Stockholm -- The last Tupilak (Nordic rainbow culture workers) & ILGCN (international rainbow culture network) event of
2024 in the Swedish capital took place on November 10 -- with seminars on the campaigns against the death penalties of
LGBT folk in the growing number of countries and the Belarus celebration of 15 years of the "Journalists for Tolerance" --
the efforts to spead LGBT human rights and cultural information to this homophobic dictatorship and to many other Eastern European nations.
Coming from the southern city of Malmö, Swedish film maker Jenifer Malmquist screened her award-winning film, "On Suffocation," about the film version of the hanging of two gay perisoners some where in the Middle East.
"We had some difficulty to convince the actors to take part in such a brutal film," Jenifer said. "We had to make sure
that the prison guards' unforms did not relect any one nationality or the other -- but could be representative of any of the
numer of Middle East nations carrying out the death penalty for LGBT prisoners."
HOMOPHOBIC DEATH PENALTY SPREADING ELSEWHERE
Adding to the discussions were the frightening conclusion that the death penalty for LGBT people has spread from
Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Middle East states to Uganda and Ghana -- thanks to the financial support of the right-wing evangical movement in the United States -- boosting the former centuries-old British colonial prison sentences to the death sentences.
Also screened at the event was the award-winning "Unchechen" film by Stefan Hornby, (UK) about a gay son killed
by his angry, homophobic father -- confirming the Chechen dictator's claim that the state need not murder LGBT folk --
"their relatives will do the job."
The two films and discussion underlinine the need for rainbow films, art, cultural events, seminars to make the
death penalties of LGBT people visible -- and confirming that homophobic torture, violence and killings in many countries
take place in the arrest jails and on the streets -- not only in the execution blocks.
15 YEARS OF JOURNALISTS FOR TOLERANCE
Visiting LGBT Belarus activists -- A.K. now in exile in Canada and Max D. now in exile in Sweden -- helped celebrate
their anniversty of their project, "Journalists for Tolerance" providing desperately-needed human rights and cultural
information to colleagues still in the homophobic dictatorship of Belarus and other Eastern European countries -- where
regimes limit or totally ban LGBT information.
"We have along been working with Tupilak/ILGCN," says A.K. with visits from Sweden, our attending Swedish Prides
and together organizing annual awards for LGBT and hetero journalists in Belarus daring to defy threats and censorships
aimed at suffocating information about LGBT human rights and culture."
"We are very proud to have been working Journalists for Tolerance over these years, especially to see the survival of
this organization for so long despite the growing homophobia in Belarus, Russia, elsewhere in Eastern Europe and now
even in many homophobic, right-wing movements in Western Europe including Sweden," says Bill Schiller of Tupilak/ILGCN.
"We hope that more J&T award winners can come to more Swedish Prides to receive their diplomas -- and get
the applause they deserve, he added. "And we hope that some of our Nordic short films and the short films from the
excellent United Nations LGBT series, "Free and Equal."
40th ANNIVERSARY OF AUSTRIAN LGBT MONUMENT
"Our next event will not be in Stockholm but in Austria --on December 7 at the Nazi concentration camp,
Mauthausen -- honoring the 40th anniverary of its LGBT monument there -- the oldest in the world," Schiller adds.
"We plan to be present both in person and with a video message confirming that this monument and the Austrian LGBT movement is well worth our "Ofeo Iris" award diploma for information and research in Nazi and neo nazi persecution of LGBT. The monument's prophetic words in stone: "Totgeschlagen Totgeschwiegen" have encouraged LGBT activists all over the world to create LGBT monuments in their own cities."
"We are proud that the long-reluctant Nordic region finally approved its first permanent LGBT monument last year -- in Gothenburg -- and that Stockholm is now taking the first steps for a monument in the Swedish capital," concludes Schiller.
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photos/logos: Jenifer, On Suffocation, Unchechen, J&T, Bill, Free & Equal, Mauthausen monument, Gothenburg monument.
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More information:
bill@tupilak.org
