RIGHTS-CHILE:
Gay Community Guardedly Optimistic About Future
Daniela Estrada

SANTIAGO,  (IPS) - Despite an increase in the number of homophobic incidents reported, a newly released study on sexual minority rights in Chile concludes that 2005 was above all a year of significant advances, and many are optimistic that the future will bring even greater progress under the new government taking office in March.

"In general terms, the assessment for 2005 is positive, because we made some important strides, like the progress achieved towards a new anti-discrimination law, the creation of the first gay student brigade, the new sex education policy, and the end of abuse by the police," said Rolando Jiménez, president of the Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation, one of Chile's leading gay rights organisations.

"All of this makes us optimistic about the future, but that doesn't mean we can let our guard down, because there have also been new developments, like the politicisation of homophobia and attempts to undertake preventive actions aimed at hindering further progress towards equal rights for homosexuals," he told IPS.

Jiménez noted that Chile's gays and lesbians faced a "climate of hatred" in the months leading up to the Dec. 11 general elections, generated by the hands of the conservative Independent Democratic Union (UDI) party

During the election campaign, the UDI, which has close links to the ultraconservative Catholic organisation Opus Dei, tabled two controversial bills in the Chilean Congress.

"One of them established that marriage can only take place between a man and a woman, while the other stipulated that gay and lesbians couples who have married in other countries cannot come to Chile and adopt children," Jiménez explained.

"The ironic thing is, neither of these demands had been made by the Chilean gay and lesbian movement," he added.

For his part, Congressman Antonio Leal of the Party For Democracy, which forms part of the ruling centre-left coalition in Chile, commented that "it is unfortunate that there are attempts in Congress to create phantom threats for purely electoral purposes, because what is currently being discussed in Congress is a bill that would authorise civil unions between same-sex couples."

While civil unions provide legal recognition to same-sex partnerships, they do not grant all of the rights entailed by marriage, such as, specifically, the right to adopt children.

Ultimately, the two UDI bills were not only voted down in Congress, but the right also failed to garner enough votes for the party to win the election. Instead, the winner of the Jan. 15 presidential runoff was socialist Michelle Bachelet, the centre-left coalition candidate, who will take office on Mar. 11 as Chile’s first woman president.

The 4th Annual Report on the Rights of Sexual Minorities, published by MOVILH with the support of London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International, provides a detailed analysis of the cases of discrimination reported in 2005, as well as a list of the institutions and individuals who reflected the most homophobic attitudes during the year.

The 112-page report was launched on Jan. 26 by Jiménez, Leal and Sergio Laurenti, the executive director of Amnesty International in Chile.

Laurenti praised the work undertaken by MOVILH and called on the country’s politicians to respond to the revelations made in the report released annually by this organisation, which represents the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) community.

The number of cases of homophobia reported rose from 46 in 2004 to 58 in 2005. Most of these were incidents of beatings and other physical assaults, although no charges were pressed in any of the cases. But for the first time ever, there were no reports of abuse on the part of the Carabineros militarised police.

According to the document, the increase in the number of cases reported "is explained by the fact that those affected have become more courageous about filing a denunciation, and does not reflect an increase in homophobia in society at large, since all of the surveys carried out in 2005 revealed that public perceptions of sexual minorities are increasingly positive."

The GLBT community also hailed the "Draft (Legislative) Agreement Against Crimes of Homophobia", drafted by ruling coalition and opposition lawmakers in conjunction with MOVILH.

"Through the draft agreement, we called on the ministries of the interior and defence to inform the police of the Chilean parliament’s concern over the homophobic attitudes expressed in 2004, and this obviously had a positive effect on both the Carabineros and the civilian police," Leal told IPS. .

He added that he is optimistic about the swift adoption by the Senate of the anti-discrimination bill, which establishes criminal sanctions for crimes committed out of homophobia, xenophobia or racism.

Leal thinks it is especially providential that the bill will be voted on by the new Senate that will take office on Mar. 11, given that the ruling centre-left coalition won the majority of seats in both houses of Congress for the first time ever, in the December elections. He believes this will guarantee the adoption of the anti-discrimination bill, which was promoted by outgoing President Ricardo Lagos.

The study’s list of institutions with the most overtly homophobic attitudes in 2005 was headed up by the UDI, the educational division of the Chilean Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conference and a secondary school in the port city of Valparaíso.

They are followed by the Vatican; the blood banks at a private clinic and the Armed Forces hospital, which refused to accept blood donations from homosexuals despite a 2003 Health Ministry order to do so; the neo-Nazi group Camisas Pardas (Brown Shirts); three nightclubs; and Family Action, a conservative citizens organisation.

At the top of the list of most homophobic individuals was the president of the educational division of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Héctor Vargas; 12 UDI lawmakers; the principal and a teacher at the Guillermo Rivera secondary school in Valparaíso; and the leader of the neo-Nazi Camisas Pardas, Francisco Javier Eguiguren Muñoz.

The list also included a number of nightclub bouncers, mayors, city council members, designated (unelected) senators, priests, writers, a psychiatrist and a political scientist.

One of the most dramatic cases reported was that of an 18-year-old student at the Guillermo Rivera secondary school, who was expelled on Aug. 25 after demanding that the head teacher do something to stop the bullying he suffered at the hands of schoolmates who had falsely labelled him gay.

"For us, the situation faced by this student was especially brutal. Although he isn’t gay, he was stigmatised and persecuted for four years by his classmates and head teacher, and when he finally exploded and screamed out to demand that something be done about it, he was expelled from the school and will have to graduate on the street," remarked Jiménez.

It is hoped that the Catholic Church will have a less prominent presence on next year’s list, following a meeting on Jan. 16 between MOVILH leaders and the president of the Bishops Conference, Alejandro Goic, where they discussed the concerns and demands of sexual minorities and left the door open for future meetings.

"I told Goic that the Catholic Church around the world has a perverse logic when it comes to homosexuals, because it views us as second-class citizens, and this serves as a moral, ideological and political justification for discrimination," said Jiménez.

As in previous years, the report is being distributed at all three levels of government, and to the Armed Forces, the police and various United Nations agencies. It is also being presented, for the first time ever, to the leadership of the Chilean Catholic Church.