GenderStan

This week I am mostly on the road on my way to Berlin and mostly thinking about migrants and their lives in Russia. Just two days ago spent about an hour at a train station trying to buy a Russian entry [migration] card with a relative. The train attendants sell these cards for 300 to 1000 roubles (13$ to 35$) and their usual customers are migrants who have to renew their cards but according to the law have to leave the country and return with a new card (yeah, this is especially fun if you are a migrant somewhere in Siberia and the nearest border is thousand plus kilometers away).  It became a business, the train attendants on trains which cross Russian borders sometimes ask if anyone needs a spare card with valid date of entry. You van also buy the card at Moscow train stations.

Meanwhile, Labrys staff managed to put the promised videocast on Google and also on Labrys blog. The video is available at p://kyrgyzlabrys.wordpress.com/2008/03/14/videocast-on-google-video/

As I have previously written, Labrys was preparing a videocast in response to the homophobic and insulting statements presented by Russian Orthodox Church. The videocast was uploaded to Kyrgyz video portal and has been watched 409 times within the first 15 hours of being up.  The video in Russian features Gulnara Kurmanova of AntiAIDS Association who is a strong LGBT ally, journalist Bektour Iskender,  priest Maksim Bratukhin and head of LGBT Organization ‘Labrys’ Anna Kirey. Together they explore the view of religion on LGBT and discuss the possibility of opening a dialog on LGBT issues which most organizations are silent about. The videocast can be viewed here

The worrying trend that I see in this situation is that the word ’sodomite’ might become part of everyday language and was presented as synonymous to LGBT in most of the media coverage of the press conference by Russian Orthodox Church.

Flowers, candy and cakes. Not much about women’s rights which originally signified the 8th of March. Flowers are sold at every corner and every woman is entitled to a gift and attention. I saw local police giving flowers to women drivers at the main Ala-Too Square. Interesting idea possibly copied from Russian police recent Valentine’s day quest with giving heart-shaped baloons instead of fines to traffic rules violators.

At the same time recently the parliament’s committee on ‘everything unimporant’ e.g. youth, sports and  gender policy voted in a bill on ‘National Sport types’ while the bill on ‘State guarantees for equal rights and opportunities for men and women’ reports MSN newspaper . The number of women in Parliament seems not to influence the attitude towards gendered approach to legislation. This was the worry of researcher and gender specialist Gulnara Ibraeva   and it is likely that the women from privileged and elitist groups might not find gendered realities of Kyrgyzstan as a key issue to support.

The press release which I wrote about yesterday is now available . Labrys has contacted different local and international human rights organizations asking for recommendations for possible official reactions to the press release.  Suggestions varied from keeping silent to suing the church for hate speech.

The revelation of the last week for me was that wordpress is banned in Turkey. I could not post anything for the week even though I planned to. Now I am back and looking at the news.

The top three news for now are:

1. Russian Orthodox Church against homosexuality and Apostolic church story continued. Today local chapter of Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) made a public statement that ROC ‘has never supported, does not support and never will support sodomites’. The press release available in Russian below accuses 5 Bishkek Channel for confusing ROC and Apostolic church and giving the viewers a wrong perception of the ROC’s position on homosexuality. The press release calles LGBT people ’sodomites’ and compares LGBT people with necrophiles and pedophiles while the LGBT-friendly priest Maxim Bratukhin is described as a ‘disguised pervert’.  Kloop posted a balanced article about this situation.

2. Gender policy in Kyrgyzstan was mixed with other ’soft’ issues through the parliamentary committee for youth, gender policy, physical education and sports.

3.  Interesting discussion on bridekidnapping is happening on Diesel forum. There is not a single person there supporting this ‘tradition’.

Keep reading →

This is the question in my mind today. I have two and a half university diplomas (the other half will be added when I finish my thesis), eight years of NGO experience, good language skills, research and journalism experience, publications, travel, living abroad . Yet I do not see purchasing a Jeep as ever something realistic unless I start a successful business in Kyrgyzstan.

This thought crossed my mind after a quarrel with my apartment owner over water and electricity bills which he promised to pay but then declined. He owns a Jeep and a car plus works for Kumtor which means that he has a high salary. He is about 35-40 years old. The apartment rent was 200 dollars per month which is reasonable these days for Bishkek (with an average income of 180-200$ per month). I pay about half of my income for renting an apartment. Labrys shelter is full of migrants coming from Naryn and Talas looking for safer places for LGBT. They cannot afford to rent an apartment for 200$, they cannot afford renting it for 50$. There are migrants in Bishkek who earn 100$ for 12-hour working days. The cheapest lunch costs about 1,5 dollars even if you cook yourself especially in meat-eating culture. Speaking about poverty.

So when will I be able to purchase a Jeep? An average woman in Bishkek earns about 100-200$ at a regular job. An average man earns more and usually has an ‘irregular’ [read: illegal] job. Men somehow manage to buy cars which cost 4000$ and up. Men manage to rent 200-400$ apartments. The more I live in Bishkek, the more I question the system of how society is organized. Apartment owners would not rent for anything less than 180$.  Who rents these apartments?

Sometimes I think its cheaper to live in Europe. When I lived in Sweden, my friend and I rented one room apartment in suburbs for 400$ and this was considered to be expensive. You need at least 200$ to rent a one-room apartment in Bishkek. Isn’t this scary?

Where do migrants live? What’s waiting for an average migrant in the future?  One option is to rent with four-five friends, then you only pay some 40-50$ and hardly have breathing space. This is a reality for many young women and men who came to Bishkek looking for better fortunes.  Will the state ever consider people who live in horrible conditions and sometimes do not eat meat or butter or even a warm meal for weeks? 

I earn more than an average woman in Bishkek but I am very worried about apartment rent prices in this city and I will not have a man with a Jeep to support me. I doubt that I will have a legal job that would help me invest in purchasing an apartment (at least 30000$) or a Jeep (sometimes costs the same).  

Somehow today is a the men’s day because it’s only men who are supposed to be convictedscripted. The celebration originates from Soviet times and the day commemorates the initiating of Soviet Army. Somehow it’s always been a holiday to value men for their protection and defense powers.  Men get ‘manly’ stuff for the holiday - socks and handkerchiefs, lighters and beer, and cards saying that they are ‘real men’ or ‘defenders’ with swords, naked women and axes. Would be really strange to see a card with ‘real woman’ sign for International Women’s Day.  Somehow we know what ‘real’ men have to do - be tough, strong, aggressive, protect and kill the enemy. Yet we still have to remind the men that they have to be ‘real’ and link celebration of their ‘masculine’ characteristics to war and protection.

Today a person from Russian Ortodox Church called my office and said that they were planning to sue Labrys for something. This something is not very clear but it is related to Labrys press conference on 14 February where an LGBT-friendly priest Maksim from Apostolic Orthodox Church spoke about his church’s views on homosexuality (which are positive).

There is no case for putting to court because Maksim was not representing Labrys but the reaction of the church is a little strange and unexpected.  The media did not focus their attention on religion during the press conference and there was hardly any information about Maksim speaking. Most of media focus turned to usual ‘exotic’ issue of transsexuals struggling to change their gender marker officially which was not the news hook at all. 

The press conference was supposed to raise the LGBT issues and talk about Labrys experiences during for years of its work and the official opening of the new LGBT community center. Somehow only Labrys Programmer Department Manager Alex Mamytov who spoke about transgender issues and social worker Viktoria Lotz talking about ‘rehabilitation’ center made it to the news.  I actually wrote to 24.kg news agency which hosted the press conference and asked to take the ’rehabilitation’ part out of the text and ’sexual minorities’ as well. Journalists somehow mix things up all the time and only write about things they find interesting or exotic, e.g. political news (= the state might allow transsexuals change their gender in passports).  

If I were to write about the press conference, I would focus on positive developments in Labrys and get in-depth information about the issue, maybe ask to visit the center or talk to  priest Maksim in detail, request information from Ministry of Health about their views on transgender documents change. Easy and Shocking unchecked and distorted information made it to media. You may read some of the reactions here.

Labrys blog has some more information about the events surrounding the press conference and will feature

Tursunbek Akun reminds me of hunger strikes, bragging about his experiences during Chechen war and senseless speeches.  Same old faces, same politics, maybe a little bit easier on gender than Bakir uulu. I still wonder why his State Human Rights Commission had to be dissolved?

Nominated by the President for this seat and elected, it seems that things are going to be this way from now on. Once the President nominates someone, the dominating party Ak Jol supports them and then we play democracy.

Irony: usually human rights activists challenge the state which infringes upon human rights and freedoms. Why do then representatives of the State vote to elect the new Ombudsman?

When I was writing about Parliamentary elections and women’s participation, there was a concern over possibility of resignations of electen women to give their place to somebody else. There was a precedent in 2007 Armenian parliamentary elections of elected female MPs resigning to give their seat to a more popular man. The 15% quota in Armenia only gave women a 9% representation in Parliament.

‘Freeing a way’ for somebody younger, stronger and male has been one of the strategies sometimes raised in Kyrgyz society. For example, in 2001 Presidential elections village elders wrote a letter to Omurbek Tekebaev who was running for a presidential seat that he should ‘ free way’ to an older and wiser candidate. 

I am happy that the freeing way is not yet part of discourse in the parliament, yet resignation of Minister of Labor Jamilya Alymbekova set a precedent for using this approach to leaving political spaces. She freed way to ‘the young’.