Tag: gay sri lanka

Shadow Foreign Secretary: Sri Lanka is ‘heading in the wrong direction’ on LGBT rights

Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander has criticised Sri Lanka’s record on LGBT rights ahead of a Commonwealth summit. Commenting on a report by the Kaleidoscope Trust, the senior Labour MP told the Press Association that the country is “heading in the wrong direction”. “Today’s report from the Kaleidoscope Trust highlights the ongoing concern about human… Read more »

Sri Lanka begins ‘systematic targeting’ of gays

Buddhist monk arrested for alleged gay pedophilia, transgender schoolboy entrapped in smear campaign After state-supported homophobic campaigns in Russia, Zimbabwe and several other African countries, the Buddhist island state of Sri Lanka has also begun a systematic crackdown on its gay community, rights activists say. President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government, which controls the army, law enforcement… Read more »

Sri lanka gay rights group launches petition to repeal gay sex laws

Sri Lanka’s LGBT community, long struggling for acceptance, celebrate their eighth Pride Festival this week and are featured in a special issue of Sri Lanka’s Life Times in which it declared: “Life Times Sri Lanka supports the decriminalisation of private acts between consenting adults, gay or straight!” With Colombo Pride in full swing, Sri Lanka… Read more »

LT Magazine goes Gay for Colombo PRIDE 2012!

Equal Ground is proud to have collaborated with Life Times Magazine to publish Chasing Rainbows and dismissing Stereotypes”. As Radhika Philip, the Editor of Life Times says: “Why we would dedicate so much of our June publication to celebrating PRIDE comes down to this: because we can. We think its the right thing to do.… Read more »

Children of Srikandi: Indonesia’s first lesbian film

Having had its world premiere at the recent Berlin Film Festival, Children of Srikandi – the first film to document the lives of queer women in Indonesia – will likely be screened at a LGBT film festival near you this year. Fridae speaks with co-producers Laura Coppens and Angelika Levi, and co-director Yulia Dwi Andriyanti… Read more »

Codified homophobia in Sri Lanka and its oppressive side-effects

“Saman” is a graduate student in Sri Lanka who was doing research on ‘safer sex’ for his thesis. He told me that while he was working in the southern city of Galle, the local police detained and tortured him assuming he was gay. While in detention he witnessed how the Sri Lankan police discriminated against… Read more »

Sri Lankan activist Rosanna Flamer-Caldera

Rosanna Flamer-Caldera has been active in the struggle for queer rights in Sri Lanka and internationally since 1999. She was a founding member of Women’s Support Group (1999), the only organization for lesbians, bi women and trans people in Sri Lanka; and Equal Ground (2004), a mixed LGBTQ organization Source – Orinam