On the occasion of the international day against homophobia, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned of a particular threat to lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals and intersexuals in the coronavirus pandemic. „There are also reports of Covid 19 policies that are being used by police to target LGBTI people and organizations,“ he said today.
„Many LGBTI people who are already exposed to prejudice, attacks and murder just because they are who they are or love, whom they love, experience increased stigma and new obstacles to accessing medical care as a result of the virus“ he said.
Removed from list of diseases
The international day against homophobia dates back to May 17, 1990 when the World Health Organization (WHO) decided to remove homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses. In order to publicly point out the discrimination that members of the LGBTI community are still exposed to in many places, those affected proclaimed May 17th in 2004 as a memorial day.
In Austria, the LGBTI spokeswoman for the Greens, Ewa Ernst-Dziedzic, issued a statement the day before, thirty years after homosexuality was no longer seen as a disease by the World Health Organization, “unfortunately we still have a long way to go. Many of our demands are still unfulfilled. ”She mentioned, for example, self-determination when entering sex and a ban on intersex genital mutilation.
