COLOMBIAN PARTNER BILL KILLED
Conservatives and other supporters of President Alvaro Uribe Vélez killed a gay civil-union bill in Colombia's Senate Aug. 26.
They blocked both a vote and further debate on the measure which would have extended spousal rights to registered same-sex couples in areas such as job benefits, insurance, pensions, social security, alimony, inheritance, health-care decisions and family violence. It also would have banned discrimination based on 'sexual identity, gender or orientation.'
The vote to block was 55 to 32 with 15 abstentions.
Senator Piedad Córdoba, lead sponsor of the bill, plans to reintroduce it in a future session.
Three ex-presidents of Colombia spoke in support of the measure. Alfonso López Michelsen, Julio César Turbay and César Gaviria Trujillo, who now is secretary general of the Organization of American States, all lobbied for its passage.
JANIS IAN MARRIES
Seventies pop singer Janis Ian, best known for her Grammy-winning song 'At Seventeen,' married her partner, Patricia Snyder, at Toronto City Hall Aug. 27.
Court decisions this summer legalized ordinary marriage for same-sex couples in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia.
The federal government is in the process of opening up the institution nationwide.
Ian, 52, and Snyder, a Nashville lawyer, have been together 14 years.
Foreign same-sex couples can travel to Ontario or British Columbia, buy a marriage license, and get married the same day.
SHARIPOV ASSOCIATE BEATEN
The public defender of jailed Uzbek gay journalist Ruslan Sharipov was severely beaten by four masked men Aug. 28 in Tashkent, the capital city.
Surat Ikramov of the Independent Group for Human Rights Defenders was abducted as he returned from meeting with a judge about a court date for appealing Sharipov's conviction. He had been receiving threatening telephone calls in the days leading up to the assault.
According to Human Rights Watch: 'Ikramov was driving his car when a man flagged him down and asked for a lift. When he pulled over, four men in black masks and camouflage uniforms opened the doors of Ikramov's car, placed a plastic bag on his head, tied his arms and legs, and put him in their car. The men beat Ikramov in the back of the car and repeatedly restricted his air supply by tightening a belt around his neck to close the plastic bag over his head. The men drove Ikramov to the outskirts of Tashkent, where they demanded money from him, continued the beating, and then left him by the Chirchik River. Ikramov lost consciousness and only [hours later] was able to get help. [He] had two broken ribs and a concussion.'
Ikramov had been organizing a protest over Sharipov's case scheduled for the following day outside Parliament.
That morning, said Human Rights Watch, 'police came to the homes of several people intending to attend the protest ... and effectively put them under house arrest by preventing them from leaving their homes for the day. Others who managed to get to the area near the parliament were detained, put in buses, driven away, and later released. One activist, Elena Urlaeva, was on her way to the protest when people who later said they were from the National Security Service stopped her car and forcefully dragged her from it, kicking her. They detained her for several hours and later released her.'
Sharipov, 25, pleaded guilty Aug. 13 to sodomy, sex with minors and running a brothel, and was sent to jail for five and one-half years. He had earlier declared his innocence but fired his lawyers and admitted guilt after officials threatened to hurt his mother.
The International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission and other human-rights groups believe the charges against Sharipov were concocted to silence his journalistic criticism of police corruption and human-rights abuses.
'Everything indicates that Sharipov was arrested on false and sordid pretenses designed to rid the authorities of a bothersome, dissident voice,' said Reporters Without Borders in a letter to Uzbek President Islam Karimov.
Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are the only former Soviet republics that still criminalize gay sex.
