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Nepal Gay Leader Wins Election To Parliament
Nepal Gay Leader Wins Election To Parliament
by 365Gay.com, 1/5/2008
(Katmandu) Nepal has elected its first openly gay person to Parliament. Sunil Pant, the founder of the LGBT rights group Blue Diamond Society, won a seat representing Katmandu, the capital.
Pant, 35, ran for the CPN-U, one of several small Communist parties.
He was one of five LGBT people running for office nationwide in the election that swept the left into power in the Himalayan country.
The election was key to a peace deal between Maoists and mainstream parties that ended a decade long civil war in Nepal and resulted in the dethroning of the king.
"We are honored to send Pant as our representative to the constituent assembly," said CPN-U leader Ganesh Shah.
"We hope it will improve the lives of a people who are the most repressed in Nepal, disowned both by society and their own families," he added.
Last year Plant was honored by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission for his work in fighting for LGBT civil rights and promoting HIV/AIDS education.
Homosexual acts are punishable in Hindu-majority Nepal by up to two years in prison.
Last December Nepal's Supreme Court ruled that the government must create new laws to protect gay rights and change current ones that might be tantamount to discrimination.
So far the government has resisted the court's directive.
Members of Nepal's LGBT community are arbitrarily arrested, held without a hearing and beaten and tortured by prison guards.
In 2006 police arrested 26 transsexuals in one raid. According to Blue Diamond they were taken to the Hanuman Dhoka central police station in Kathmandu where they were held for weeks without being allowed to contact anyone.
Nepal was one of several countries named in the State Department report on human rights violators in 2006. In April last year, two young lesbians captured by Maoist guerrillas in southern Nepal in March were been released after promising to join the rebels.
Blue Diamond also said that people working in the areas of HIV prevention are regularly harassed by police.
In March Katmandu's only hospice for gay men with HIV/AIDS was closed after neighbors mounted a campaign against its landlord for allowing the hospice to open in the area.
Twelve patients, four of whom are terminally ill and unable to walk, were evacuated from the building on only a few hour notice.
The hospice was funded by the Elton John Foundation and operated by Blue Diamond Society.
(Katmandu) Nepal has elected its first openly gay person to Parliament. Sunil Pant, the founder of the LGBT rights group Blue Diamond Society, won a seat representing Katmandu, the capital.
Pant, 35, ran for the CPN-U, one of several small Communist parties.
He was one of five LGBT people running for office nationwide in the election that swept the left into power in the Himalayan country.
The election was key to a peace deal between Maoists and mainstream parties that ended a decade long civil war in Nepal and resulted in the dethroning of the king.
"We are honored to send Pant as our representative to the constituent assembly," said CPN-U leader Ganesh Shah.
"We hope it will improve the lives of a people who are the most repressed in Nepal, disowned both by society and their own families," he added.
Last year Plant was honored by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission for his work in fighting for LGBT civil rights and promoting HIV/AIDS education.
Homosexual acts are punishable in Hindu-majority Nepal by up to two years in prison.
Last December Nepal's Supreme Court ruled that the government must create new laws to protect gay rights and change current ones that might be tantamount to discrimination.
So far the government has resisted the court's directive.
Members of Nepal's LGBT community are arbitrarily arrested, held without a hearing and beaten and tortured by prison guards.
In 2006 police arrested 26 transsexuals in one raid. According to Blue Diamond they were taken to the Hanuman Dhoka central police station in Kathmandu where they were held for weeks without being allowed to contact anyone.
Nepal was one of several countries named in the State Department report on human rights violators in 2006. In April last year, two young lesbians captured by Maoist guerrillas in southern Nepal in March were been released after promising to join the rebels.
Blue Diamond also said that people working in the areas of HIV prevention are regularly harassed by police.
In March Katmandu's only hospice for gay men with HIV/AIDS was closed after neighbors mounted a campaign against its landlord for allowing the hospice to open in the area.
Twelve patients, four of whom are terminally ill and unable to walk, were evacuated from the building on only a few hour notice.
The hospice was funded by the Elton John Foundation and operated by Blue Diamond Society.
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