¿Por qué es tan importante un desfile del orgullo?
LGBTI people don’t have it easy no matter where they live: sexual minorities in most places are faced with negative attitudes, stigma and violence. In the relatively young country of East Timor, independent from neighboring Indonesia since 2002, a public Pride parade was held in July 2018 for just the second time because of the fierce battle for acceptance the LGBTI community has to fight.
Natalino is twenty-eight, gay and lives in East Timor. During the first pride parade in 2017, which he had organized with his LGBTI youth organization Hatutan, he suddenly ran into his conservative, religious brother. Although Natalino had invited him to the parade, he didn’t expect him to come because they hadn’t been on speaking terms for some time.
“But then I suddenly saw him in the distance, late as usual. As we approached each other, I saw he was wearing a t-shirt that said ‘You are not alone’. We embraced each other with tears in our eyes. It was one of the most emotional moments of my life, especially because of the difficulties we had experienced.”
Antes de este abrazo, el hermano de Natalino, al igual que sus padres, llevaba años dividido entre aceptar o rechazar la homosexualidad de Natalino. Su breve momento juntos es una señal del cambio que está ocurriendo en Timor Oriental.
Trabajando hacia un cambio positivo
La Coalición para la Diversidad y la Acción (CODIVA), la primera organización LGBTI de Timor Oriental, desempeña un papel fundamental en este cambio. Con el apoyo de Hivos, ha ampliado su alcance, pasando de ofrecer servicios relacionados con el VIH para hombres gay y personas transgénero a luchar por una mayor inclusión de todas las personas LGBTI en el país. Gracias a Hivos, los fundadores de CODIVA (miembros de la comunidad LGBTI) pudieron solicitar financiación y fundar su organización.
Tenemos que seguir educando a la gente aquí para que entienda cuestiones como el género y la sexualidad.
Hivos’ regional Sexual Rights and Diversity program manager, Jonta Eliakim Saragih, says CODIVA’s expansion is essential. To illustrate this, he recalls a recent incident when a transwoman was bullied and mistreated. Jonta’s friends took her to what they thought would be a safe place – a women’s shelter for victims of domestic violence. But they turned her away, not because she wasn’t a battered wife, but because they claimed she wasn’t ‘a real woman’. That’s when Jonta realized, “We have to continue educating people here to understand issues such as gender and sexuality.”
Por eso Hivos apoya a CODIVA, dice Jonta. "Porque Hivos lucha por defender todos human rights, we believe that CODIVA will remain crucial for the LGBTI community here for some time to come.” But CODIVA is still too small to operate independently, and Hivos is currently its only financier.
De pequeños a grandes, de oponentes a defensores
Thanks to the efforts of CODIVA and activists like Natalino, the country is starting to change. In 2017, Natalino had a video made about LGBTI acceptance in families. The Prime Minister agreed to appear in the video, and Xanana Gusmão, one of the founders of the country, attended its screening. Both figures are held in high esteem; people in East Timor listen to them. Natalino concludes, “This gave us so much confidence, we decided to try and organize a pride parade through the streets.”
Unas 500 personas acudieron a su primer intento en 2017, y gracias a las redes establecidas entonces, la de 2018 fue tres veces más numerosa. Embajadas y organizaciones contactaron a Natalino y a sus colegas de Hatutan para ofrecerles apoyo, y en julio de 2018, con el apoyo de CODIVA e Hivos, lograron que participaran más de 1500 personas.
¡Incluso había monjas católicas! De hecho, la iglesia no lo permitía. Que vinieran fue un gran gesto para nosotros.
On social media, those who had criticized the first parade were now talking about “respecting one another”. 2018’s participants were also more diverse, with more representatives from the government. Natalino laughs, “There were even Catholic nuns! That was actually not allowed by the church. The fact they came anyway was a great gesture for us.”
Cambiar a través de mayor visibilidad
Natalino thinks this new visibility is vital in creating social change because it helps normalize the discussion about acceptance. “Just two years ago, we didn’t dare organize a public parade,” he notes. But now, Pride parades provide an ideal platform for the LGBTI community to be publicly visible as themselves.
What motivated him to take the risk of producing videos and organizing parades in support of LGBTI rights and inclusion? A few years ago, a news story about a transwoman and a boy celebrating a birthday had been distorted into one of the couple getting married. It flared into a national debate, even reaching the parliament, where MPs asked if this would bring disgrace to East Timor. “The same year, a study came out showing that corrective rape and physical and sexual abuse of lesbian women was still very common here. Then I felt we must do something. It was getting too difficult to be ourselves here.”
Una lucha local y regional
That is why the work of CODIVA is still very much needed in East Timor. The organization is crucial in drawing people’s attention to this issue and keeping it in the spotlight.
In the conservative neighboring country of Indonesia, where anti-gay discrimination is used by politicians to win votes, this type of visibility would not be possible. According to Natalino, this is partly because other countries in the region – Taiwan and Australia, in particular – have legalized gay marriage. This worries conservative groups in Indonesia, who publicly criticize homosexuality in ever harsher terms. The support and key role of Hivos for the work of CODIVA is necessary in the region as well.
As LGBTIs, Natalino and Jonta’s struggle is also personal. They feel deeply involved and are fully aware that their community’s major support network is still only CODIVA. Jonta makes it very clear: “That’s why I continue to fight as part of Hivos to keep improving the living conditions of my community, here and everywhere.”