LGBT MONGOLIANS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

“Behind the blue sky” exhibition opening



LGBT MONGOLIANS AND HUMAN RIGHTS


B.D Colorboy, Mongolian LGBT activist


Good evening, sisters and brothers, friends and supporters. My name is B.D Colorboy. I wish to thank everyone who made the time and space to attend this exhibition opening. I came here today to talk about the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people’s human rights in Mongolia, but seeing the life itself spread out in front of us, I’ve decided to be brief. So let me ask you a couple of questions.


How many lesbians or gays do you personally know?
How many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Mongolians are out there?
What is your and the societal perception of these people?


About ten years ago when we established the Tavilan, a Mongolian word for destiny, an NGO for gay men in Mongolia, the standard answer I got was “I don’t know such people in Mongolia. There probably aren’t, and even if there are, there must be very, very few”. The answer still holds today. So I start engaging that person on why they think that way, and I start trying my best to convince them that LGBT Mongolians are here, there, everywhere. If I fail, which I do very often, I drop my bombshell, which is simply the sentence “I am a gay man”. The most difficult part is that afterwards that person will stop acknowledging me, will stop responding to my greetings, will start to jab and verbally abuse me directly or indirectly, or worse, declare to others who am I, leading to my brother breaking my leg, being shunned away at the university where I was out and proud. If I continue, this list of woes arising due to being born gay in Mongolia is never-ending.


The reason why I am telling you today this is because I wanted to remind you that it does not matter whether it is a single person, or a hundred, or a hundred thousand or even three hundred thousand – we are not here talking numbers. It doesn’t matter whether it is one or many; we are talking PEOPLE behind these khadaks.

You have seen the many portraits and pictures around the hall and you have read the soul-wrenching testimonies, as well as a litany of violence against LGBT people. I am also hoping that you have noticed a couple of words that were repeated often enough to have caught your attention; in particular, one of them: democracy. There are many here who have specialised in democracy and democratic studies, so there is no need to talk much about why and how, except I want to highlight several things. Democracy has been defined and conceptualised differently in different ages. In this age we live in, democracy is no longer its original meaning or application, it is no longer only for the nobility or the army, it is no longer only for the propertied or for males above a certain age. Indeed, it is a governance ideal and a governance structure, form, method and process pertinent to all. To put it simply, because we are born humans, we are a part of the social contract in which we all partake equally. And this is because everyone is born equal and everyone is entitled to dignity. To put it even more simply: we are different, but we are the same. Despite diverse external appearances, psyche and its varied expressions, we are one. And it is this sameness of humanity’s another colour, another expression, that is spread out before you today.

Why are we hiding our faces? Genocide in Rwanda, extreme forms of gender based violence, South African apartheid, the plight of Palestinians for decades upon decades, the attitudes and conceptions imposed upon the Muslim around the world since 9/11. These are all examples of forms of discrimination and persecution. The persecution of the minority by the majority, the persecution of the powerless by the powerful. The right to life, the right to be free from gender-based violence, the right to religion, the right to education, the right to engage in employment provided that employment is not inflicting harm upon others, the right to the freedom of association, greatly curbed to LGBT persons in Mongolia, through the telling example of how the LGBT Centre of Mongolia had to fight for nearly three years before getting its official registration in the middle of December 2009, and most important of all, the right to be free from violence and brutality of which agents are usually uniformed officials. These are all fundamental, inseparable, non-derogable human rights.

It is because the LGBT Mongolians are unable to enjoy these fundamental basic rights and because we want our realities and our lives to exist free from violence, that we have gathered and united our voices in saying “We are PEOPLE like you” through this exhibition, even if our faces are hidden.

The term “people” is inclusive of LGBT people as well. Non-discrimination based on gender includes in itself non-discrimination based on sexual orientation: it’s international law. If Mongolia is indeed a democratic country with a rule of law, let’s uphold and abide by our Constitution that says no one shall be discriminated on based on their sex, which is also, as I said, inclusive of sexual orientation. Let’s faithfully abide by our duties and responsibilities under international treaties.

A year and a half ago, Mongolia faced terror, a catastrophe: the first big scale post-election violence the likes of which Mongolia never faced in its history. Five people lost their lives, while many of the arrested 800 were mistreated and even tortured, and thousands upon thousands of people were affected by the war on information, losing sleep, losing hope, and most of all, TERRIFIED of the state that was coming into our lives and violating our privacies through many ways. This exhibition’s aim is to show you that for us, the LGBT Mongolians, our every day is July 1 of 2008.

Thank you for your attention and please continue to support your brothers and sisters, daughters and sons and their rights whether at home in the US or outside.


For more information on Mongolia’s LGBT issues, please contact:

LGBT Centre, suite 202,

Peace Avenue-57, Bayanzurkh district,

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Website: www.lgbtcentre.mn (coming soon)

Email: robyn.garner@yahoo.com and mtsu9otgoo@hotmail.com