembourgish Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, and Andorran Prime Minister Xavier Espot Zamora. California Congressman Mark Takano, who chairs the Congressional Equality Caucus, and LGBTQ+ Victory Fund CEO Evan Low were among those who attended.
Jetten in his remarks said he was “very surprised” to learn that “not only in the U.S. but also in some European countries that we’ve let them decide what the gay group looked like.” The Dutch prime minister further pointed out that conservatives began “to attack the debate on toilets or starting this debate about trans people in Olympic games.”
“That is, of course, a ridiculous debate to start, but we’ve got distracted because we were so busy having this debate on Olympians, and then we actually forgot the real fight was about access to healthcare, just being yourself, being able to enlist in the army, or being able to be a young trans boy or girl in school,” said Jetten. “We got distracted by some fresh meat that was thrown into the area by some very conservative people.”
“We have to open our eyes and have very in-depth conservations within our community, and come up with a much better strategy to win this fight and to protect all our trans brothers and sisters, dolls, whatever,” he added. “Because if we don’t win this fight for trans people, we’re going to lose the bigger fight for all LGBTQ people in the world.”
Varadkar noted Ireland in 2015 passed a law that allows people to legally change their gender without surgery or other medical interventions.
He conceded there was “a liberal wind blowing across the world at the time, and it was largely uncontested.”
“It would be harder now, quite frankly, to do that legislation,” said Varadkar.
Scottish lawmakers in 2022 passed the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which lowered the age for anyone to legally change their gender without medical intervention from 18 to 16. Then-British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government later blocked the measure from taking effect.
The U.K. Supreme Court in 2025 ruled the legal definition of a woman under the country’s Equality Act is limited to “biological women.” Author J.K. Rowling is among those who praised the decision that stemmed from a case that challenged the Scottish government’s decision to include trans women in its definition of women when it sought to increase the number of women on government boards.
The Trump-Vance administration on Jan. 20, 2025, the first day it was in office, issued a sweeping executive order that, among other things, declared the federal government would only recognize two genders: male and female. The White House earlier this year in its counterterrorism strategy said it “will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”
“We have to stay united,” said Rondelli. “The strategy was, since the beginning, was a Nazi strategy to create groups, target groups, and to create maximum distractions to avoid discussion about some sort of policies.”
“Trans people are the target at the moment,” he added. “But after them it will probably be some others, so we have to stay united.”
Boris Dittrich, the Dutch Senate’s First Vice President and a member of Jetten’s D66 party who was previously global advocacy director for Human Rights Watch’s LGBTQ Rights Program, at the end of the panel asked about protecting intersex babies from what advocates maintain are unnecessary surgeries.
Netherlands
Dutch prime minister opens World Pride Human Rights Conference
Rob Jetten is country’s first openly gay head of government
Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers and Photo Editor Michael Key are on assignment in Amsterdam through Aug. 10.
AMSTERDAM — Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten on Wednesday opened the World Pride Human Rights Conference in Amsterdam.
Jetten — who in February became the country’s first openly gay prime minister — began his remarks with an acknowledgment that the July 25 terrorist attack at Berlin’s Christopher Street Day that left one person dead and more than two dozen others injured “filled me with anger and sorrow.”
He started to speak after a group of activists began to shout at him over his government’s position on Palestine — the International Criminal Court, which is based in The Hague, has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leaders in connection with crimes against humanity it says they committed in the Gaza Strip and Israel after Oct. 7.
Jetten stood silently and allowed them to protest before security personnel removed them from the room.
View on Threads
Jetten in his speech acknowledged this year marks 25 years since the Netherlands became the first country to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples. He also pointed out 2025 marks Amsterdam Pride’s Canal Parade‘s 30th year.
“More and more in recent years, we’ve seen hard won progress being eroded,” conceded Jetten. “We’ve seen countries backsliding in equal rights legislation. We’ve seen homophobic hate speech becoming more overt and aggressive, and not only out in the real world, but online as well.”
Jetten pointed out “online hatred is one of the biggest threats facing the LGBTQIA+ people today.”
“All around the world … misinformation and disinformation can be spread in the blink of an eye with a single mouse click, reaching much further and much faster than NGOs, youth workers and health organizations can,” he said. “This is always how hatred takes hold. First in the shadows, outside the spotlight of society, underestimated by everyone, until, having grown into a many headed monster, it crawls out of the darkness.”
Jetten said his government this fall will launch “a social dialog on online discrimination and offering specific guidance on action to take.” This will include “training courses for municipalities and civil society organizations to help them deal with online hate speech.”
His government over the next three years will invest €7.5 million each year “in improving the safety of the queer community in our cities with an alliance of organizations committed to safety, both in the public space and in the workspace for LGBTQI+ people, and with a public information campaign to combat discrimination and disinformation.” Jetten also said the government will promote a campaign in Dutch schools that encourages students and teachers to wear purple as a way to show their support for the LGBTQ community.
’Equal rights are not a Western agenda’
Jetten in his speech also singled out “conservative forces” in Uganda, Senegal, and in other countries who are framing LGBTQ rights “developments as a neocolonial Western agenda.”
“Under the pretense of resisting so-called Western moral decadence, horrendous laws are enacted and promoted, laws that put the rights of free people under severe pressure,” he said. “But in reality, many communities in these countries have a long history of diversity and freedom, and the laws that impose the restrictions were in fact put in place by the colonial powers.”
“No matter how hard those conservative forces try to pull the wool over people’s eyes, queer communities around the world know that equal rights are not a Western agenda,” added Jetten. “They are first and foremost a human agenda.”
Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema and Nayyab Ali, co-chair of the Ending Violence Against Women and Girls Alliance Pakistan, are among those who also spoke on Wednesday. Lady Phyll, co-founder of UK Black Pride, and Camiel Welling, supervisor of the Amsterdam Trans Clinic, are co-hosting the conference that ends Friday.
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