China’s gay rights groups asked to pull out of Shenzhen charity fair
China’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights groups not officially recognised
Several Chinese gay rights advocacy groups were asked to pull their display boards and brochures from a national charity fair held in Shenzhen over the weekend, said volunteers.
Workers at this year’s China Charity Fair, an event organised by the country’s Ministry of Civil Affairs and sponsored by the Guangdong provincial government, demanded LGBT rights volunteers to stop passing out pamphlets and pull their advertising from the event, according to a gay rights worker.
“They told us we are not registered with the ministry and therefore were not allowed to promote anything at the fair,” said A Qiang (not his real name), a senior worker at PFLAG (Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians and Gays) China, a Guangzhou-based organisation that helps gay parents.
Volunteers obliged and stopped passing out educational pamphlets about the LGBT community, he said.
Another Beijing-based gay rights group, Beijing LGBT Centre, was also banned by the event organisers from passing out flyers, citing the same reason.
A lack of an official identity is nothing new for China’s gay rights groups.
A Qiang said he had been trying to register his group for years by making at least a dozen visits to local government, but all to no avail. An official once told him that no law in China says homosexual is “legal”, so they couldn’t possibly approve his request.
