Helem is an NGO dedicated to LGBTQ+ rights.
BEIRUT — Helem (dream), an NGO dedicated to the rights of the LGBTQ+ community, issued a statement Saturday in response to caretaker Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi’s call to ban events “promoting homosexuality,” describing it as a scapegoating tactic to “distract the public from [the government’s] failures and corruption.”
Here’s what we know:
• Helem’s statement said there is no legal basis for Mawlawi’s letter to security forces, describing it as “homophobic and transphobic hate speech,” which it said “incit[ed] violence,” noting that the “Lebanese penal code does not criminalize any identity” and that allowing “LGBTQ people the right and space to express [themselves] and assemble freely” was accepted officially by Lebanon as part of the “2021 Universal Perioidic Review process at the Human Rights Council.”
• Mada, an NGO “which aims at reinforcing the relationship between local communities and their natural environment,” called for a sit-in at the Interior Ministry Sunday at 5pm, to be followed by a march to downtown Beirut to protest Mawlawi’s statement and to affirm the rights of Lebanon’s LGBT community.
• Helem’s statement also decries “increased racist deportation rhetoric against Syrian refugees by government officials, several vicious attacks against women, and the ongoing summoning of journalists and activists for interrogation in retaliation to criticism they posted on social media.”
• Arising in response to “religious leaders’” criticism of the “organization of celebrations aimed at promoting unnatural sexual relations in Lebanon,” Mawlawi’s letter asked security forces “to take the necessary measures to prevent any celebration, meeting or gathering whose purpose is to promote this phenomenon."