Vietnam: Unlikely haven for gays and a lucrative business opportunity

If it had been in business a decade ago, Nguyen Anh Thuan’s restaurant would have been a target for late-night police raids to arrest lawbreakers and stamp out “social evils”. But Comga Cafe, in the heart of Vietnam’s capital, is no gambling den, after-hours bar or front for dealing drugs. It is a business friendly to people of all sexual preferences in a one-party state where conservative values are strong.

Yet Thuan is experiencing success instead of resistance. Prejudice is giving way to some liberalism, he says, in a country often labelled a human rights abuser but now one of Asia’s most progressive on gay, lesbian and transgender issues.

That has spawned a niche market of an estimated 1.6 million Vietnamese at a time of galloping growth, offering money-making opportunities to firms that provide services from travel and weddings to insurance and health care.

“Our business benefits a lot from the LGBT community,” said Thuan, who also advises businesses on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, which are often abbreviated as LGBT.   Read more via South China Morning Post

Australia: Malcolm Turnbull becomes first Prime Minister to attend Sydney Gay Mardi Gras

 More than 12,000 people marched through Oxford Street at the 38th annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, drawing some 500,000 spectators.

Not connected to the Catholic holiday, Sydney’s Mardi Gras has its origins, like Pride festivals in America, in an act of violence: In 1978, participants in a sanctioned demonstration were beaten and arrested by police. Almost four decades later, LGBT rights have grabbed the spotlight again, now that England, Ireland and the U.S. all have marriage equality. The issue has become as divisive Down Under as it is in the States—the current Conservative government wants to kick the issue down the road to at least 2017. So while Saturday’s event was an unabashed celebration, it was also a protest. 

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott was steadfastly opposed to marriage equality, but his successor, Malcolm Turnbull, became the first sitting PM to attend Mardi Gras. Read more via New Now Next

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Netherlands: Gay Refugees Face Death Threats, Abuse In Netherlands

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The Dutch parliament is calling on the country’s government to offer emergency housing for gay refugees, who for months have been subject to death threats, intimidation and other forms of harassment at temporary shelters, LGBT activists say.

Members of parliament voted in favor of a motion earlier this week, requesting that the government “provide the possibility of separate and safe housing for LGBT and other vulnerable groups, if noted that their security can’t be guaranteed."

Philip Tijsma, public affairs manager at an LGBT rights organization called COC Netherlands, called the motion a breakthrough. It calls for exactly what the refugees facing abuse asked for: a safe place: “What’s the use of having a roof over your head if you’re too afraid to leave your room because of all the bullying and harassment?”

Here’s a look at some of the numbers behind the violence gay refugees face as they seek safety in the Netherlands. Read more via Vocativ 

Poland: Office of Campaign Against Homophobia (KPH) has been attacked

Office of the Campaign Against Homophobia (KPH) was attacked on 3rd of March. Three young men tried to break into the premises of the KPH, shouting offensive terms to the employees of the organisation. Few activists of the KPH were present at the office by the time of the incident and they called the police immediately. However, the attackers managed to escape before the police officers arrived.

Worth noting that, this is the second occasion in the past few days when LGBT organisation has been under attack. Earlier this week, someone threw a brick to the office of the Lambda Warszawa and broke the windows. Everybody is safe and unhurt.  Read more via KPH

Italy: Gay rights activists rally for universal marriage and adoption rights

Donning the gay pride rainbow on their cheeks and holding banners which read "we want equality," "love counts" and "the law and its rights are for everybody," around 20,000 protestors gathered in Rome's famous Piazza del Popolo to protest government plans to implement a civil union bill which fails to recognize their right to legally marry and also adopt their partners' biological children.

Demonstrators say the proposal - which had been reined in in a bid to pass the senate, and is now being assessed by the lower house - only goes part of the way to securing rights for Italy's homosexual families.

"Today's demonstration is meant to show that the Italian people aren't happy with our parliament and government," Pietro Stramba-Badiale, spokesman for civil rights group ParteCivile, told DW.

But it was not only LGBTI activists, Stramba-Badiale added, who were out demonstrating on Saturday.  Read more via DW

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South Africa: Minister of Justice calls on Africa to respect LGBTI people

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South Africa’s Minister of Justice has called on African nations to accept the human rights of LGBTI people and to change their attitudes towards sexual orientation and gender identity.

Delegates from across the continent participated in the “Africa Regional Seminar on Finding Practical Solutions for Addressing Violence and Discrimination Against Persons Based on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression.” The seminar brought together officials, human rights groups, international and regional bodies, civil society and academics.

In his speech, Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Advocate Michael Masutha said that the seminar had its roots in the resolution adopted by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in May 2014 condemning violence and other human rights violations against the LGBTI community. The historic resolution, while largely ignored by African governments, also condemned attacks by states against people on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Masutha said that at the heart of efforts to protect LGBTI Africans from “horrendous violations” was the understanding “that we must change societal attitudes”.  Read more via MambaOnline

World Bank ‘won’t fund’ projects in developing countries that endanger LGBT people

Speaking at the Economist’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ conference taking place concurrently in London, New York and Hong Kong, the President of the World Bank Jim Yong Kim spoke about proposals to rein in lending to projects that could end up harming LGBT rights.

Explaining why the bank cut off lending after Uganda passed an Anti-Homosexuality Act, he said: “Right at that moment we were about to approve a $90 million loan to support health clinics in Uganda. I worked as a doctor, and this is an important issue for me… but we looked carefully and we found out that it was possible that active discrimination could happen in these clinics, and because of the requirement to report homosexual behaviour, gay men and women could go to these clinics… and we could actually endanger people from the LGBTI community, so we had to stop that loan.”

He continued: “There were a lot of countries who condemned Uganda… but the money still flowed. We were the only ones who stopped the flow of money. The Ugandans were very angry about this… but [I told the board] I felt it was very important to take this stand. One of the questions was, what would be the implication of taking that kind of action? Well, our business has exploded since then. The Ugandans have repealed that law – the court found it unconstitutional.

“But probably the most encouraging thing was a minister of finance from a developing country came and insisted on seeing me one-on-one, and I didn’t know what it was… he came in and said the Prime Minister wanted me to know there was draconian legislation on homosexual activity going through the Parliament, but he wanted to assure me he would veto it, and it would never become law."  

Read more via Pink News
 

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Kiddle the child-friendly, Google-powered search censoring 'bisexual' and 'transgender'

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A new search engine aimed at children blocks words such as “bisexual” and “transgender” and says that they are “bad words”. The search engine uses Google’s technology by allowing people to search in a custom Google search bar. But it is meant to keep children safe, by excluding words that could be damaging to children.

Many of those words lead to pages that could be useful to children, however. And sites related to sexuality, gender and other important topics are still being missed. The site also still allows people to see adult content when searching for words like Pamela Anderson, and does not filter a story about a Danish radio host killing a rabbit.

The site says that its search results “are either handpicked and checked by our editors or filtered by Google safe search”. That process means that people “get kid-oriented results without any explicit content”.  Read more via the Independent

Twitter asks for nonprofit help in fighting trolls

Twitter’s new Trust & Safety Council, backed by a wide variety of nonprofits, aims to tackle one of the major struggles that it and its users have faced over the years: the proliferation of harassment on the social network.

The social network, which has faced some high-profile defections in recent months announced that it was collaborating with more than 40 nonprofits on the council. Among the new members are the National Cyber Security Alliance, GLAAD, the Internet Watch Foundation, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Dangerous Speech Project.

“To ensure people can continue to express themselves freely and safely on Twitter, we must provide more tools and policies,” said Patricia Cartes, the company’s head of global policy outreach. Read more via Associations Now

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Nigeria: The trials of modern LGBT life

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excerpt: I’ve dedicated some time to write articles on the gay issues in Africa, with a special focus on my home country, Nigeria. The great thing about sharing my story, aside from creating awareness, is that I’ve met lots of African gays who share their own stories, including a friend of mine, Sam, who was in Lagos, when he went to a café to meet up with a guy he found on Grindr last year. The guy followed him from the cafe and asked Sam for his phone. Suddenly, two guys appeared, telling Sam to cooperate. It dawned on him that this was a set up.

Instinctively Sam began yelling, “Thief!” to draw attention from passers-by. He had no gay content on his phone so these men couldn’t prove anything. The men began yelling, “Gay, Gay, Gay!” thinking the passers-by would attack Sam. Sam, with the confidence that there was no evidence of his sexuality, told them he’d get the police involved.

Three passers-by stopped and asked what was wrong. The men told them that Sam was gay and they set a trap for him. They said they had proof that Sam was gay. By then, eight people had joined the onlookers. A lady spoke up, “If he is gay, what’s your business?” Someone else said, “Homosexuality is legal is several countries, what’s your point?” Read more via EQ views

Cameroon: Plea to to Pope, Restrain gay-bashing Catholics

In Cameroon, a recent resurgence of anti-LGBTI rhetoric from the Catholic Church has come in for criticism from the Douala-based advocacy group Alternatives-Cameroon, which fights AIDS and supports human rights for sexual minorities.  In this press release, Alternatives-Cameroon asks Pope Francis to intervene:

We recalled that during the Synod on the Family, held a few months ago, the same prelate declared homosexuality to be a threat to the family. Cardinal Tumi [Cardinal Christian Tumi, the retired archbishop of Douala] even declared that homosexuality was a “threat to the human race.” Catholic lawyers depicted homosexuality to be a clinical pathology that should attract the attention of different hospitals.

This Church wants more than ever to set Cameroonians against each other, ignoring its mission to promote love, tolerance and peace. Has history not taught it a lesson? From slavery to the Holocaust to the Rwandan genocide — now it’s the turn of homosexuals. Read more via 76crimes