ASEAN SOGIE Caucus Statement on International Human Rights Day 2021

Human rights violations are constantly faced by our queerblings in Southeast Asia, with ASEAN member states perpetuating and sponsoring the persecution of persons based on their sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex charateristics (SOGIESC). In the middle of this year, Nur Sajat, a transgender woman was flown from Malaysia to Thailand for their safety, but was abducted by Thai authorities while waiting in transit for approval of her asylum. This September, some of our queersiblings in Municipality of Datu Piang, Maguindano in the Philippines were targeted and murdered. And recently, Thailand’s Constitutional Court denied equal marriage on the basis of heteronormative values, with the verdict stating that “the purpose of natural reproduction is to pass the race of nature between male and female, passing the property and creating a bond between father, mother, uncle, aunt, and grandparents. Meanwhile, marriage between the gender diverse may not be able to pass such a delicate bond.”

ASEAN SOGIE Caucus Statement on Thailand Constitutional Court Decision on Equal Marriage Petition  

Thailand Constituional Court Verdict on the petition of equal marriage for all, filed by 2 queer Thai citizens and garnering more than 274,000 signatories, was met with anger and frustration from LGBTQIA human rights defenders, feminists, and pro-democracy activists. Moreover, this decision came out after Thailand’s Constitutional Court ruled that Section 1448 of the Civil and Commercial Code, which defined marriages as only between men and women, is constitutional.

We, the undersigned organisations working to advance the human rights of persons of diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC) call for the protection of women, children, LGBTIQ people and other vulnerable persons in Afghanistan.

Since 15 August, the Taliban-led takeover of Kabul’s Presidential Palace and the abrupt collapse of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan’s government raises concerns over human rights and the safety of marginalised groups in the country. Besides LGBTIQ people and people of diverse SOGIESC, women, persecuted religious minorities, journalists and human rights defenders have come under threat, and many have gone into hiding out of fear.

A Regional Statement of LGBTIQ+ Advocates from Southeast Asia^[1]

We, the undersigned individual activists and organizations in Southeast Asia, are pushing for strategic steps towards an inclusive ASEAN region.

The advancement of the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer, and other sexual and gender diverse (LGBTIQ+) persons in the Southeast Asia remains an challenging endeavour. ASEAN, having the mandate to protect and promote human rights for all persons as enshrined in its ASEAN Charter and the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration, have so far taken unremarkable steps to address our issues. As an institution, ASEAN restricts its very limited spaces for meaningful interaction and dialogue and alienating issues, advocacies, and identities which they perceive as sensitive or as not reflective of consensus among its member states.

မြန်မာတပ်မတော်သည် ဒီမိုကရေစီနှင့် ပြည်သူတို့၏ ရွေးချယ်မှုများကို လေးစားသင့်သည်။

ကျွန်ုပ်တို့သည် လိင်စိတ်ကိုင်းညွတ်မှု၊ လိင်ဝိသေသခံယူမှုနှင့် ထုတ်ဖော်ပြသမှု၊ လိင်လက္ခဏာ အမှတ်အသား (SOGIESC) တို့ မတူညီကွဲပြားသောသူတို့၏ တစ်ဦးချင်း လူ့အခွင့်အရေး တိုးတက်မှုဆိုင်ရာ အဖွဲ့အစည်းများနှင့် ကွန်ရက်များဖြစ်ကြပါသည်။ ကျွန်ုပ်တို့သည် ၂၀၂၁ခုနှစ်၊ ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ (၁) ရက်နေ့တွင် ဖြစ်ပေါ်ခဲ့သော မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ အရပ်ဘက်အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးအပေါ်တွင် စစ်အာဏာသိမ်းမှုနှင့် ၄င်းတို့၏တိုက်ခိုက်မှုအား ပြင်းထန်စွာ ရှုတ်ချလိုက်ပါသည်။ ကျွန်ုပ်တို့သည် ၂၀၂၀ခုနှစ်၊ နိုဝင်ဘာလတွင် ကျင်းပခဲ့သော မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအထွေထွေရွေးကောက်ပွဲမှတစ်ဆင့် တရားဝင်ကောက်နှုတ်ခဲ့သော မြန်မာ့ဒီမိုကရေစီလမ်းစဉ်ကိုသာ အခိုင်အမာအတည်ပြုကာ ထောက်ခံပါသည်။

Joint Regional Statement by LGBTIQ+ Organizations, Networks, and Allies

We are organizations, networks and concerned individuals advancing the human rights of persons with diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and expresion and sex characteristics (SOGIESC). We strongly condemn the military coup and its attack on civilian rule in Myanmar that took place on 1 February 2021. We affirm and support Myanmar’s democratic process that was legally conducted through the Myanmar General Election in November 2020.

(29 January 2021, Bangkok/Kuala Lumpur/Manila) — We, the undersigned, are alarmed by the arrest of the three individuals who were exercising their right to assembly in a peaceful protest against transphobia outside the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Singapore earlier this week on 26th January. We call on the authorities to unconditionally end any judicial harassment against the protestors, for the Government of Singapore to respect and protect the right to peaceful assembly for all, and for the MOE to swiftly act on the discrimination against transgender and LGBT students in schools and universities.

The protest stemmed from a student’s post going viral on social media after she wrote about being unable to begin hormone replacement therapy due to intervention from the MOE, whose interference resulted in her inability to receive a doctor’s referral letter.

We, the undersigned organizations, express our deep solidarity with our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and gender-diverse/non-binary (LGBTIQ+) siblings around the region who are at the forefront of movements seeking to uphold human rights and democratic values. We affirm that LGBTIQ+ rights and inclusion will only flourish in democratic societies where meaningful participation, dissent, and checks and balances are respected and guaranteed.

The struggle to confront and overcome violence is a daily reality for women, transgender persons, and gender-diverse persons.Violence manifests in different ways direct and indirect forms of violence. It limits human potential and impedes one's enjoyment of a life with dignity.

This reality is fueled by a deep seated patriarchal and heterosexist culture, and reinforced by social institutions. It works through religious, cultural, and state institutions, embodied in policies that govern in the public and private spheres; legislative products, political attitudes, social norms, language systems, knowledge, technology, economy, belief, and arts.