LAGUNA – The second annual gay pride march held in the University of the Philippines (UPLB) campus in Los Banos City saw tempers flaring against the country’s leader that the protestors accuse of violating their rights and trashing their welfare.
Led by the UPLB Babaylan, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) student association, the pride march not only dished out cries for gender equality but also demanded President Aquino to cure serious budget gaps that compromised their education, health care, and security, days before street protests greet the annual State of the Nation Address or SONA before Congress in the capital Manila, 40 miles to the north.
“Bakla at lesbiyana, sa budget cut imbiyerna!” (Gays and lesbians are mad over budget cuts!) was a slogan that reverberated across the campus as a gigantic rainbow flag, the symbol of LGBT community, was carried aloft by students who are increasingly stressed by shocking hikes in tuition fees.
Jan Erick Alim, the group’s punong babaylan or chief shaman, said that this year’s pride is marked by LGBT students with stark insecurity as many are forced to work in sleazy low paid jobs just to pay fees for a state-run school that are now more expensive than for private schools.
Alim noted that Aquino after two years in office has proven to be a curse to the LGBT, as his administration trashed pro-LGBT recommendations that LGBTs submitted to the Universal Periodic Review of the United Nations Human Rights Council in May, including the passage of the Antidiscrimination Law that was filed in Congress by Bayan Muna’s Rep. Teddy Casiño.
“We denounce the terror attacks staged by the police against hundreds of gay clients of Queeriosity and Fahrenheit Cafe in Manila, and the increasing hate crimes against LGBTs that Aquino is refusing to address,” Alim said in a statement sent to the Mindanao Examiner.
Gay activists blame these police attacks for the geometrical rise in new HIV infections among transgenders, gay and bisexual men. UPLB Babaylan said that the Department’s Health’s privatization of government-owned hospitals will kill prevention programs and bankrupt treatment and medicine supplies for those already infected.
For the month of May alone, the Department of Health registered 273 new infections, of which 4 out of 5 cases were through homosexual contact. The department chief Dr. Enrique Ona was also denounced for recommending the mass profiling of gay Filipinos and subjecting them to enforced quarantines as a way of stopping the AIDS problem in the country.
Even as this means seven new infections daily, Aquino’s budget for HIV prevention, treatment, care and support plummeted from 81 million pesos ($1.9 million) in 2009 to 65 million pesos ($1.6 million) last year. The UNAIDS estimates that drugs treatment costs need 428.5 million pesos ($10.3 million) by 2015.
UPLB Babaylan is joining many campus groups in a march on Congress demanding the administration to increase budget for health programs and tuition support for poor students, while halting the selling off of schools and hospitals to corporate investors in order to protect their future.
20