By IPS Correspondents
MANILA, Nov 24 2003 (IPS)

Images of men in white, their faces covered with white cloth as they were being hauled by a cordon of policemen, played out many times before a hushed audience here.

The 60-minute video documentary, ‘Living Dangerously’, was shown at the first night of the 22nd World Conference of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) here this month.

‘Cairo 52’ was how the 52 men who were arrested, jailed and beaten by Egyptian police in May 2001 because of their presumed homosexuality were called, and the film stood out for the pain of bias and prejudice that the conference tried to address.

Looking back, many among the more than 100 participants said the spectre of discrimination and homophobia still remains in many societies for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders.

"We couldn’t take it," said a Cairo 52 defendant interviewed in the documentary, which also carried interviews with gay activists from mostly developing countries such as Egypt, Pakistan, Malaysia, China, India, Sri Lanka, Kenya and the Philippines.

"Hate is still very persistent," said Rosanna Flamer-Caldera, co-secretary general of ILGA. "There is this rage against persons whose orientations are different or not acceptable.”

Caldera said that while discrimination happens even in developed countries and areas like the United States and Europe, it is often more pronounced in many poor and developing nations with beleaguered political systems and religious restrictions.

"Some liberal laws adopted by some governments that created a better understanding of our situations are still no match to the strife that many lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders are experiencing today," she said. "I think the changes that we want will depend on how individuals will change their mindsets."

An organiser interviewed by IPS said the conference went ”quite well” in mainly Roman Catholic Philippines, which groups arranging the conference nevertheless considered only one of five nations in Asia "friendly and democratic enough" to hold such a meeting.

Although it was the 22nd such meeting, the conference that ended Nov. 18 was the first in the region.

Many participants discussed gains made so far, such as the legal recognition of same-sex unions in different countries such as Denmark, Britain, the Netherlands and Canada.

But to Anna Leah Sarabia of the Philippines-based Women’s Media Circle, who convened the conference, homosexuals still live in difficult environments.

For some, the only recourse they had, as shown in the documentary, was to seek asylum in countries where there is freedom to work and to live.

The Cairo 52 defendant who was interviewed now lives in Canada but that was after he and his colleagues were given harsh sentences for what Egyptian courts said was "obscene behaviour”.

The case of the Cairo 52 was condemned by international human rights organisations, including the United Nations. Two non-Egyptians who were interviewed left their countries for the United States and Australia, which they selected because they believed they had more space to be themselves.

"Some gay organisations have gotten to the doorsteps of legislation in their countries, but not before they were branded as sick or misguided people by those who hate them," Sarabia said.

Sarabia, who also heads Kalakasan, a non-government organisation in the Philippines that helps abused women, earned the ire of a powerful politician when the group came to the aid of his wife who sought help for repeated abuse.

"He filed a libel case against us and said people should not believe us because we are lesbians, we are not normal,” she recalled. The politician’s wife committed suicide early this year.

In many ways, Claudia Roth, a federal government commissioner for human rights and humanitarian aid in the Foreign Office of Germany, said, homosexuals now need to confront their ”next barriers”.

Roth said that while gay parades in Taiwan, the Philippines and Singapore obviously show their acceptance in these countries, the picture is far from the same in nearby countries. ”Lesbian couples still commit suicide in India and gay male couples in China are arrested if they are caught being cozy with each other,” she said.

She also cited the governments of Zimbabwe, Namibia and Uganda as "stubbornly repressive and discriminatory”.

Yet the human rights of homosexuals, she said, has been recognised by the United Nations and in various global summits on rights.

”Theoretically, gays and lesbians are recognised by their identities as being different from homosexuals in many countries, but still, they live with fear of being attacked because of their sexual orientation," she said.

Besides governments, many also said the media are often discriminatory to gays and lesbians. In one of the roundtable discussions on media, participants cited the Philippine media as insensitive because of their stereotypical views of gays and lesbians.

In a news conference held weeks prior to the November conference, one participant recalled how a Filipino reporter shot the first question by asking if all the members of the panel there were gay.

This environment is far from surprising for those like Representative Bellaflor Angara-Castillo, an advocate of reproductive health and sexuality issues in the Philippine Congress who had filed a bill recognising the unions by gays and lesbians.

The measure has since been classified as one of the "sin bills" by mostly Catholic and conservative groups who lobbied against it.

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