Last Friday
I went to Amnesty Finland event. The issue was the situation in Uganda. The key
note speaker was a Ugandan activist Kasha
Jacqueline Nabagesera and the co speaker was
Canadian-Somali Hassan Shire Sheikh.
They told about the situation in Eastern Africa and especially in Uganda. Homosexuality
is still a taboo in most parts of Africa, due to various reasons. One is increasing
influence of Islamic fundamentalists. In Uganda the reason is more relied on Christianity
strongly supported by hard core Christian missionaries. So there’s a law
prohibiting being a gay that might sentence you for a long time to prison. It
was meant to include even the death penalty to the bill but it was finally
dropped because of strong international opinion against it.
Anyway the
life of gay people in Uganda is terrible. They said it is not the authorities.
it is the other people. Local tabloid newspapers began a hate campaign in 2006,
publishing the names and photos of homosexuals with captions such as ‘homo
terror!’ In 2010, Nabagesera’s name was mentioned in the Ugandan tabloid
Rolling Stone in an article headlined: ‘Hang them: they are after our kids!’
However the
main message for us was we should carefully listen to the local activists and
not make our own conclusions what to do; in many cases the wrong actions may
only make the situation even worse.
I found out
the situation of the trans people varies hugely in Africa. In some areas trans
people are appreciated highly due to tribal traditions. On the other hand in
many cases trans people are regarded as gay, no matter what their sexual
orientation is.
After the discourse
we went to the hang out at the office of the Rainbow family organization. There
I had an opportunity to chat with LBGT people from other countries. The Greek
lady told me about the bad situation of trans people in her home country. And
one of the Iranian guests told interesting things about the situation in Iran. One
thing was the situation of trans women is not so bad as it could be: Ajatollah
Khomeini laid down the bill that let the trans women do their sex-reassignment.
The background of the bill is it is severely prohibited for men to have sex
with a man. But if the partner is not a man…. The bad news about that was many
gay men are forced to make the sex-reassignment against their own will. The situation
of lesbian women is a bit easier because the life of women is partly covered
from religious polices and on the other hand it is more natural for women to live
together. However the pressure will increase if you seem to be too lazy to try
to get married.
We also talked about the other implication of the gay sex in Islamic countries: There's a tradition to kidnap a boy to a dancer in Northern Pakistan and in Afghanistan. They are forced to dress as a girl and dance to men and finally have sex with them. And men are not having sex with other men, the boys are actually girls, you see... It practically ruins the boys' life and it is common that they commit a suicide. How awful, it is so hard to even think about it.
Our
domestic issue was the “Hetero Pride” demonstration next day. It was organized
by some retarded religious and extreme right wing politicians. They have
introduced the word homosation to express the fact that homosexuality is issued
rather commonly in media. They claim it is even not allowed to tell someone is
married or have kids…. The most horrifying situation has happened when one of
these lads heard his son naming him “homo father” after watching a soap where
there was a homosexual character. How an awful situation for homophobic
people!!
We were
wondering the claimed problem there’s sooo much homo issues in media. So we
planned to propose one of the Finnish journal to edit one number of the paper
in such fashion as “In the film a hetero man is trying to get an attention of
the hetero dame.”, “Hetero politician has said he’s against any hidden
agreements with other hetero politicians” etc.
And what comes to Hetero Pride implementation, it was not a particular
success… There were about 50 participants and even more policemen and anti
demonstrators. It was said to be a merry (should I say gay….) pro family event but there were almost only
men. And after the demonstration some of the organizers were posing with Nazis
with Nazi greeting!!
So it was
not a merry family event for sure!
BTW
The last week I also became a granny. It is a marvelous feeling, my twin granddaughters are simply fantastic!!
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