Colombo Pride 2006: A Reportback

 

-- Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

 

From May 22- May 26, Equal Ground, a Sri Lankan LGBT human rights organization, held Sri Lanka’s second-ever LGBT Pride festival in Colombo.  I was blessed to be able to attend this groundbreaking event. As a radical queer Sri Lankan artist who has been working to build with other queer/trans, feminist and progressive Lankans in the diaspora, I went hoping to be able to build connections between LGBT Sri Lankan organizers in Sri Lanka and those of us in the diaspora, as well as to learn from people doing incredible, life saving, risky work.  I was not disappointed.

 

Colombo Pride 2006 marked a watershed in Sri Lankan LGBT organizing. Many people will remember the violence faced by previous attempts to organize a  Pride festival in Sri Lanka. In 1999, the Women’s Support Group of Companions on a Journey worked to organize a lesbian conference. The Island printed an editorial that called for rapists to be let out of jail for a day, “to show the women the real thing.” WSG was forced to cancel the conference because of these threats of violence. They and Companions on a Journey attempted to bring the issue before the Human Rights Commission, but had their case dismissed.

 

Last year, Equal Ground held the first successful Colombo Pride, a one-night party and celebration. This year’s Pride was greatly expanded, and featured a full week of events. Kicking off with an LGBT film night at Barefoot Gallery, the week also included a performance of Jeff Solomon’s one-man show, “Mother/Son”, an all-day LGBT theater workshop and a club night attended by over 250 people.  On Friday, May 25^th, Stages Theatre presented  an interactive theater piece at the Poonchi Theatre examining issues of closeted gay men in Colombo, their lovers, families and lives on the down-low. I also performed spoken word poetry from my book, Consensual Genocide.  The week culminated in a Rainbow Kite Festival held on Mt. Lavinia beach, where lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans Sri Lankans flew banners calling for queer and trans rights, freedom and self-love.  

 

None of the week’s events were met with violence of any kind. Festival organizers chose to not pursue media attention, instead publicizing the event through their membership and personal and political networks. Attendance at events ranged from 100-250 people.  A small, positive article about the theater and performance night appeared in The Nation on Sunday.

 

The issues voiced by people attending Pride are as diverse as Sri Lanka’s LGBT communities. The most discussed issue is the criminalization of queerness under

Section 365 of the Penal Code.  Although technically one has to be “caught in the act” of having sex to be arrested and this is rare, the criminalization of queer and trans lives trickles down to mean harassment from the police and from people on the street. Organizers reported police sweeps of cruising areas and harassment of trans people as common occurrences. As with any repressive legislation, whether or not one is ever arrested for being queer or transgendered, the fear of being arrested affects every moment of one’s life as an LGBT person.

 

Gossip and community acceptance are a huge issue for LGBT Sri Lankans. It’s difficult to negotiate being queer when everyone instantly knows your business. Many festival attendees I met with had been thrown out by their families, left on their own with no money and difficulties finding work. In response, the Women’s Support Group has set up a small shelter for lesbian and trans people who are homeless and need emergency queer-positive housing. Equal Ground and WSG both help their members find employment.

 

Not surprisingly, class plays an enormous role in Sri Lankan queer lives. LGBT Sri Lankans come from all class backgrounds, but more money  brings the ability to buy things like privacy, independence and the entry fee to queer club nights.   I met with Sri Lankan LGBT from rural poor and urban working-class backgrounds, who had struggled to find work after being thrown out by their families. I also met some people who grew up working-class but  had been able to access more middle class jobs through the LGBT social networks they found. Of the Sri Lankan queer and trans people I met from middle and upper-class backgrounds, some who were using their privilege consciously to organize (and fund that organizing), and some who seemed content to live within a privileged circle.

 

LGBT Sri Lankans face tremendous challenges. However, it’s amazing to see what a decade of organizing has done. 1995 marked the founding of Companions on a Journey, Sri Lanka’s first LGBT organization, which did a lot to break the silence around Sri Lankan LGBT lives and struggles.  Sri Lanka now has three LGBT organizations -  Equal Ground, the Women’s Support Group, and Companions on a Journey. Equal Ground focuses on working from a human rights framework to lobby for decriminalization. They also organize LGBT and feminist events in an attempt to change attitudes about LGBT people.  The Women’s Support Group has weekly meetings open to all LBT women and trans people, does HIV/AIDS and sexuality trainings for many community groups and assists queer women who are thrown out without support by their families. And Companions, the first group to be established, has done groundbreaking work bringing together LGBT people and breaking silence about queer lives.  Members of all three groups were present at Colombo Pride.

 

As I met with different LGBT rights organizations, I was struck by both the challenges they face and the strength of their organizing. Groups are run out of homes, not in nonprofit office buildings. There is no government funding for LGBT rights groups: organizations are supported by grassroots fundraising, from parties and out of people’s pockets, and a few grants from international LGBT and women’s funds, like Astraea and the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA ). LGBT books sent from overseas have been held by government censors and destroyed.  People face everyday violence and harassment.

 

But the  LGBT Sri Lankans  I met were fiercely determined to organize for change.   Despite the extreme challenges to organizing that exist, everyone I spoke with was clear about their desire to work for the transformation of Sri Lankan society into one where LGBT people can live in freedom.

 

Being able to attend this event was a blessing in so many ways. Not only was I attending a historic event for LGBT Sri Lankans, I was also going back home for the first time at 31. Like many Sri Lankans in the diaspora, my family wasn’t ever able to visit Sri Lanka in the 80s and 90s because of both the civil war and the high cost of plane tickets.  

 

Now I was going back, and going back surrounded by hundreds of Sri Lankan queer and trans people. I was drinking Lion lager and partying on the beach with a hundred Sri Lankan queers. I was home, in every way that counted.

 

 

For more information about Sri Lankan LGBT organizations, contact:

 

Equal Ground: http://www.equal-ground.org/

Women’s Support Group: http://www.wsglanka.com/