SUCCESSFUL SWEDISH SALUTE to IDAHO DAY

 

SUCCESSFUL SWEDISH SALUTE to IDAHO DAY

Stockholm -- Tupilak (Nordic rainbow culture workers) and ILGCN (international rainbow culture network) Information Secretariat-Stockholm carried out a positive salute to the May 17 IDAHO Day -- international day against homophobia, transphobia and bi-sexual phobia -- at an event in the Swedish capital.

The event was made possible by Tupilak's chair person, Sarah Guarino Werner, of 

Sweden -- setting up the Zoom links, and Tupilak's Peter Fröberg working on the internet, video mobile and film screening facilities and generously offering once again his private locale.

Joining the event via Zoom was Louis-Georges Tin, Paris-based French professor, author LGBT anti-racist activist and originator of the concept of IDAHO Day. He received the Golden Tupilak 2005 award diploma for creating IDAHO Day initiative.

"I am so proud of this award -- my first international recognition," said Louis-Georges. "And so pleased that the IDAHO DAY idea went from local initiatives, national recognition in France and elsewhere and finally as United Nations pro-claimed day. And that a number of organizations around the workd -- Nepal and Cuba and elsewhere have used this concept succuessfully in their struggle to combat homophobic laws. We have succeed in a number of countries -- but still have a difficult and dangerou battle ahead in other countries!" he added.

Louis-Georges reminded the aucience that the choice of May 17 was based on the United Nations´ World Health Organization decision declaring that homosexuality was not a sickness -- combating many national laws East and West putting LGBT people in prison, mental institutes and even execution.

A Swedish-Speaking Finnish Island in History 

Another digital video phone participant in the event was Swedish singer, performer, ex-parliamentarian member for the Left Party, and co-ordinator of the WestPride annual event in the Swedish west coast city of Gothenburg, and new head of the Nordic Cultural Institute in Mariahamn of the Finnish, Swedish-speaking Åland islands --Tasso Staffilidis -- an earlier winner of a Tupilak award diploma.

"We want very much to work together -- with the Nordic Institute (NIPÅ), Ålands's LGBT pride organization, Regnbågsfyren (rainbow light house), and Tupilak/ILGCN in future Nordic LGBT events," said Tasso. "And we fully support Tupilak's founding concept that the Nordic region shall also include our Baltic neighbors -- once part of the Swedish 17th and 18th empire, later part of the Soviet-occupied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as part of the Nordic family!"

(Åland lies in the Baltic Sea, closer to Sweden, and once was the historic

center of frustrated, emperial Russian advance towards attacking Sweden. And later the conflict of almost leading to warfare between Sweden and Finland over who should claim the Swedish-speaking islands.) 

French Poetry, United Nations Films

Also part of the event was a poem in French dedicated to Louis-Georges from Tupilak poet, Tomas Åberg of Sweden. Also, IDAHO Day greetings from Canada, the UK and Norway -- also from Norwegian humanist LGBT activist Rolf Solheim -- often a participant in Tupilak seminars in the Nordic region and in Eastern Europe.

Also, the screening of United Nations LGBT films from the "Free and Equal" series -- the song-filled documentary "Why We Fight" covering the global scene and the humorous and song-filled "The Welcome" of India -- showing how the hesitant, elderly generation can warmly receive LGBT youngsters into the family.

FUTURE TUPILAK & LGBC EVENTS

Possible future Tupilak and ILGCN seminars, music events, art exhibits and film screenings are coming up on July 30th in the "Pride in the Streets" events of the Stockholm Pride week supported by Baltzar (meeting place for the eldery and all others) with participants coming in person for via Zoom from the United States, Canda and Russia, and the annual Tupilak/ILGCN seminars at Stockhold Pride, a seminar at the Reclaim Pride alternative program in July, a joint Nordic rainbow program with the Nordic Institute on the Åland Islands, and the 10th Nordic Rainbow History & Culture Month --October, 2025 together with Estonia, Sweden, Finland and Denmark -- including participating visitors in place and Zoom participation from Hungary, Germany, Romania, Austria, Norway, the U.K., USA, Spain, Latin America and others.

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More information: Tupilak, ILGCN, Bill Schiller Facebooks and bill@tupilak.org

 

 

Nordic Rainbow Culture & History

Thursday, March 27 -- NORDIC RAINBOW CULTURE & HISTORY 

TUPILAK (Nordic rainbow culture workers) & BALTZAR (meeting place for seniors)

(Bolinders plan 1) (T-Centralen) (18.00-20.00) Stockholm

-- all ages welcome! 

(Baltzar invites with coffee and sandwhichs 17.30!)

please sign up with: hakan.norrby@stockholm.se

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Torsdagen, 27 mars -- NORDISKA REGNSBÅGS KULTUR & HISTORIA

TUPILAK (Nordisk HBT kulturarbetare) & BALTZAR (mötesplats för 

seniorer)

(Bolinders plan 1) (T-Centralen) (18.00-20.00) Stockholm

-- alla åldrar välkommna!

(Baltzar bjuder på kafe och smörgås 17.30)

gärna anmälar: hakan.norrby@stockholm.se

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Håkan Norrby -- "Baltzar -- yesterday, today and tomorrow"

Sarah Guarino Werner/Bill Schiller -- "Tupilak, ILGCN: Nordic Rainbow Culture & History"

Jan Hammarlund - song & music

Willi Reichhold - film: "Both Sides Now" (text of Joni Mitchell)

Tomas Åberg - poetry

Peter Fröberg - song

Bill Schiller -- Nordic LGBT "old-timers who were still going strong" - 

- Selma, Carl Gustaf, Tom, HC, Dag, Carl, Tove, etc."

Films: Music film of Carl Ewert (Gothenburg) - Sarah Leander's 

"Sång om Syrsor"

"If I Could Tell" (SETA-Finland)

"When Harry Met Santa" (Norway Post)

"All Shall Be Well" (Ray Yeung -Hong Kong)

"Why We Fight" (United Nations) 

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Balzar

Free and Equal

When Harry Met Santa

Balzar Flags

All Shall Be Well - Hong Kong Film

Haluaisin Finnish LGBT elderly

Zarah-Leander-1972

Carl Ewert Gothenburg

Tommy Åberg

Peter Fröberg

Willi Reichhold

Jan Hammarlund

Bill Schiller

Sarah Guardino Werner

 

EPORT ON TUPILAK/ILGCN LAST STOCKHOLM EVENT 2024

Stockholm -- The last Tupilak (Nordic rainbow culture workers) & ILGCN (international rainbow culture network) event of 

2024 in the Swedish capital took place on November 10 -- with seminars on the campaigns against the death penalties of 

LGBT folk in the growing number of countries and the Belarus celebration of 15 years of the "Journalists for Tolerance" -- 

the efforts to spead LGBT human rights and cultural information to this homophobic dictatorship and to many other Eastern European nations. 

Coming from the southern city of Malmö, Swedish film maker Jenifer Malmquist screened her award-winning film, "On Suffocation," about the film version of the hanging of two gay perisoners some where in the Middle East.

"We had some difficulty to convince the actors to take part in such a brutal film," Jenifer said. "We had to make sure

that the prison guards' unforms did not relect any one nationality or the other -- but could be representative of any of the

numer of Middle East nations carrying out the death penalty for LGBT prisoners."

HOMOPHOBIC DEATH PENALTY SPREADING ELSEWHERE

Adding to the discussions were the frightening conclusion that the death penalty for LGBT people has spread from 

Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Middle East states to Uganda and Ghana -- thanks to the financial support of the right-wing evangical movement in the United States -- boosting the former centuries-old British colonial prison sentences to the death sentences.  

Also screened at the event was the award-winning "Unchechen" film by Stefan Hornby, (UK) about a gay son killed

by his angry, homophobic father -- confirming the Chechen dictator's claim that the state need not murder LGBT folk -- 

"their relatives will do the job."

The two films and discussion underlinine the need for rainbow films, art, cultural events, seminars to make the

death penalties of LGBT people visible -- and confirming that homophobic torture, violence and killings in many countries

take place in the arrest jails and on the streets -- not only in the execution blocks.

15 YEARS OF JOURNALISTS FOR TOLERANCE

Visiting LGBT Belarus activists -- A.K. now in exile in Canada and Max D. now in exile in Sweden -- helped celebrate

their anniversty of their project, "Journalists for Tolerance" providing desperately-needed human rights and cultural 

information to colleagues still in the homophobic dictatorship of Belarus and other Eastern European countries -- where

regimes limit or totally ban LGBT information.

"We have along been working with Tupilak/ILGCN," says A.K. with visits from Sweden, our attending Swedish Prides

and together organizing annual awards for LGBT and hetero journalists in Belarus daring to defy threats and censorships 

aimed at suffocating information about LGBT human rights and culture." 

"We are very proud to have been working Journalists for Tolerance over these years, especially to see the survival of 

this organization for so long despite the growing homophobia in Belarus, Russia, elsewhere in Eastern Europe and now 

even in many homophobic, right-wing movements in Western Europe including Sweden," says Bill Schiller of Tupilak/ILGCN.

"We hope that more J&T award winners can come to more Swedish Prides to receive their diplomas -- and get

the applause they deserve, he added. "And we hope that some of our Nordic short films and the short films from the

excellent United Nations LGBT series, "Free and Equal."

40th ANNIVERSARY OF AUSTRIAN LGBT MONUMENT

"Our next event will not be in Stockholm but in Austria --on December 7 at the Nazi concentration camp, 

Mauthausen -- honoring the 40th anniverary of its LGBT monument there -- the oldest in the world," Schiller adds.  

"We plan to be present both in person and with a video message confirming that this monument and the Austrian LGBT movement is well worth our "Ofeo Iris" award diploma for information and research in Nazi and neo nazi persecution of LGBT. The monument's prophetic words in stone: "Totgeschlagen Totgeschwiegen" have encouraged LGBT activists all over the world to create LGBT monuments in their own cities."

"We are proud that the long-reluctant Nordic region finally approved its first permanent LGBT monument last year -- in Gothenburg -- and that Stockholm is now taking the first steps for a monument in the Swedish capital," concludes Schiller.
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photos/logos: Jenifer, On Suffocation, Unchechen, J&T, Bill, Free & Equal, Mauthausen monument, Gothenburg monument.  
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More information:  bill@tupilak.org