Organized for the third time Arctic Pride parade on Saturday attracted hundreds of participants. The organizers according to preliminary estimates of participants was about five hundred, the police parade, the population was estimated at about half smaller.
Arctic Pride event is of great importance not only to sexual and gender minorities Lappish, but also the image of a matter of the entire region. Read More
Lapland’s LGBTI community took to the streets over the weekend for the region’s annual Pride celebrations. Arctic Pride, which takes place in Lapland’s commercial centre, Rovaniemi, was set up to provide a safe place for sexual and gender minorities to meet in one of Europe’s most northern cities, which lies just six miles from the Arctic Circle.
The weekend offered attendees the chance to get a taste of LGBT theater, music, exhibitions and work shops, as well as the opportunity to take part in a Pride parade through the streets of Rovaniemi. Read More
A gay Rwandan refugee was brutally attacked and blackmailed in Pipeline estate. According to the victim, who cannot be named as his asylum process is underway, he was attacked by 5 men after meeting and agreeing to visit one of them in a house in Pipeline estate, Embakasi. Read More
Hundreds of people turned out for Mumbai's annual Pride Parade on Saturday, demanding equality and rights for the LGBT community in India.
Wearing an array of outfits, participants danced under huge rainbow flags and carried multi-colored balloons through neighborhoods of India's financial capital chanting "Homophobia Bharat chorro," a slogan that translates in English to "Homophobia get lost from India." Read More
The Home Office has published new guidance on the treatment of sexual identity issues in asylum claims following last year’s critical report by Borders and Immigration Chief Inspector John Vine.
The guidance states that Home Office caseworkers must conduct “a sensitive enquiry into the development and exploration of the claimant’s sexual identity and the extent to which it is relevant to the assessment of the need for protection. It should not be an enquiry into any explicit sexual activity.” Read More
A man who is seeking asylum in the UK has told how he must “prove” his claim to be gay in order to remain in his Leicester home. John Ssenkindu fears he could be jailed for life or killed if he is forced to return to Uganda – a country with notoriously homophobic laws.
In 2013, more than 20,000 people applied for asylum in the UK. Of those cases, a total of 283 people did so on the grounds they were gay or bisexual and faced persecution. Of those cases, 113 people were granted asylum. People who were refused leave to remain in the UK tended to be from countries where the Home Office believed they could live “discreetly” or because officials did not believe the applicants’ claims about their sexual orientation. Read More
Around a thousand LGBT people and their allies on Sunday flocked to HCMC's Labor Culture Palace in District 1 for the event titled “Embrace Diversity Festival 2014.” The “Ngày hội Tôn Vinh Sự Đa Dạng 2014” was held by ICS Center, an organization supporting LGBT (lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender) community’s rights in Vietnam. Read More
More than 4,000 members and supporters of the LGBTI community took to the streets of Quezon City on Saturday (13 December) for the city’s first pride parade. The event commemorated the 20th anniversary of the first pride in the Philippines and was a ‘pet project’ of the recently formed Quezon City Pride Council (QCPC).
‘Our main goal is to deliver the message of equality,’ Jeffklein Glodove, secretariat of QCPC told GMA News Online. ‘QCPC defines equality in all aspect of life. Equality in the workplace, social services, and delivery of goods without any discrimination regardless of gender identity and sexual orientation.’ Read More
In December 2013, India’s Supreme Court overthrew a 2009 ruling by the Delhi High Court that had decriminalised gay sex, effectively making homosexual sex illegal. On November 30, New Delhi saw the largest demonstration of gay pride since said ruling, and since Narendra Modi became Prime Minister of India. Below are some of the parade’s most poignant images. See more
Nearly a thousand gay rights activists marched through central New Delhi on Sunday to demand an end to discrimination against gays in India's deeply conservative society. Many at the parade said the recent Supreme Court decision criminalizing gay sex was a denial of their human rights. Read More
Three journalists and an LGBT activist have fled Russia in recent days, seeking asylum in Germany and the U.S. on the basis of alleged homophobic abuse, a series of recent news reports revealed. Lauding the move, St. Petersburg lawmaker Vitaly Milonov told reporters that now it is the best time for Russia's gays to leave their country.
"It is clear that St. Petersburg 'homos' felt that they were needed [by the West]. This is the right time to leave Russia, in a state of political humiliation. This situation even gives these people the possibility to claim social benefits [in the West]," said Milonov, who is well known for his anti-gay sentiments. Read More