Tag Archives: rights and freedoms

Editorial: Gay marriage in Georgia

JUNE 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The issue of gay rights and gay marriage in Georgia has become increasingly heated. Each side loathes the other. There is little dialogue but plenty of insults and the odd clash.

Now a move by anti-gay right activists to try to enshrine marriage in Georgia’s constitution between a man and a woman through a referendum threatens to bring this animosity to a head. And at a dangerous time.

Even at the best of times, Georgia is a tinderbox. If the activists do collect the 200,000 signatures needed to hold a referendum the vote is likely to take place on the same day as a tense parliamentary election – Oct. 8.

Georgia is a conservative society and it is likely that the activists will be able to raise the 200,000 signatures. It was always going to be a long, fractious parliamentary election campaign. The prospect of a referendum on the same day deliberating on gay rights could make it explosive.

The role of the powerful Orthodox Church and various politicians and their rhetoric will be crucial in managing the various moods.

ENDS

(Editorial from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)

Gay rights activists protest in Georgia against WCF meeting

MAY 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in Georgia arrested several gay rights activists ahead of a planned demonstration outside a meeting of the US-based World Congress of Families, highlighting tension in Georgian society between liberal and conservative factions.

The activists accused the World Congress of Families, which campaigns against gay rights and heavily promotes conservative Christian values, of being deliberately provocative by choosing May 15 – 18 as the date for its annual meeting.

Importantly May 17 is the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. In Georgia, it is also the anniversary of violent attacks on a pro-gay rights march in Tbilisi in 2013. Around two dozen activists were wounded in the clashes, one of the worst attacks in the former Soviet Union on gay rights activists.

Outside the World Congress of Families meeting activists placed a rainbow-coloured stool, or taburetka.

“The taburetka became a symbol of oppression and daily violence,” Mariam Kvaratskhelia, representative of the LGBT Georgia lobby group, was quoted in DFW as saying.

“LGBT people exist in Georgia and they’re experiencing daily oppression. We’re calling the Georgian Orthodox Church to stop generating hate towards LGBT persons within society.”

In the 2013 attack on gay-rights campaigners, a heavily-bearded Orthodox priest was photographed wielding a stool and using it as a weapon against the activists.

It was an image that has come to represent reactionary forces associated with the Georgian Orthodox Church.

Georgian society is generally regarded as being conservative, an issue that is likely to play a role in October’s parliamentary election. Politicians have already been looking to win support from the large groups which support the Georgian Orthodox Church. This group is generally considered to be anti-gay rights.

Opinion polls have shown that the election is going to be close.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Kyrgyzstan introduces media law

MAY 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz legislators proposed a new bill to restrict foreign media funding into the country, a law that could further undermine Kyrgyzstan’s shaky freedom of expression record. The new law would ban foreigners from setting up media organisations in the country and restrict foreign funding to 20% of an organisation’s total revenue. Media lobby groups have said that this law will serve only to restrict media and reduce free speech.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Editorial: Gay rights in Armenia and Azerbaijan

MAY 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A report by the lobby group IGLA-Europe makes for discouraging reading. Propping up the league table on gay, lesbian and transgender rights in 49 countries across Europe and its near abroad are Azerbaijan and Armenia, split by Russia.

They scored 5% and 7%. Above them, halfway up the table, was Georgia with 30%. The fine-print said that the report was primarily concerned with the legal framework established in each country to allow gays, lesbians and transgender people the same rights and protections as everybody else.

The IGLA’s assessment, in Armenia and Azerbaijan at least, was that this appears to be near zero.

And this is reflected in news reports of attacks on homosexuals and other minorities in Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Importantly, though, it is not just people with different sexual orienta- tions who are potential targets in these countries. The same group-think extends towards opposition activists, overly pious Muslims and journalists. They are all marginalised. This whole mentality needs changing.

ENDS

(Editorial from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Armenia and Azerbaijan ranked as worst for LGBT people

MAY 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia and Azerbaijan are the worst places in Europe and the South Caucasus to be a homosexual, bisexual, lesbian or a transgender person, the IGLA-Europe lobby group said in a report focused on the legal framework that countries have developed for equality issues.

Of the 49 countries ranked in its index, Azerbaijan was ranked bottom with a score of just under 5%, followed by Russia with 6.5% and then Armenia with around 7%. Georgia was the second highest ranked former Soviet state in 30th position with a score of around 30%. Estonia was ranked in 21st position.

Azerbaijan has been cracking down on opposition groups and media over the past year. European officials have said that this political crackdown has also involved a more general crackdown on civil rights — including against the gay and the lesbian communities.

IGLA-Europe agreed.

“Azerbaijan’s LGBTI community continued to face severe challenges in 2015,” it said in its report. “Numer- ous violent attacks were carried out against LGBTI individuals; several murders were reported and investigated throughout the year.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Senior Georgian judge calls homosexuals ‘flawed’

APRIL 8 2016, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Nino Todua, a senior Georgian judge, told a parliamentary hearing on her promotion to the country’s Supreme Court that homosexuality is a moral flaw.

Her comments may be abhorrent to Western liberals, but for many Georgians Ms Todua was just reflecting their own strongly held views.

A survey by the largest data collection organisation in the country, CRRC, said that 87% of Georgia’s population believes homosexuality can never be justified.

“I feel sorry for them because of such a deviation. Every person has a flaw; I have mine and they have their flaws and that is their flaw,” Ms Todua was reported as saying when asked about homosexuals.

“There are no flawless persons. The question was why I think that it is a flaw – because cultural norms deem it to be such; it’s not just my personal opinion, the majority of the world’s population think that it’s against cultural norms.”

The homosexuality debate is important, politically, in Georgia. While anti-homosexual sentiment reflects popular opinion, it runs counter to the views of the European Union, a group that Georgia aspires to join.

And gay rights campaigners were quick to criticise Ms Todua.

Eka Chitanava, director of the local NGO Tolerance and Democracy Initiative, said that as a person in the public limelight, Ms Todua should keep her personal opinions private.

“Her beliefs will directly impact her decisions. It was a mistake from the president to nominate her for that position,” she said.

Still, on the streets of Tbilisi, it was clear that most people generally supported her position.

Shalva, a 54 year old bus driver, said: “I don’t care what people do in their bedroom, but they shouldn’t shove their life-styles in my face. Good for her for speaking up for the Georgian people. We need someone to protect our values.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)

Editorial: Azerbaijan’s pardon

MARCH 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – In the past weeks, European Union representatives had said soothing, nice words to Azerbaijan’s leadership, especially in light of its key participation in the Southern Gas Corridor infrastructure complex, which will bring Caspian Sea gas to Europe by 2019.

Human rights advocates in the West had lobbied loudly for a hardline position regarding the government’s crackdown on political freedoms.

But the EU chose to avoid the critical topic and went on talking business.

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev’s decision to free some political prisoners must be read as a payment in kind to the EU’s soft hand on human rights.

While welcoming the gesture, people in Azerbaijan are still waiting for the release of Ilgar Mammadov, Khadija Ismayilova and Intigam Aliyev, three political prisoners that were not pardoned.

By pardoning political prisoners, the government is holding out an olive branch towards the West, more than towards domestic actors. The struggle for them, for independent media and for opposition parties, is not over just yet.

ENDS

Editorial from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)

Oil workers strike in Kazakhstan

MARCH 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – About 200 people working for the oil services company Techno Trading, which is a sub-contractor for Mangistaumunaigas went on strike. They complained that the company had not paid them their quarterly bonuses. Industrial action is a sensitive issue in western Kazakhstan where police and demonstrators clashed in 2011, killing at least 14 people. Inflation is rising and the value of the tenge has dropped in Kazakhstan, straining worker-employer relations.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Women march through Kyrgyz capital on March 8 to demand more rights

MARCH 8 2016, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — Dozens of women protested in Bishkek against what they said was the patronising message sent out by the traditional March 8 International Women’s Day celebrations.

The march was a rare challenge to what has become one of the former Soviet area’s most popular and enduring holidays.

“Don’t sell 8th of March for flowers,” the marchers chanted. “We don’t want flowers, we need rights.”

Civic demonstrations, especially by pro-women’s rights groups are rare, if not unheard of, in Central Asia, where governments retain strict control and generally mistrust the rise of women in society.

Kyrgyzstan is something of an exception. It has more political plurality than other countries and counts a woman, Roza Otunbayeva, as a former head of state. She was president of Kyrgyzstan in 2010 and 2011, after a revolution overthrew her successor Kurmanbek Bakiyev. None of the other Central Asian states have had any significant female political or business leadership other than daughters of presidents.

Saadat, one of the march participants, told the Bulletin’s Bishkek correspondent that March 8 was not a holiday to celebrate spring and woman but something much more important.

“Instead of buying flowers and making profit for local flower shops, people would better support women’s crisis centres or female entrepreneurs,” she said.

“I think, one of reason why we were not dispersed on the square (bpolice) is that two female MPs were also with us on the square,” she added.

There is supposedly a quota of women in the Kyrgyz parliament of 30% although activists said the proportion of women in parliament had dropped to 12.4% from 19% in 2004.

Arina Sinovskaya, a member of a Kazakh feminist group, said their rally had been banned in Kazakhstan.

“In Kazakhstan, unfortunately, we cannot hold a march, so we came here to express our solidarity,” she said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Georgia PM wants constitution to block gay marriages

MARCH 8 2016, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgian PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili said he wanted to write into the national constitution that marriage can only be between a man and a woman, a thinly disguised attempt to woo conservative voters ahead of a parliamentary election in October.

Georgian society is broadly conservative and anti-gay rallies have been strongly supported over the last few years. Gay rights rallies have been attacked.

Mr Kvirikashvili’s Georgian Dream coalition is facing a tough battle to win another term in office.

It has tried to canvass votes from Georgia’s conservative base by looking for support from the influential Georgian Orthodox Church. The Church is anti-gay rights.

“We have a pending initiative that would guarantee the protection of the sacred institution of marriage, via the constitution,” media quoted Mr Kvirikashvili as saying.

This would mean changing the constitution to ensure that marriage is only possible between a man and a woman.

He appeared to be responding to an initiative by Georgian civil rights lawyer Giorgi Tatishvili who has been lobbying for same-sex marriage.

Importantly for Georgia, the EU has highlighted its conservative views over gas rights and other civil issues as a potential stumbling block for its integration into the EU.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)