ILGCN RAINBOW CULTURE CONFERENCE TAKES PLACE IN BUDAPEST

ILGCN RAINBOW CULTURE CONFERENCE TAKES PLACE IN BUDAPEST 

Press release from the ILGCN Information Secretariat:  July 5, 2017

Budapest --  Seminars on LGBT culture and history, films, music, poetry, art and photography were part of the ILGCN (international rainbow culture network) international cultural conference -- July 3-4, 2017 part of this year-s Budapest Pride.

Also discussions on the role of "Bears on the Barricades," the role of trans persons in rainbow history and culture, immigrants/refugee contributions to LGBT culture, the importance of  rainbow humanists and the anti-fascist movement on the rainbow barricades -- especially in nations facing growing threats from violent neo-nazis, intolerant politicans, negative media and homophobic religious leaders.  Discussions also covered research in the Nazi and neo Nazi persecution of homosexuals -- followed 10 years after the liberation of Auschwitz by Franco's Tefía concentration camp in Spain, and the growing number of LGBT monuments paying tribute to LGBT people arrested, imprisoned, and murdered over the millinnems.

Art and photography illustrated the works of colleagues from Poland, Belarus, Russia, Estonia, Finland and elsewhere.  Films included the Canadian "Beyond Pride" covering prides in Vancouver, Sri Lanka, Brazil and Russia and the British drama "Unchechen" displaying the recent wave of persecution and violance against gays in the Chechnyan republic of Russia. 

Participants requested another such conference in the Hungarian capital next year.  The 2nd stage of this year's conference is planned for one of the 14 Nordic cities of the 2nd Nordic Rainbow History & Art Month this October -- an event inspired by the LGBT history months taking place in London for over a decade and the LGBT history month in Budapest.

The Budapest conference was also supported by Tupilak (Nordic rainbow culture workers), European Rainbow Humanists and Bears International.

Some of the Budapest conference participants from Canada, Hungary and Sweden

www.ilgcn.tupilak.org     bill@tupilak.org

IDAHOT DAY IN STOCKHOLM

 PRESS RELEASE                                                   Stockholm May 18, 2017...

TUPILAK, ILGCN HONOR IDAHOT DAY IN STOCKHOLM

      Stockholm -- Presentations, poetry, art, and film screenings were part of the Tupilak (Nordic rainbow culture workers) and the ILGCN (rainbow culture international) -arranged event at the Old Town gay-friendly pub Secret Garden marked May 17 as the international day against homophobia and transphobia.

  Presentations included program plans from the Södertälje Art Hall producer Sarah Florén for the October 13-14 part of the 2nd Nordic Rainbow History & Art Month and Bill Schiller on the other 12 Nordic  cities in the October Month -- ranging from Reykjavik to Vilnius.

  Andrea Sjöfelt presented the outslines of her seminar "scientific rascism in the care system yesterday and today for transgender people"  to be deliverind in full in Stockholm and Södertälje during the Nordic Month.

    Sccreened films included "Komet", by Victor LIndgren about LGBT refugees coming to Sweden and "Stockholm Daybreak" by Elin Övergaard about two young gays with dawn hangovers slowly waking up to their true sexual orientation.

    The Stockholm event also expressed special greetings to colleagues in the northern Swedish city of Umeå -- also marking this as IDAHOT Day and screening the film "Komet" with the prescence of the film director participating in a panel discussion..

      Special salutes were made to colleagues in the dictatorships of Belarus and Chechnya.

    Veteran Swedish  singer, musican and song writer Jan Hammarlund performed and Tupilak's Tommy Åberg read his poetry.

      ILGCN awards announced included the "Roger Casement" 2017 dipoma for journalism (named after the human rights pioneering homosexual executed by the British 101 years ago) going to the Russian LGBT Network reporting on the persecution and murder of Chechnyan gays, Russian journalist Elena Milasjina of Novaja Gazeta, facing death threats for reporting on the situation in Chechnya. and Ulf Andersson, editor of Sweden's Amnesty Press.

    The ILGCN "Rainbow Warrior" 2017 was announced , going for the first time posthumously to French policeman, Xavier Jugelé, a popular gay activist murdered in a recent terrorist attack in Paris.

    ILGCN film awards for the coming year went to the U.S/Russian documentary, "Campaign of Hate," the annual LGBT film festival in St. Petersburg "Side by Side" and the British short-film drama "Unchechnen" about the violent mistreatment of gays in Chena.

     Also, a call for a pink dollar boycott of tourism and investment in Indonesia -- with the news of the sentencing of two young gays to 85 cane lashings -- sentenced on IDAHTO day as pointed out in the international news media.

    A special IDAHOT salute was made to the young- 2-years-old Ukrainina Bears, organizing international Bear events during the Eurovision Song Contest in Kiev, helping challenge the stereotypes often describing gays as "half" men in the Eastern European media, political and religious circles -- undesering of human rights.

   And a Swedish skål was made to American whistleblower, Chelsea Manning, released on IDAHOT Day after 7 years in prison.

  Also supporting the Stockholm event:  Bears International and Nordic Rainbow Humanists

NO CULTURAL EXCHANGE, NO  PINK TOURIST OR INVESTMENT                                                        DOLLARS TO INDONESIA

     On this May 17, 2017 IDAHOT Day, two slender gay men in their 20’s in Indonesia have been found guilty of having gay sex and have been sentenced to prison and 85 cane lashes each.  Such a high number of flesh-cutting lashes can be a death sentence even for strong, muscular men let alone frail youngsters.

    The BBC tv and Al Jazeera reports showing the men taken into a police bus also reported that the young men wept when hearing the verdict.  The reports also emphasized that the sentence came on the world day against homophobia.

      

     The ILGCN, Tupilak, Nordic Rainbow Humanists and Bears International not only send a loud protest – but also call for a global rainbow cultural, tourist and investment boycott of Indonesia -- a nation spending huge amounts of money daily on BBC television advertising in hopes of attracting more foreign investments and foreign tourists to Indonesia.

      

    The tourist adds display a harmonious people, beautiful scenery, and much food – to the song of the long-deceased American musician, Louis Armstrong, singing about "green trees and red roses, too...in a wonderful world.”

    We propose that this rainbow boycott begins on this IDAHOT Day, May 17, 2017.

                                                                                                      Bill Schiller, Stockholm