ILGA surges in Asia

The Asia Region of ILGA convened a successful caucus in Manila as part of the 22nd ILGA World Conference on 11-18 November.

The caucus convened human rights activist networks and HIV/AIDS support groups from Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand who committed themselves to renewed campaigns for equality for sexual minorities.

“This Asian caucus is another milestone in our just struggle to put to task governments and private institutions in 80 countries, pressuring them to assure protection and welfare for the millions of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgenders (LGBTs), in the region,” said Lanny Winata, the newly elected Asian female representative, who hails from Indonesia.

Mr. Vivek Anand, the new Asian male representative, revealed that hand-in-hand with defending the rights of sexual minorities is tackling related issues of health, availability of health care services and poverty.

“The looming HIV/AIDS crises in India, China and many Asian countries are complicated by the antiquated policies and cultural biases against LGBTs. Our task as ILGA members, therefore, is to correct those laws and educate the people about the need to be more open to gender and sexual issues,” Anand said.

Anand cited India’s complicated attitudes towards homosexuality as a damper on efforts to control the spread of HIV, from his experiences as a health worker of the Humsafar Trust, a service organization based in Bombay.

The historic first conference on LGBT rights in an Asian country is seen to increase the opportunities in more cooperative endeavors among the scattered groups in Asia which, are mostly hidden, suffer police repression and poorly funded.

But the conference owes its inception to women who dared make the bid to host it in the region. Anna Leah Sarabia of the Philippines, ILGA’s first Asian Co-Secretary General, made the bid in 1997 to host the Conference and headed the Conference Organizing Committee that convened the support network Pinoy Pride. Sarabia now heads ILGA’s Women’s Secretariat. Rosanna Flamer-Caldera of Sri Lanka, supported the Conference Organizing Committee during her term as Female Asian Representative to the ILGA Board. She was elected ILGA’s new Female Secretary General during the Manila conference.

Sarabia noted that the conference owes part of its success to the timely contributions of mainstream human rights, women’s rights and AIDS groups in Manila who provided venues, funds, personnel and assistance to the secretariat.

The conference ended with the heartily applauded speech of the Honorable Claudia Roth, Commissioner for Human Rights and Humanitarian Assistance of the Federal Republic of Germany, who authored most of the gay-friendly legislations in the European Union.

Roth’s urgent appeal for governments to implement global human rights standards for the LGBTs in Asia inspired the member organizations towards more activism and cooperation.

ILGA Asia is expected to make modest gains for equality, as previously hostile regimes such as Taiwan, China and Singapore have started to relax their colonial-era sodomy laws and have even extended limited dialogues with LGBT citizens.