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.
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
