2 In Peru, LGBT mark twelfth anti-hate, anti-violence day 6/11
3 Lima, Peru Mayor Susana Villaran Helms Gay Pride March 7/11
4 Perform Actions on Behalf of LGBT Anti-discrimination Ordinance 8/11
5 In Prison, a Little Health Care Goes a Long Way 10/11
January 2011 – IGLHRC
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Peruvian Action Alert
In October, IGLHRC issued an Action Alert jointly with Peruvian LGBT partners Boletín Diversidad and VIHDARTE calling for the condemnation of anti-LGBT hate crimes, including the recent murder of journalist and human rights activist Alberto Osorio. Peruvian activists delivered more than 500 letters generated by the Alert to local authorities. In response, the Office of the Public Ombudsman committed to an investigation with communication with community leaders. Authorities voiced support for hate crimes legislation being debated in parliament and committed to training police and media on LGBT rights issues.
21 June 2011 – LGBT Asylum News
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In Peru, LGBT mark twelfth anti-hate, anti-violence day
Source: Homosexual Movement of Lima
This day – National Day of Struggle Against Violence and Hate Crimes – was established as a reference control for the LGBT movement in Peru. Since May 31, 1989, in which a group of six members of the guerrilla group Revolutionary Movement Tupac Amaru (MRTA) shot dead eight members of the LGBT community, there have been a series of commemorative activities and complaints about these facts. On May 31, 1989 a group of six members of the guerrilla group Revolutionary Movement Tupac Amaru (MRTA) shot dead eight members of the LGBT community (mainly gay and trans), who were patrons of the bar "Las Gardenias," in human settlement "April 9, in the city of Tarapoto (San Martín).
The weekly "Cambio", official organ of the MRTA, claimed the move as a subversive group’s decision because the police allegedly covered "these social ills, which were used to corrupt youth." This was reported by the Commission of Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in its final report (August 28, 2003). The date has been considered by the Peruvian LGBT movement as a historical landmark. Indeed, in July 2003, and the Movement MHOL Root participated in a commemoration of the disastrous events of July 2000, when as part of "March of the Four" (which demanded a return to democracy and the rule of law) killed six workers at a branch of Banco de la Nacion. Review.
At the ceremony commemorating the MHOL introduced TLGB Memory Retablo, where he realized the events that occurred on May 31, 1989, in the city of Tarapoto. In the altarpiece with the names of people who had been killed by hate gay / lesbian / transphobic from 1989 to 2003 (mostly in Lima), reaching more than 100 victims, whose stories were previously collected long working hours. By then there were ICCHRLA Special Report, with the news in the weekly Cambio, and the testimonies of some activists linked to MHOL.
Public exposure of the Altar of Memory TLGB allowed members of the TRC-present at the event public-size the importance of these facts. This information was collected to be tested on the basis of data collected by the TRC testimonies, finding 3 references to those crimes, including happened on 31 May. This information enabled the Drafting Team CVR to incorporate the systematic persecution LGBT communities, and be the first time in history that a Commission of Truth joins LGBT communities as persecution and extermination. From the LGBT movement activists contributed to this process as Jorge Bracamonte (MHOL), Jose Montalvo and Manuel Herrera (Core Root Movement Sexual Diversity).
Subsequently, in November 2003 as part of activities MHOL anniversary of the Sexual Diversity Collective Root (independent and Root Movement) presented an initiative to commemorate the May 31 "day of the collective memory of the crimes hatred." Thus the MHOL in the summer of 2004 called for a meeting of various associations and groups to discuss TLGB. The meeting took place in the building used by Lesbian Feminist Activist Group (GALFAN). There was discussed and agree on the date and the name "National Day of Struggle Against Violence and Hate Crimes Towards Lesbian, Trans, Gays and Bisexuals."
Since 2004, Lima TLGB motion to initiate the first actions to commemorate the 31 May. The MHOL organized a first conversation about the meaning of this event with the participation of one of the Commissioners of the TRC, the anthropologist Carlos Ivan Degregori. And with the collaboration for artists Susan Torres and Giuseppe Campusano underwent intervention in the Plaza San Martin with the names of those killed or missing and wreaths in his memory placed in the columns surrounding the Plaza. Likewise, groups and university centers TLGB various commemorative events organized at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (San Marcos), the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (PUCP) and the Universidad Nacional Federico Villarreal (UNFV).
July 03, 2011 – On Top Magazine
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Lima, Peru Mayor Susana Villaran Helms Gay Pride March
by On Top Magazine Staff
Lima, Peru Mayor Susana Villaran on Saturday led the city’s Gay Pride march, the AFP reported. The 61-year-old Villaran, a former schoolteacher and journalist, became the first woman to be elected mayor of Lima last year and was sworn in on January 1. She is a member of the center-left Social Force Decentralization Party (La Fuerza Social) and a Roman Catholic.
“As a citizen, I joined the Gay Pride parade,” Villaran told reporters. “I did it again as a candidate, and now as the main authority in the city I join in this parade through the streets of Lima.” When asked how she would respond to critics for marching in the parade, Villaran insisted she couldn’t be dissuaded. “I won this election cleanly, I won with my personal convictions, and my conviction is that everyone has a right to be in Lima and express themselves,” she said. “Nobody is going to dissuade me from serving the people of Lima.”
The 10th annual parade, organized by the Homosexual Movement of Lima, attracted a few hundred people and ended at a downtown city plaza, site of the city’s Gay Pride festival.
28 August 2011- –ILGA
Spanish to English translation
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Peru: Perform Actions on Behalf of LGBT Anti-discrimination Ordinance
In support of the draft ordinance that promotes the right to equality and discrimination on grounds of gender identity and / or sexual orientation to be discussed at the Lima Metropolitan Council next September, LGBT groups are organizing interventions in the streets with to sensitize and inform the general public about the legal aspects of the ordinance and to promote rights for all.
For social inclusion
The draft ordinance is placed on the public agenda at the very time that the incoming government has announced it will emphasize social inclusion, so that this differs from other governments and develop a state for each and every citizen.
"The draft ordinance seeks to promote the right to equality and eliminate various forms of discrimination and exclusion, including physical and verbal aggression, impediments to business premises to meet in public service in general, restricted freedom of movement, arbitrary detention and kidnapping , which sadly is a reality in Lima and many other parts of the country. With a rule like this, the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima would also meet the social inclusion work to be performed by the local government, "said Gabriela Mariño, transgender activist Pride Collective. Today, conservative groups of evangelical and Catholic churches continue to press the municipality to file the project. They want to pressure the mayor and aldermen through biased statements and leaflets and using children in their mobilization.
Interventions by a non-discriminatory Lima
In late July a group of lesbian, trans, gay and bisexual Pride Collective intervened red lights, the last block of Wilson Avenue and the first block of Avenida Arequipa, in the district of Lima, ( high traffic streets and pedestrian) displaying banners against discrimination in support of the ordinance and handing out flyers to pedestrians and drivers. On August 25 will be held urban intervention "Express Yourself: For a Lima without discrimination" in the Plaza San Martin, where the public can be informed and give their opinion.
While the August 26 will be held on "Public Forum and Youth: For a Lima without discrimination. Challenges to achieving full citizenship "in the premises of the UPCH (Av Armendáriz 445-Miraflores). The forum will feature expert speakers on issues of discrimination and human rights and advocates of the Ordinance. A way to close the August 27 LGBT groups will carry out the flashmob Dare: For a Lima without discrimination in the Parque Kennedy in Miraflores.
Source: Diario de Lima Gay, LGBTI Student Bloc Peru, LGBT Youth Group "Your way." – Source: www.ciudadaniasx.org
October 28, 2011 – IPS
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In Prison, a Little Health Care Goes a Long Way
By Ángel Páez
Lima (IPS) – "I caught tuberculosis, but I’m lucky because it’s been cured," says Hernán Arévalo from his bed in the new hospital at the Peruvian prison of Lurigancho, one of the most crowded and dangerous in Latin America. "Before, whoever came in here was unlikely to get out alive." The prison of San Juan de Lurigancho, close to the city of Lima, "did not have a health centre four years ago, but a kind of antechamber to hell," Arévalo told IPS, emphasising the importance of the hospital, built with money contributed by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
The 54-year-old prisoner did not need to be told how dreadful health care used to be, before the hospital was built in Lurigancho, which had 10,000 prisoners in 2008 and today has 6,000, although it was designed to hold 3,500. Arévalo, who was sentenced to 20 years for drug smuggling, has served 13 years in Lurigancho. "In the past, you would go for treatment for one disease and come out with an even more serious illness, but now I am being given all the medicines and proper food," he said.
This radical transformation is due to the hospital, built in 2006 by the National Penitentiary Institute (INPE) at a cost of one million dollars. It was financed by the Global Fund, a partnership of governments, the private sector, civil society and affected communities created in 2002. Since then it has spent 21.7 billion dollars on programmes in 150 countries that have treated 3.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS and 8.2 million tuberculosis patients.
In Peru alone, the Global Fund gave seven million dollars between 2004 and 2008 to build the health centres at the prisons of Lurigancho and Tambopata, in the southern Madre de Dios jungle region, and to modernise tuberculosis wards, improve health care infrastructure in these and 10 other prisons, and provide medical equipment to reduce infections. "In Lurigancho prison today there are at least 420 tuberculosis patients and another 450 people diagnosed with AIDS, a much lower figure than in previous years thanks to having adequate infrastructure and trained personnel," said doctor José Best, INPE’s deputy director of health.
Read complete article here
