Petrelis Files

State Dept's Latest Human Rights Report Issued Today; Are Gay & HIV Citations Included?

For a number of years, Rick Rosendall of the Gay Lesbian Activists Alliance in DC, and yours truly, as unpaid volunteers interested in global gay issues, have done what we can to both pressure the State Dept to monitor and foster respect of human rights for gays around the globe, and to include the abuses and advances of gay people in the annual human rights report.

Neither Rick nor I, nor our brother across the pond, Peter Tatchell, who has greatly assisted us in our work as USA gays committed to working with our State Dept to benefit gays globally, is part of a group with millions of dollars and paid executives and researchers.

Click here to read about some of our work on improving the annual human rights report from State in 2005.

Go here and also click here for the two places on the web where you can read all of the gay and HIV citations from last year's annual report.

And if you click here, you'll find the 2004 gay and HIV citations, excerpted from the annual report.

So far today, the Human Rights Watch, the International Gay Lesbian Human Rights Commission, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and Amnesty International have yet to post notices on their sites about the overall report, or the gay and HIV citations.

I've contacted people at those organizations and asked them to let me know when they'll examine the report for its gay content, or lack thereof, and also if they have any plans to excerpt every gay and HIV reference in the new State Dept report.

It is my fervent hope I will hear back from all the groups about how they are coordinating reading the report, analyzing it, using it to benefit our brothers and sisters around the globe, and who should be thanked at the State Dept for including all the gay and AIDS references.

To read the State Dept briefing with Paula Dobriansky and Barry Lowenkron, undersecretaries for human rights and labor practices, click here.

Secretary Rice's short remarks on the new report are posted here.

Finally, and most importantly, click here to start reading the full country-by-country reports.

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NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN RIGHTS

Among grossly overlooked issues in this country are Native American Indian rights; luckily there are some organizations in place to help the Native American cause.