Activists in London and San Francisco are urging people around the world to report antigay abuses to the U.S. State Department.
They hope to increase the number of such incidents that are included in the department's country-by-country human-rights report, which the agency must produce and send to Congress each year.
Submissions must be received at the State Department before the end of 2005.
' [ This ] will help improve the U.S. State Department's monitoring of such abuses and expand a data base that can be used by human rights campaigners pressing for an end to homophobia,' said longtime independent activist Michael Petrelis. 'The data will also be helpful to corroborate the claims of gay people fleeing persecution and seeking asylum.'
'The massive scale of homophobic persecution worldwide is grossly underdocumented in all official human rights reports,' added London activist Peter Tatchell of the gay-rights group OutRage!. ' [ We ] will be submitting evidence to the U.S. State Department based on our firsthand evidence from LGBT refugees.'
Reports should be e-mailed to pottslg@state.gov .
— Rex Wockner