GAY HOMELAND FOUNDATION
PRESS RELEASE
GHF PR EN 2007/003 (Public)
4 August 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Gay Homeland Foundation
welcomes the Global Gay Solidarity Day
On August 4, 2007 representatives of the Gay
Homeland Foundation (GHF) will call on several consulates located in Cologne
and hand over letters petitioning for decriminalization of homosexuality in
Gambia, Malaysia, Nepal, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunesia.
The Foundation welcomes the decision of
Gay activists in Caracas, Cologne, Mexico City, San Diego, San Francisco,
Stockholm, Warsaw, Washington and Vancouver to initiate actions on this Global
Gay Solidarity Day, which hopefully will become a good tradition and will give
fresh dynamics to the Gay movement in the next years. With some 300 millions
Gay individuals worldwide there is much potential for interconnection and joint
action.
GHF is pleased to see various Gay
organizations and activists now standing united to express Gay solidarity.
Despite all disagreements over singular issues, Gays still are one people, and
in decisive moments they must stick together and confront the adversary in a
close formation.
The Global Gay Solidarity Day shall serve
as a reminder that while homophobia is imposed upon Gay people by others, there
are also many things which Gays can make for other Gays by own efforts. The
Global Gay Solidarity Day symbolically expresses the powerfull potential Gays
have as a people, the solidarity itself shall be lived throughout the entire
year as well.
Their oppressors of Gay people speculate
that Gays will abstain from assisting their brothers and sisters from other
countries, declaring such persecution to be within the sole competency of the
responsible government.
GHF rejects such argumentation as
frivolous. Persecution of Gay people in any given country is not an internal
affair of the persecuting state, it is an assault on the Gay people in its
entirety. Appeals to the national souvereignty are not a legitimate
argumentation when it comes to violation of human rights. Gay citizens of these
states are belonging to the Gay people, thus the worldwide Gay community shall
no longer accept such infringements of safety and cultural freedoms of Gay
people, wherever they occure.
When a country is interested in good
relations to all peoples and nations, it shall respect all these peoples and
nations. Criminalization of family life and disruption of cultural events of
members of a particular minority is certainly not a suitable way to establish
good international relations.
Persecuting countries shall be put before
the option to abandon their laws criminalizing homosexuality, or be subjected
to an embargo by countries belonging to “the free world.” The governments of
western democracies must otherwise explain to Gay people why expropriation of
private property is a sufficient reason for an embargo, but severe persecution
of Gay people is not. Governments of the countries posing as human rights
defenders must explain to Gay people how it is possible for them to be friends
with governments determied to exterminate Gays from their populations.
The United Nations must address the Gay
issue immediately. No other people is persecuted as fiercefully in so many
states as the Gay people, and no other violation of human rights is as readily
overlooked by the majourity of UN member states. The state sanctioned
persecution of Gays often amounts to cultural and physical genocide as
specified by the corresponding UN convention, and it must not be tolerated by
the UN anymore. Unlike the poverty issue, this one does not cost billions of
dollars and does not require complicated infrastructure programs. All it takes
for the concerned governments is to rewrite few passages of their legislations.
To the knowledge of GHF, Gay people are
persecuted by criminal legislation in the following countries: Afghanistan,
Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados,
Bhutan, Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic,
Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominica, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gabon,
Gambia, Ghana, Grenada, Guinea, Guyana, India, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Kenya,
Kiribati, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives,
Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Nicaragua,
Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Qatar,
Samoa, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Seychelles, Singapore, the Solomon Islands,
Somalia, Sri Lanka, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the
Grenadines, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and
Tobago, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, United Arab Emirates,
Uzbekistan, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Gays can be subjected to the death penalty
in Afghanistan, Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates
and Yemen.
The Gay Homeland Foundation renews its
appeal to the international community to cease deporting Gay and Lesbian
asylum-seekers to persecuting countries, and to consider instead the
establishment of a self-administered territory for the Gay and Lesbian people.
-- 30 --
763 words
CONTACT INFORMATION:
The Gay
Homeland Foundation is an organization dedicated to furtherance of a Gay
national movement and cultural progress of the Gay and Lesbian community; the
administrative center is located in Cologne, Germany. The Foundation is
actively investigating the possibilities for establishment of self-administered
LGBT settlements and organizing the LGBT community in a sovereign political entity.
For additional background material, please
visit: http://gayhomeland.org
For further event information, please contact
Viktor Zimmermann:
viktor.zimmermann@gayhomeland.org
tel. +49-221-1691810