The situation at home was dismal for a small delegation of LGBT and ally Belarusians during a tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department's International Visitor Leadership Program this month.
Attacks by authorities on Belarus' LGBT community have been on the rise in recent months. Police have been raiding bars popular with the queer community, detaining and questioning members of the community, and the justice ministry refused to register or renew registrations for LGBT organizations.
"The LGBT community faces great oppression from the authorities, especially ... the two previous months," Natallia Mankouskaya, a lesbian who is a board member of GayBelarus, told the Bay Area Reporter.
"The great problem in Belarus [is] we have a very perilous situation with human rights. There is great problem with freedom of assembly and with the freedom of expression," she said.
The B.A.R. met with the delegation during their tour of the U.S. when they stopped in San Francisco on February 12. The group was on a six-city tour visiting U.S. government officials and LGBT community leaders in Washington, D.C.; Annapolis, Maryland; Dallas; Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama; and New York City.
One of the activists, Siarhiej Androsienka, chair of GayBelarus, the country's leading LGBT rights organization, was supposed to be traveling with the group but was stopped by authorities and had his passport confiscated right before the trip, according to media reports. The B.A.R. learned of this only after meeting with the Belarusian delegates.
The recent crackdown on the LGBT community in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, and throughout the country started last May on the International Day of Homophobia, according to Mankouskaya.
LGBTs don't have legal protection to defend themselves, said Mankouskaya. Two bills dealing with gender equality and domestic violence prevention that could potentially have some protections for the LGBT community have sat in the legislature since 1999. Each legislative session the bills are proposed and sometimes brought to debate, but then never voted on, said Mankouskaya.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko developed a "gender index" that's supposed to improve gender protections, but it's only for appearances, she said.
Aliaksandr Paluyan, editor of Gayby.net, added that authorities use anti-pornography laws to discriminate against gay men. There are no clear guidelines on what constitutes pornography; a simple photograph of a naked man can qualify as pornography. If caught, it opens up an individual to close scrutiny and searches of personal property by police.
Another law that attempts to halt the spread of HIV requires HIV-positive individuals to go through a diagnostic test. The law isn't widely used, but the LGBT community is concerned that it could be used as a "tool against the gay community," said Paluyan.
Drawing attention
U.S. and other foreign policy officials expressed concern about the recent attacks by Belarusian authorities on members of the nation's LGBT community and other activists in a letter to officials at the Permanent Council in Vienna, Austria on February 14.
Ambassador Ian Kelly, the U.S. representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, cited four incidents of police raiding clubs popular with the LGBT community and briefly detaining dozens of citizens. The most recent event occurred on February 8. In addition to raiding bars popular within the queer community, authorities have repeatedly denied legal recognition of GayBelarus and have questioned over 60 members of the organization regarding its activities in January, according to the letter.
In the letter, Kelly invited an open dialogue between the countries' leaders and community-based organizations to discuss the U.S.'s record on human rights. In turn, he urged Belarusian authorities to discuss its country's human rights issues.
Recent attacks on Belarus' LGBT community and refusal to register organizations aren't new. There were unsuccessful attempts to register LGBT organizations in 2011 and 1999.
LGBT Pride and other events have consistently been denied permits and support by authorities in the largely homophobic society. Without the justice ministry's stamp of approval organizations can't operate legally.
Last December was the second time GayBelarus submitted its application and there were problems, Mankouskaya said.
"We are faced with such oppression that we don't know what to do because it was four or five police raids on gay clubs in a month," Mankouskaya said. She described how police contacted members of the organization and their families, schools, and places of work. Some were taken to the police station and questioned about their involvement with GayBelarus.
"Some people are very scared because of it and several people decided to stop their membership in LGBT organizations, unfortunately," she said. "They don't want to have anything in common with the LGBT organization because they think, 'If I remain in closet everything will be good.'"
Authorities obtained GayBelarus's membership list when the group submitted its application to the justice ministry, Mankouskaya said. By Belarusian law organizations have to include their membership list when registering their organization. Officers of the ministry then handed over the list to Ministry of Internal Affairs.
A week later, members and supporters of the organization began to receive phone calls from authorities from the drug control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the KGB requesting informal interviews.
The recent attacks have scared members of the community, pushing them further into the closet, said Mankouskaya.
In spite of its non-legal status, Androsienka, who has led the gay rights group for three years, told the Gay Star News that members of the organization would "continue working without registration" and plan to appeal to Belarus' Supreme Court to repeal the justice ministry's decision.
Hope
"Unfortunately, that is why the LGBT group is vulnerable on every kind of aspect. The government applies pressure, the police exert its authorities," said Irina Solomatina, director of Gender Route, a feminist organization. "There is a misunderstanding of the concept that LGBT is an intrinsic part of the human right process and part of the human right."
Most Belarusian feminist organizations don't work with the LGBT organizations, but Gender Route does, according to Solomatina, a 43-year-old straight ally.
The leaders of Gender Route joined forces with GayBelarus and other LGBT organizations to produce a conference for LGBT Pride, the only way LGBT Belarusians can celebrate Pride due to authorities' denial of a festival or parade. The two organizations are now working on a report as a result of the conference, she said.
"This will be the very first publication which will cover LGBT issues," said Solomatina.
To contact the Embassy of Belarus, 1619 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009; phone: 202-986-1604; fax: 202-986-1805; email: [email protected].
LGBT Ugandans publicly named again
The daily tabloid Red Pepper published photos and personal information of Ugandan gay rights leaders last weekend, according to a tweet by gay activist Frank Mugisha on February 23.
Mugisha, who is the executive director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, tweeted his concern about the lives of the private individuals due to their public outing in the tabloid.
"Ugandan tabloid red pepper again, naming gay Ugandans with pictures. I feel 4 people's photos who r not 'out' the harassment they will face," he wrote.
The story was sensationalized on the cover of the tabloid with the headline, "Top Uganda Gay Recruiters Busted." The publication has a habit of sensationally outing individuals, from sports stars to LGBT citizens. The editor of the tabloid, Ben Byarabaha, stated in an interview in 2009 that he would continue to publish the names of suspected LGBT individuals in his campaign against the community.
The Anti-Homosexuality Bill is waiting to be considered for debate and voted on in Uganda's Parliament. If passed into law, criminalization of homosexuality will be sweeping from fining people associated with LGBT individuals if they don't report them leading up to the death penalty of people identifying as LGBT.
Two LGBTs murdered in Brazil
A drag queen and transgender woman were murdered last week in Brazil, according to media reports.
An Nauton Levy Coelho, a 28-year-old transgender woman who went by Mary Lu, was shot 10 times around midnight in Manaus on February 22, according to La Bruna Close, the president of Amazonian Association of Gays, Lesbians and Transvestites.
A suspect hasn't been identified, but the murder is under investigation.
Lu was the second LGBT individual murdered within a 48-hour period. Prior to Lu's violent murder, Jesse Henry Matsui Gonzaga, a 16-year-old drag queen, was killed by two shots in the back in the same city on February 20, according to activists.
The young drag queen was murdered by a classmate with whom he had a dispute, Close told reporters.
Got international LGBT news tips? Call or send them to Heather Cassell at 00+1-415-221-3541, Skype: heather.cassell, or mailto:.