Nepalese NGO open doors to battered gays

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Jacob

22 June, 2011

Nepal has already earned a name for its self with its philanthropic deeds for homosexuals; now it has gone a step further by offering shelter to South Asia's battered gays.

AFTER DOING several charitable deeds for homosexuals, including starting a beauty contest for gays and transgenders and organising an extravagant same sex wedding, the country has taken its efforts to a whole new level. Nepal’s revolutionary gay rights organisation, Blue Diamond Society, is the first NGO in South Asia to open its doors to homosexuals (gay, lesbians), bisexuals and transgenders (LGBTs), who are not accepted in their own countries because of their different sexual orientations.

Blue Diamond Society plans to open a LGBT Centre for South Asia in Dhumbarahi, Kathmandu. The five-story house will be home to all South Asian LGBT’s, who are ill-treated in their homeland. The centre will offer all facilities to its residents, including a theatre, a conferencing hall as well as a clinic. Sunil Babu Pant, the founder of Blue Diamond Society and Nepal's only openly gay MP, said that the move aims at preventing ill-treatment of homosexuals in countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where different sexual orientations are considered a taboo.

Although the LGBT Centre is yet to be established, people have already started pouring in to make registration at the centre. Amongst these is a lesbian couple from Kolkata, India. One of these girls is a Hindu, while the other is Muslim. Since their relation was not accepted by society, they decided to run away and take refuge in Nepal.

Nepal’s first Maoist government, headed by Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, was the first to recognise Blue Diamond Society in 2008. The organisation started receiving budgetary allocations from the government. It was with this money that the organisation bought the land to establish the centre. Monetary assistance was also provided by the Danish and Norwegian governments. The organisation is falling short of USD 150-170,000 more, if the money is arranged in time the project will be completed within the next 15 months, Pant added.