Global News Journal

UN victory for gay rights supporters

Suporters of rights for gays and lesbians worldwide secured a major victory at the United Nations this week. The 192-nation U.N. General Assembly voted to restore a reference to killings due to sexual orientation that had been deleted from a resolution condemning unjustified slayings. The shift came after the United States submitted an amendment to restore the reference, which the General Assembly’s human rights committee removed last month from a resolution on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions that is adopted every two years.

The U.S. amendment that restored the reference to sexual orientation was adopted with 93 votes in favor, 55 against and 27 abstentions. The amended resolution was then approved with 122 yes votes, one against and 62 abstentions. (Saudi Arabia cast the sole vote against the resolution, and the United States was among those who abstained.)

The committee’s deletion of the reference last month — at the proposal of African and Arab nations — had outraged Western countries and human rights activists. Similar resolutions adopted in previous years have explicitly mentioned killings due to sexual preference, along with slayings for racial, national, ethnic, religious or linguistic reasons and killings of refugees, indigenous people and other groups.

Cary Alan Johnson, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), was pleased with the outcome. “The outpouring of support from the international community sent the strong message to our representatives at the U.N. that it is unacceptable to make invisible the deadly violence LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people face because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation.”

Not everyone was happy. Zimbabwe’s U.N. Ambassador Chitsaka Chipaziwa told the General Assembly that there was no need to refer explicitly to sexual orientation: “We will not have it foisted on us. We cannot accept this, especially if it entails accepting such practices as bestiality, pedophilia and those other practices many societies would find abhorrent in their value systems.” A European diplomat later told Reuters that Chipaziwa’s statement was “disgraceful.”

The opposition to the U.S. amendment came mainly from African and Muslim states. However, they had powerful support from diplomatic heavyweights like China and Russia, both of which voted against including a reference to slayings of people because of their sexual orientation. Several states that had voted against the inclusion in November reversed their positions and voted for the U.S. amendment this week, among them the African nations South Africa and Rwanda.

Although President Barack Obama himself welcomed the adoption of the U.S. amendment, Washington sent an ambiguous signal of support by abstaining from the vote on the amended resolution condemning extrajudicial, arbitrary and summary executions. The U.S. delegation did not explain its abstention. Several Western diplomats suggested that the U.S. abstention was unrelated to the issue of sexual orientation, but was connected with the U.S. use of unmanned drones to kill suspected Taliban and al Qaeda militants in countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.

Where gays do serve, openly, in the military

C.M. Sennott

In many corners of the world, the policy on gays in the military could be labeled this way: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Care.”

In the military establishments of more than 30 countries, including U.S. allies such as Israel, Canada and the United Kingdom, gays and lesbians are allowed to openly serve in their country’s military.

It’s just not a big issue out there in much of the Western world.

But here in the U.S., the long-simmering debate over “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has heated up after President Barack Obama vowed to repeal it during his State of the Union Address last week.

On Tuesday, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, in a powerful and emotional statement, denounced the policy before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Sex education again in Malaysia, thanks to the courts

By Niluksi Koswanage

Gay Austrian fashionista Bruno will not be making an appearance on Malaysia’s screens this summer for fear of corrupting this mostly-Muslim nation’s youth.

But Malaysia’s parents will still not have it easy as the country’s opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim  is again on trial for sodomy in a re-run of a 14-month case that in 1998 generated endless sexually explicit headlines and questions from curious children.

Photo: Anwar enters Kuala Lumpur courtoom with wife Wan Aziza Wasn Ismail for his sodomy trial on July 15/ Reuters (Zainal Abd Halim)

I was a teenager then when the former deputy prime minister was first found guilty of sodomy and corruption in a marathon trial that featured graphic descriptions of anal penetration, faithfully reported in lurid detail by this country’s government-owned press and on prime-time TV.

(Photo: Anwar arrives in court on July 15, Reuters/

Back to the future in Malaysia with Anwar sodomy trial II

By Barani Krishnan

A decade ago, Malaysia’s former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim was on trial for sodomy and corruption in a trial that exposed the seamy side of Malaysian justice and the anxieties of a young country grappling with a crushing financial crisis and civil unrest.

Anwar is Malaysia’s best known political figure, courted in the U.S. and Europe and probably the only man who can topple the government that has led this Southeast Asian country for the past 51 years.

Anwar vowed in a recent interview to fight what he says are trumped up charges.

The 14 months I spent covering the 1998 trials saw Anwar accused of sodomy with three men and having sex with a woman over a period of years. This case is simpler, there is just one accuser. All homosexual acts are illegal in this mainly Muslim country and sex outside marriage is illegal for Muslims.

The first trial was gruelling. Lines began as early as four in the morning as people tried to get into the court that could seat less than 200. Most of the spectators were ordinary people, but there was a sprinkling of dignitaries and businessmen who had known Anwar when he was in office.

There was a separate media queue and again a fight to get in line as dozens of reporters from local and international outlets jockeyed for space. Ringing the court were hundreds of riot police, backed by watercannon, waiting for trouble in a country where there were daily protests at the time, often involving tens of thousands of people.

Was rightist Haider gay? Austria doesn’t care

 Now that Austrian far-right leader Joerg Haider is dead, the German, British and U.S. press are eagerly spilling the beans on his “secret double life”, saying that he had a male lover.

 Just when you thought his story couldn’t get more dramatic — he died on Oct. 11 in a high-speed car crash while drunk — we now learn that Haider, who was married with two daughters, was not only a populist who polarised the public with remarks about Nazism and immigrants, but might have been gay too.

 But wait a minute. Speculation about Haider’s sexuality is not at all new, at least not in Austria. Here, his death has not really led to breathless speculation about his private life as it has elsewhere.

 Why not?

 Questions about Haider’s sexuality had been asked in Austria since the 1990s, when the charismatic, folksy leader surrounded himself with a group of young and successful male followers, earning his entourage the nickname “The Boys Posse”.

 Far-right parties have never been especially women-friendly anyway.  Haider never said he was gay, nor denied it and Austrians’ reaction to this is interesting. They don’t really care. Whether true or not, this speculation was largely politely ignored or deemed not newsworthy.

 Overall the Austrian press abides by the unwritten rule that private lives should only be written about when made an issue by the politician themselves, or has an effect on public policy.