“We want to exist!” LGBTI people in Panama protest against their “invisibility”

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Panamanian authorities “pretend that we are invisible, that our rights do not exist”, denounced this Saturday the LGBTI community leader Ricardo Beteta, during a demonstration in which this population reaffirmed its right to “exist and live without fear”.

“The greatest form of discrimination that we suffer is invisibilization (…) You have to understand the price we pay every day for living in this silence, in the dark from the authorities, who do not give us attention,” Beteta said during a demonstration against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia held in the Panamanian capital.

The activist asserted that during the current Government presided by Laurentino Cortizo, the rights of the LGBTI community are suffering an “unprecedented” violation.

“We are now living through an Administration that has been a dark moment for the LGBTI community (…) we see how we have been backtracking on critical issues, and everything has to do with a very well-financed and orchestrated anti-rights agenda that is doing us a lot of harm”, stated Beteta.

He recalled that as part of the strategy to combat the pandemic, restrictions on mobility by personal identity number and gender were imposed for months in Panama, despite complaints and denunciations from local and international organizations about the violation of the rights of LGBTI people by the authorities.

“There are comrades who have been afraid to go out on the street, to face the fact of being arrested, fined, taken before an authority, ridiculed in public because their personal documents do not match their personal appearance,” said Beteta.

In Panama, three cases of same sex marriages abroad are still pending a ruling since 2016 in the Supreme Court and in the Electoral Tribunal since 2016, two of which seek to invalidate the Family Code and legalize same-sex marriages.

Last October, the Rapporteur on the Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex (LGBTI) Persons of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Flavia Piovesan, made a “vehement” call to Panama to comply in “good faith” with regional standards to guarantee the rights of the sexually diverse population.

Last March, the IACHR also expressed its “concern” over the approval in the Panamanian Parliament of a law that prevents people of the same sex from adopting children, and again urged the State to guarantee the rights of the LGBTI community.

WE WANT TO EXIST, TO LIVE WITHOUT FEAR

This Saturday’s demonstration, which featured music and an artistic representation of butterflies because they embody “diversity,” was called to “reaffirm” the LGBTI community’s determination “to stop living in fear” and to return to the streets because “activism through social networks is not working,” Beteta said.

It was part of the commemorations looking to May 17, the International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia, established after the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses on that day in 1990.

Martin Gil, 21, told Efe that he went to the call because “it is good to remind” Panamanian society, in which in his opinion “there are many phobias, many ‘isms’: homophobia, racism, classism”, that the LGBTI community “is still here”.

“Any day is a good day to protest, especially to defend your right to live, to love, to exist, and to want to be yourself, without the prejudices of society. The truth is that we want to exist, we want to live,” Gil added.

Source: efe