Lebanon: Successful organizing in the face of attack — A personal account from NEDWA conference

Contributed by: 

Jessica Stern - Executive Director of OutRight

On Saturday, I walked into a sunny courtyard ringed by a yellow awning, the site of NEDWA, the annual conference organized by the Arab Foundation for Freedoms and Equality (AFE), and wondered if I’d stumbled into heaven. There were eighty LGBTIQ+ activists at this hotel just outside of Beirut, gesticulating emphatically, draped in political slogans, and wearing their queer best. For some, that meant a simple t-shirt and sneakers, for others, high heels and dangling earrings, a defiant act in a region where oppressive laws incessantly police dress and gender. They came from Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Libya and across the region to plan how to be safer as LGBTIQ+ activists back home.

“ A woman came over to another foreigner and me and said, Please stay here. Your presence reminds them they have an audience, and you make us safer. ”

Suddenly, two plain-clothed officers from the General Security Directorate (al-Amn al-'Aam) showed up. I was having lunch with Georges Azzi, AFE’s director, when his colleagues alerted him. General Security is one of the arms of the Lebanese security apparatus that, among other things, controls borders and hotels. They came to investigate a complaint from the Hay’at Al-Oulamaa el Mouslimin (Association of Muslim Scholars). The group had issued a statement accusing the conference of promoting homosexuality and drug use, and they called for the arrest of the organizers and for the conference to be cancelled on grounds of “incitement to immorality.” General Security asked Georges for the conference program, if the conference was about LGBTIQ rights, and about transgender participation. Georges cooperated. He explained that we were talking about many issues including LGBTIQ+ rights, public health, and feminism. They took his number and left.

Read more via OutrightInternational including Stearn’s 7 take aways from experiencing the event first hand