Category Archives: Peter Tatchell

Alicia Keys criticised for Women’s Day event in ‘misogynist’ Saudi Arabia

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The US singer has been called out by human rights activists for hosting a summit and performing on stage in the repressive state

Performer Alicia Keys projects a powerful position on women’s rights, hosting a regular Women to Women summit and posting inspirationally on Instagram on Friday for International Women’s Day. But the singer-songwriter’s message is undermined for some by the revelation that she is hosting the third edition of her summit this weekend in Saudi Arabia.

The American performer and her guests, including Pharrell Williams, best known for his worldwide hit Happy, are to discuss “how women are pushing the culture forward in Saudi Arabia and around the world”, she has announced, before the get-together in the coastal city of Jeddah.

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‘World is watching’ Qatar, warns Peter Tatchell at London embassy protest

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LGBTQ+ activists call on fans to boycott games or use social media to highlight human rights abuses

Peter Tatchell has warned Qatar that the world’s eyes will be on the country during the World Cup, as protesters gathered outside its embassy in London to highlight the dangers faced by LGBTQ+ people, women and migrant workers.

Tatchell said t was “outrageous” that figures including David Beckham were promoting Qatar and the tournament, in effect asking fans to ignore human rights abuses and the country’s record on LGBTQ+ issues.

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Peter Tatchell stopped in Qatar while staging LGBT+ rights protest

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Incident outside National Museum in Doha comes less than a month before start of men’s football World Cup

The human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has been stopped by police in Qatar while staging a protest against the Gulf state’s criminalisation of LGBTQ+ people.

Tatchell’s protest outside the National Museum of Qatar in the capital, Doha, comes less than a month before the start of the Fifa World Cup, which is expected to attract 1.2 million visitors from around the world.

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Johnson’s LGBT adviser ‘dismayed’ at failure to ban trans conversion practices

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Nick Herbert calls for royal commission to detoxify trans debate but criticises ‘shouty protests’

The prime minister’s LGBT adviser has said he is “dismayed” by the decision not to include transgender people in a ban on conversion practices, while describing the cancellation of the government’s equality conference as an “act of self-harm by the LGBT lobby”.

Nick Herbert also called for a royal commission to detoxify and take the politics out of the trans debate.

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Hating Peter Tatchell review – crusading activist’s greatest hits

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Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry and the former archbishop of Canterbury appear in a chummy documentary recounting the gay rights activist’s most outrageous stunts and impressive achievements

“My doctors have said very clearly: ‘No more head injuries.’” So says Peter Tatchell, one of the world’s most tenacious, divisive and necessary activists, as he prepares to fly to Moscow in 2018 to protest against state-sanctioned homophobia. The trip, which returns him to the city where he was beaten and arrested in 2007, forms one of the few present-tense sections of this greatest hits-style documentary. Tatchell has sustained numerous injuries from his lifetime of protest, though claims of memory loss are comically undermined during a kid-gloves interview with Ian McKellen. “Fifty two years of civil disobedience, Peter!” gasps the actor admiringly. “Fifty three now,” Tatchell replies, unable to resist the lure of being right.

As of this year, it’s 54. Tatchell was already an activist when he moved from Melbourne to London in 1971 at the age of 19. Among other achievements, he went on to stage the first gay rights protest in a communist country (East Germany, 1973), co-found the gay pressure group OutRage!, and attempt citizen’s arrests of Robert Mugabe (London, 1999 and Brussels, 2001). The former MP Chris Smith correctly identifies those run-ins with the Zimbabwean dictator as turning points which softened public hostility toward Tatchell.

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