love is a human right - Amnesty blog

Amnesty is in the midst of an ongoing almighty battle against homophobia around the world, and especially in Eastern Europe. With the furore surrounding the gay pride parades in Riga and Jerusalem this summer, among others, this season has already proved to be an intense one for all those involved…..





At the beginning of June a group from Amnesty in the UK joined Gay Pride marchers on Latvia’s 3rd ever Pride march, in the capital city Riga. The city authorities had tried to ban the march, but the courts overturned this decision and it went ahead:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6716287.stm
The key organisers were the inspiring Latvian gay rights group Mozaika:
http://www.mozaika.lv/index .php?lng=en
whose founder Linda is interviewed here:
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/lva-030507-background-eng

The march couldn’t have been more different from the party atmosphere of the well established Pride marches here in London or Manchester. The group was joined by 300+ seriously-well-armoured police who were there to keep the baying anti-gay counter-demonstrators at bay. One activist documented the march on his blog: http://blog.amnesty.org/rigapride/



It’s not enough to assume prejudice against LGBT people is only a problem elsewhere. A really worrying recent survey made by Stonewall shows that there is still serious homophobia in the UK: http://www.stonewall.org.uk/education_for_all/news/current_news/1794.asp
and 40 years since the law was changed here, decriminalising homosexuality (July 1967), there is clearly still a long way to go.



Pride in London staged a mock Eurovision song contest and awarded “nil points” to certain countries… Blogged about on this blog: http://acediscovery.blogspot.com/search/label/eurovision

If you want to take action online, you can click on:http://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=876