PRESS RELEASE
Stockholm May 18, 2017
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 "Unch
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.
Photos by Joakim of Sweden.
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
