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National Jamaican Boycott Campaign To Kick-Off in New York City With 'Rum Dump' at Birthplace of Gay Rights Movement
What: Gay advocates are launching a national boycott of Jamaica in New York City at the famed Stonewall Bar -- birthplace of the gay rights movement. The bar's owners and boycott supporters will dump Jamaican liquor -- Red Stripe beer and Myers' Rum -- down the sewer. (All boycott supporters are invited to attend and participate.)
Human rights activists have given Jamaica the infamous title: "The Most Homophobic Place on Earth." Gay people have regularly been beaten and murdered on the island, while authorities do little to stop the violence.
"We, as the owners of the Stonewall Inn, birthplace of the Gay rights movement, refuse to support, in any way, shape or form, the oppression of any people especially our gay brothers and sisters in Jamaica," the Stonewall Inn said in its statement. "We ask all people of all walks of life to send a clear message to the Jamaican people and their government, that as long as they continue to allow and condone violence and hatred toward the Gay community, we will neither buy their products nor support their tourist trade. To do so is to tacitly support the current climate of oppression."
Where: Stonewall Inn Wednesday, April 15 53 Christopher Street 6:30 PM
Who: Bill Morgan, Stonewall Inn, Kurt Kelly, Stonewall Inn, Tony DeCicco, Stonewall Inn, Wayne Besen, Boycott co-organizer
Background: GLBT activists Michael Petrelis, Wayne Besen and Jim Burroway launched this boycott after a State Department report highlighted the violence faced by GLBT people. According to the report:
The Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All Sexuals, and Gays (J-FLAG) continued to report human rights abuses, including arbitrary detention, mob attacks, stabbings, harassment of homosexual patients by hospital and prison staff, and targeted shootings of homosexuals. Police often did not investigate such incidents. The West Coast portion of the boycott took place earlier this month with a rum dump in San Francisco that featured Petrelis and city Supervisor Bevan Dufty. Learn more about the boycott at www.BoycottJamaica.org.
Gareth Henry, the co-chair of JFLAG until he was forced to flee the country for Canada last year, says he supports the boycott. He says JFLAG can’t be seen to publicly support a boycott.
“They can’t be the ones to call for the boycott,” he says. “They can’t be that voice. But the gays, lesbians and queers on the ground are supportive of a boycott.”
Henry says he’s tried talking to the government.
“We have tried numerous approaches, numerous dialogues with government officials,” he says. “They have been non-responsive to the call. We have to hit people where it’s going to hurt, where they’ll feel it. In the Jamaican context talk is cheap. After 10 years of JFLAG’s existence what else can we do?”
(Some of us have had enough of decades of cheap talk that has led nowhere. Others want to continue this useless treadmill diplomacy)
Here is also another Jamaican perspective http://axoriak.blogspot.com/2009/04/boycott-jamaica.html
posted by Wayne Besen, at
4/14/2009 7:17 PM
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