“Happy Pride, everyone!” Around the world it just isn’t so.

“Happy Pride, everyone!”

The following article was written by William Urich, with grateful acknowledgment from additional contributors to the Human Rights Forum held during an Annual General Meeting of InterPride: Dmitri Bartenev, Moscow Pride; Tomasz Baczkowski, Warsaw Pride, Rosanna Flamer-Caldera, Equal Ground, Sri Lanka; Oscar Ataderro, ProGay, Manilla, the Philippines; Nada Raphael, HELEM, Beruit and Montreal (Diverscite); Aidan Dunn, San Francisco

Yes, Happy Pride. It’s the familiar greeting you hear repeatedly all day at the once a year festival you go to to buy GLBTIQXYZ-themed chatchkas, lavender candles, buttons, the occasional piece of jewelry and bumper stickers, and to enjoy a beer or share recent gossip with friends. You walk around with your dog, who might be wearing a rainbow collar or hankie. You enjoy watching a parade and might even cheer the contingent of queer police officers who pass by as active participants in the Pride Parade. You hear gay and lesbian-related messages and music from queer (and supportive) speakers and musicians on stage. You see folks you know, or those you only see out at such events. But you see people. Friendly people. Lots of people. People like you. They’re all doing the same thing you’re doing: being seen strutting your Pride and enjoying a peaceful day. Fear is the farthest thing from your mind.

“Happy Pride, everyone!” It is shouted proudly from the stage to welcoming cheers and applause. It rings loudly. It rings clearly amongst the festive crowd. Once a year, we “let freedom ring.”

But, not every year. And not everywhere.

In many places around the world, there is silence. In many places around the world, there is invisibility. And in some places, when that silence and invisibility are breached, there is ostracizing, imprisonment…. or death. Indeed, let freedom ring.

We in the West have enjoyed an active Pride movement and some advances in equality and recognition since Stonewall. We’re used to it. It’s no big deal. Like many of us, Pride is moving into a comfortable and complacent middle age. In many areas of the world, however, an emerging Pride movement is just now enduring the stresses of birth….a slow and agonizing birth.

During the first Belgrade Pride March in 2001, our peaceful Serbian brother and sister Pride goers were harassed and beaten and bloodied by religious and skinhead groups as the police stood idly by and watched, sometimes joining in. Although present, the good officers offered very little support and protection from the abusing anti-gay protesters, some of their own ranks included. It turned out to be the ONLY Pride March. There has been no Pride in
Belgrade since.

Happy Pride, everyone? Not in Serbia.

In 2002, during Zagreb’s first open Pride event, the young organizer did not shout “Happy Pride” from the stage. Instead, he stood up at the microphone and yelled, “…from this day we shall be silent no longer….from this day, we won’t be invisible anymore…”

Zagreb has had a successful Pride event ever since. But this achievement was not won without an on-going, widening struggle. And it could not have been won without a courage that surpasses a constant fear of retribution from hate mongers and religious bigots. With a brave and daring GLBT community and diligent police support, Pride events have occurred in

Croatia since 2002. Happy Pride, everyone!

When the nations of the former Soviet Bloc signed on to the various international European bodies (the EU, OSCE, Council of Europe, etc.), they agreed to adopt and conform to the established European standards of Human Rights. The extent of the protection of Human Rights in any nation is directly proportional to the level of democracy that nation has attained and to how well it conforms to the standards of the international bodies of which they are a part. Idealy, it is the combined pressure of conforming nations on the “bad guys” that can force compliance with accepted practice. But not always. In some cases, like the EU, membership is contingent upon each member adopting specific Human Rights in individual member constitutions. Failure to do so can be grounds for exclusion. Russia and Moldova belong to the Council, but not the EU. The level of Human Rights protections is therefore still lower in those parts of Europe.

All over the world. Human Rights are tested during Pride organizing and activity. Neo-fascist Nationalists, religious protesters and homophobic municipal leader’s refusals hinder us while the state silently approves hate speech. There is an obvious absence of Human Rights non-profits in these areas and the ability to monitor abuses of Human Rights is extremely limited.

The guarantee of Police protection is written into constitutions. However, European Convention protocols allow for certain restrictions on freedom of assembly in the interest of national security and some homophobic mayors use this as a loophole to prevent Pride events from taking place. Moscow officials, for exa,mple, said they couldn’t guarantee the security or safety of Pride participants and therefore banned Moscow’s first gay Pride last year. Interestingly enough, they want to host an Olympics and say security and safety are of no issue. Their constitutional law and the laws of organizations they signed onto are supposed to guarantee equal treatment. This is the basis for the suit which Moscow Pride organizers have filed against the city.

In Poland, a nation which shares a similar history with other former Eastern Bloc countries, the church is the greatest stumbling block, supported by homophobic municipal officials who ban Pride events. Just last year, Warsaw was finally able to put on the first legal Pride celebration, but foreign intervention was instrumental in facilitating the event. As elsewhere, homosexuality was not visible at all during the totalitarian regime. The fall of the Soviet Union would result in an increase of rights and protections, but any Pride movement at all in these areas had to start from zero. In much of Eastern Europe (and indeed, much of Africa and Asia as well) there is a common equating of gays to criminals and pedophiles. If you’re gay, you break the law and rape children. With no nonprofit Human Rights groups to help educate the public, GLBT groups have the daunting job of multitasking, and money, or the lack of it, is always an issue. With the few brave activists working on Human Rights, HIV/AIDS, public education, etc., despite the obvious importance of Pride in these areas, the event itself often has to take a back seat. This is why it is such a MAJOR occurrance when Pride actually happens there.

Asia is closeted and people are forced to conform to heteronormitive behavior. There is family pressure to marry and produce children, so homosexuals are forced underground and become invisible. It’s hard to bring these people out when their lives are endangered. Poverty and money are always problematic, making sponsorship nearly an impossibility in some areas. The power of a closeted GLBT market is not recognized. Culture is a problem: families are shamed. With more pressing Human Rights issues, Pride is not always a prioirty.

There are some positive changes, however. Taiwan is leaning toward tolerance and has accepted Pride events. Happy Pride, everyone! The attitude in China is softening and they are expanding programs for HIV/AIDS among gay men as well as the general public. But no Pride has yet been held in Tienneman Square. In Nepal, despite the overthrow of the king, GLBTI issues are still not allowed on the Human Rights agenda. The Blue Diamond Society is working diligently and bravely to change this.

In Sri Lanka, as in most of Asia, homosexuality is still a criminal offense. GLBT people are targeted by extremists, rounded up and sometimes shot. Bangla Desh, Pakistan, Malaysia and more are the same. This is based on religious and cultural taboos. There is a current trend to abhor anything western and homosexuality is seen as a westen import, promoting deviant behavior and pedophilia. In many parts of Asia, British Colonial sodomy laws are still in place, despite their having been repealed in the UK. Now, if it existed back then to the point that it had to legislated against, why do these people think it’s a western import? The logic of straight people astounds me. In Indonesia, the Muslim police raid gay clubs and target gay Muslims.

On a brighter note, however, for the last 2 years Equal Ground, the Sri Lankan GLBT organization, has had successful Pride events, but they had no publicity or visibility (internet and word of mouth only) and made sure they provided a secure and heavily protected environment. A public Pride march is still out of the question for Sri Lankan Pride participants. They’d be like rotating ducks at a carnival shooting booth.

The Middle East is no different, with a religiously sparked homophobic culture. Gays are equated to pedophiles. Sex itself is a taboo to talk about, whether hetero or homo. In most of Islam, homosexuality is criminal and usually severely punished…. often by death. Family honor is at stake (sound familiar?) and your own family can kill you for being queer and dishonoring them. Lebanon and Israel are the only centers for GLBT activity in the Middle East. We wince when we think about the 2 young Iranian boys who were publicly hung for being gay. Since 1979, more than 4,000 alledged homosexuals have been executed there. All countries which have death penalties for homosexuality are Moslim. No Happy Pride there. Ironically, Turkey, a Moslim nation between Asia, the Mid East and Eastern Europe has been having successful Prides for 14 years. Happy Prides.

Of the 54 countries on the African continent, only a precious small handful have any sort of Pride event at all. In
Africa there exists an atmosphere of refusal to acknowledge not only basic human rights, but basic human dignity. The challenges our brothers and sisters face daily are deeply rooted in culture and religion. They are ridiculed instead of treated in hospitals, where doctors act as moralists, not physicians, and, as many of us have experienced, homophobia is too often used as a platform to gain political standing. In some areas, GLBT activists have attempted a redoing of Bills of Rights but the outspoken homophobes repeatedly block these efforts in nearly all cases.

Like the Mid East and Asia, there is a common view that homosexuality is an import to Africa. However, Attorney Alice NKrom, who has been fighting for the decriminalization of homosexuality in Cameroon and currently representing the Cameroon 9 postulates that Africa is the birthplace of mankind, therefore, homosexuality has existed from the beginning, that there can be no true creativity without diversity and cites examples of homosexual activity among various other species within the animal kingdom. She also puts forth that if God created Man, and homosexuality has existed all along, that God must want it to exist. It’s a foregone conclusion that religious and political leaders don’t often go along with that thinking.

The social climate in parts of Africa is not at all unlike that which occurred during Hitler’s reign. The people in some countries are not dealing so much with Pride issues as they are with issues of their very survival. Confidentiality as a necessity is a given and there is considerable effort to prevent assembly, particularly in Nigeria where stricter laws were just passed which basically ban homosexuality altogether. People often fear imprisonment…….or worse. There is rampant persistent devaluation of the Human in much of Africa. In Senegal, for example, there is a 95% Muslim population with an elitist electorate. The overall political and religious control emphasizes a lack of worth of the GLBT population and perpetuates justification for the denial of and refusal to recognize basic Human Rights.

We will not herewith be sayers of all doom and gloom, however, and we must recognize and encourage further the strides of Africa and her fledgling movement towards equality. Two moments which sparked change, the African Stonewall, as it were, can be traced back to a rallying call around the death of Simon Nkote and the Book Fair “rebellion” for lack of a better term. Active and successful Prides and/or pride-related situations DO exist, albeit few and far between but most are heavily entwined with the difficult business of dealing with the AIDS situation as well as Human Rights issues. This is typical of the struggling organizations throughout Africa, and the publicizing of a “GAY” or “GAY and LESBIAN” Pride event is quite rare for safety’s sake. We do have Johannesburg and Capetown in the Republic of South Africa, which both celebrate relatively large Pride events. Equality Now! Development Group is but one of several struggling organizations in Kenya trying to organize an event.

Namibia celebrates a cultural Pride week through the efforts of the Rainbow Project in Windhoek. And in Zimbabwe, the Jackoranda Festival organized in part by GALZ has a large GLBT contingent. And Nigeria, where being queer can be “hazardous to one’s health” for a multitude of reasons, looks to celebrate Black Gold Pride despite horrific opposition from the Anglican Church and Islamic officials. There are indeed other organizations in various stages of growth with all the pain and suffering that that often entails. Notice the lack of use of the term PRIDE in most of the African events, but keep in mind: “…a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”.

There is a strong desire in Africa to set up a network to follow the South African example, a nation that is looked up to by her neighbors on the continent as the powerhouse of socio-economic change in the region. Although the first nation to incorporate the equal treatment of homosexuals into its constitution, it must be remembered and understood, however, that this was a long and hard-won battle. It was not done in the forefront of lawmaking, but slid in on the coat tails of other legislation. “Sex change issues” is the only piece of actual GLBT legislation. Despite the successes of South Africa in our lifetime, the access to Social Security and legal aid is still not good.

There has to be a closer scrutiny of the entire socio-economic system throughout the continent: the high jobless rate, lack of sponsors and knowledge and means to find them, no money to organize and lobby to change archaic laws, etc., etc., ad nauseum. Although HIV/AIDS is rampant, there is poor access to healthcare. As with gays and lesbians in other cultures, many marry to attempt to hide their true identity and there is forced invisibility just to stay alive. Bush has prevented all funding dealing with any aspect of birth control whatsoever making life-saving condoms and even lubricants widely unavailable.

In Atlanta, New York, Boston, Toronto, London, Berlin and many other cities and towns around the globe we have been having Prides for a while now. Big Prides and little Prides. Happy Prides, all. Belgrade, Bucharest, Chisinau, Krakow, Moscow, Poznan, Riga, Katmanhdu, Karachi, Tehran, Bagdad, Abuja, Addis Ababa, Nairobi, Mambassa and many, many other cities and regions continue to endure the suffering and feel the pain and fear that we either never knew or have long ago forgotten. No Happy Pride there.

Pride is not just about visibility, or marching in a parade or eating different foods or enjoying a stage show. It’s all about rights. If you’re reading this, you have them. You’re lucky. We call it freedom. Human Rights continues to be an issue around the planet. Violations of basic Human Rights occur on a daily basis throughout the world and they occur with a severity the likes of which we can have little or no comprehension for. Without basic Human Rights, there can be no Pride. There are, however, brave souls in difficult areas who continue to try. We should count our many blessings as we celebrate our Pride and remember the words of Pearl S. Buck: “None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.”

So, when you say “Happy Pride” while you’re enjoying the festivities at your Pride event, keep it somewhere in the back of your thoughts that you are among the fortunate. Not all of us can say:

Happy Pride, everyone.

Urich is a member of Connecticut PRIDE Hartford Rally and Festival, Inc., a Regional Director for InterPride and serves as Chair of the InterPride Subcommittee on International GLBTI Human and Civil Rights.