ျမန္မာေဂးေတြ
ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ေနတာဟာ ထုိင္းလူမႈ၀န္းက်င္က ေဂးေတြကုိ အသိအမွတ္ျပဳတ့ဲ အေနအထားမ်ဳိး
ျဖစ္တယ္ လုိ႔ AFP သတင္းေဆာင္းပါးတပုဒ္မွာ ေရးထားပါတယ္။
Same-sex
relations are technically criminalised by a colonial penal code still in force
in Myanmar
ေဆာင္းပါးကုိ
တင္စုိး ဆုိတ့ဲ ေဂးတေယာက္အေၾကာင္းနဲ႔ အစျပဳပါတယ္။ အမည္ရင္းမဟုတ္ပါဘူး တ့ဲ။
တင္စုိးက
သူ ေဂးျဖစ္တယ္ ဆုိတာကုိ ၄ ႏွစ္သားကတည္းက သတိထားမိတယ္၊ မိသားစုေဆြမ်ဳိးေတြ သူ႔ကုိ
ေဂးအျဖစ္ လက္ခံလာေအာင္ ရုန္းကန္ခ့ဲရတယ္လုိ႔ ဆုိပါတယ္။
ခုေတာ့
သူ အသက္ ၃၀ ရိွပါျပီ။ ရဟန္း၀တ္ရင္ ပုံမွန္အတုိင္းျပန္ျဖစ္မယ္လုိ႔ အဘြားတေယာက္က
ေျပာတာေၾကာင့္ ၃ လၾကာ ၀တ္လုိက္တယ္၊ မေျပာင္းလဲပါဘူးလုိ႔ သူက ဆုိပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာျပည္လုိပဲ
ဗုဒၶဘာသာအမ်ားစုေနတ့ဲ အိမ္နီးခ်င္းထုိင္းမွာေတာ့ ေဂးေတြ၊ ခဲြစိတ္ျပဳျပင္
လိင္ေျပာင္းထားသူ ေတြကုိ လက္ခံၾက အသိအမွတ္ျပဳၾကတာ အေတာ္ေလးမ်ားပါတယ္တ့ဲ။
ျမန္မာေတြ
ထုိင္းကုိသြားၾကျပီး ျဖစ္ပ်က္ေနတာေတြကုိျမင္ေပမယ့္ ျမန္မာျပည္ကေဂးေတြဟာ
အထင္ေသးခံေနရ တုန္းပါပဲဆုိတ့ဲ ခရီးသြားလုပ္ငန္းလုပ္ကုိင္သူတေယာက္ရဲ႕ အျမင္ကုိလည္း
ေဆာင္းပါးမွာ ေတြ႔ရပါတယ္။
ရန္ကုန္သားတေယာက္ကေတာ့
ျမန္မာျပည္မွာ ေဂးအခြင့္အေရး လႈံ႔ေဆာ္ရင္ေတာ့ ေထာင္ထဲ သြားရမယ္လုိ႔ ေျပာပါတယ္။
ဒီေတာ့
ေဂးေတြ ဘယ္လုိ ေတြ႔ၾက ဆုံၾကသလဲ။
အင္တာနက္မွာ
ဆုံၾကပါသတ့ဲ။ ပုိျပီး လုံျခဳံတယ္လုိ႔ ဆုိတယ္။ ကုိတင္စုိးက သူ႔ေကာင္ေလး သုိ႔မဟုတ္
သူ႔ေကာင္ႀကီး (boyfriend) ကုိ FaceBook မွာ စျပီး ေတြ႔တယ္လုိ႔ ဆုိပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္
ေဂးေတြ ေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားကေတာ့ အင္တာနက္မွာ ဓာတ္ပုံ မတင္ရဲၾကပါ တ့ဲ။
ပြင့္ပြင့္လင္းလင္းမရိွတ့ဲ
ဒီအခ်င္းအက်င္းေၾကာင့္ က်န္းမာေရးပညာေပး အသိေပးတာေတြ လုပ္ဖုိ႔ေတာ့ လြယ္မွာ
မဟုတ္ဘူးလုိ႔ ေဆာင္းပါးက ဆုိပါတယ္။
၂၀၁၀
ကုလသမဂၢ အစီရင္ခံစာကုိ ကုိးကားျပီး ေရးထားပါေသးတယ္ - ရန္ကုန္ မႏၱေလးလုိ
ျမိဳ႕ႀကီးေတြဆုိရင္ ေယာက်္ားျခင္းခ်စ္သူေတြထဲမွာ HIV ပုိးရေနသူ ၂၉ ရာခုိင္ႏႈန္းေတာင္
ရိွေနျပီ တ့ဲ။
"ဒီတုိင္းျပည္မွာ
(ေဂးနဲ႔HIV အေရး) ေဆာင္ရြက္သူေတြ အမ်ားႀကီး ရိွပါတယ္၊ ရိွေပမယ့္ အရမ္းႀကီး
ပြင့္ပြင့္လင္းလင္း လုပ္လုိ႔ေတာ့ မရဘူးေပါ့ေနာ္။ ဟုိတယ္မွာ ေဆြးေႏြးပဲြ (workshop)
လုပ္မယ္ ဆုိလည္း ပုိစတာႀကီးေတြ သုံးလုိ႔ မျဖစ္ဘူး။ ေလာ္စပီကာလည္း မပါရဘူးေပါ့။
ဒုိင္လွ်ဳိေလးပဲ လုပ္ရတယ္" ဆုိတ့ဲ ကုိတင္စုိးရဲ႕ ေျပာျပခ်က္ကုိ ေတြ႔ရပါတယ္။
ထုိင္းမွာ
ေနထုိင္တ့ဲ ေဂးတေယာက္ ျဖစ္တ့ဲ ကုိေအာင္မ်ဳိးမင္းရဲ႕ အျမင္တခ်ဳိ႕ကုိလည္း
ေဆာင္းပါးမွာ ဖတ္ရမွာပါ။ အမ်ဳိးသမီးခ်င္း ခ်စ္တ့ဲသူေတြကေတာ့ ျမန္မာျပည္မွာ ပုိျပီး
ေနသာထုိင္သာ ရိွပါတယ္တ့ဲ။ အမ်ဳိးသားခ်င္း ခ်စ္သူေတြနဲ႔ ယွဥ္ရင္ သူတုိ႔ကုိ
ျမန္မာလူမႈအသုိင္းအ၀န္းက ပုိလက္ခံ ပုိခြင့္လႊတ္ ဆုိပဲ။
ေဆာင္းပါးကုိ
ျမန္မာျပည္က ၅၂ ႏွစ္အရြယ္ ေဂးတေယာက္ရဲ႕ စကားနဲ႔ အဆုံးသတ္ပါတယ္။
သူငယ္ငယ္ကဆုိ
လူေတြက သူ႔လုိမ်ဳိး ေဂးေတြကုိ ေလးခြနဲ႔လုိက္ပစ္ၾကတယ္၊ လက္ရိွအေျခအေနဟာ သူ
ဆယ္ေက်ာ္သက္အရြယ္ အေျခအေနထက္ ပုိေကာင္းလာပါျပီ၊ ပုိေကာင္းလာျပီ ဆုိေပမယ့္
သူတုိ႔ကုိ အမွန္တကယ္ နားလည္လက္ခံမယ့္အေျခအေနမ်ဳိး ေရာက္ဖုိ႔ေတာ့ အလွမ္းေ၀းပါေသးတယ္
တ့ဲ။ ထုိင္းနုိင္ငံမွာလုိမ်ဳိး ျဖစ္ခ်င္တယ္၊ အဲဒီမွာ ဆုိရင္ ေဂးေတြက
တျခားလူေတြလုိပဲ ေနလုိ႔ထုိင္လုိ႔ ရၾကပါတယ္တ့ဲ။ ဒါပါပဲ။
ႏြားေက်ာင္းသားကုိ၀င္း
ဧျပီ
၁၈၊ ၂၀၁၁
မိုးမခ
- FaceBook
မွာ အေဖာ္ရွာတဲ့၊ ထိုင္းလူမႈဝန္းက်င္ကို အားက်တဲ့ ျမန္မာေဂးမ်ား
အဂၤလိပ္လုိ
ဖတ္ဖုိ ့
Myanmar gays seek Thai-style
acceptance
YANGON
— Tin Soe was just four when he realised he was different to other boys in his
neighbourhood, but growing up in conservative and army-ruled Myanmar, he
struggled to be accepted as gay by his relatives.
"My
granddad's sister said that if I became a monk my sexuality would change. So I
was a monk for three months, but my sexuality never changed," the
30-year-old said, asking for his real name to be withheld.
A
repressive mix of totalitarian politics, religious views and reserved social
mores has kept many gay people in the closet in Myanmar, formerly known as
Burma.
Gay
men have developed their own language as a "gaylingual" code to both
signify and conceal their sexuality, said Tin Soe, who now works on HIV/AIDs
prevention in Yangon.
"We
want to be secret and we don't want to let other people know what we are
saying. We twist the pronunciation."
It's
a world away from neighbouring Thailand, where a lively gay and transsexual
scene is a largely accepted part of society, which -- like Myanmar -- is mainly
Buddhist.
"More
Burmese are travelling to Thailand and see things there," said a
34-year-old working in Myanmar's tourism industry. "But here gays are
still looked down on, in a certain category."
Homosexuality
is often linked to local religious beliefs about karma in Myanmar, Tin Soe
said.
Many
believe "we're gay because we did something in a past life, that in a past
life I committed adultery or raped a woman. But I don't believe in that,"
he explained.
"It's
not like Iran where they are killed, but gays are a strange story in this
country."
Traditionally,
the only area where non-heterosexuality has been openly embraced is the realm
of "nat" or spirit worship, a form of animism that is intertwined
with Myanmar's Buddhist beliefs.
Flamboyant
and effeminate spirit mediums take centre stage at popular "nat"
festivals throughout the year, but their acceptance here has also served to
reinforce certain stereotypes of gay people in Myanmar.
Same-sex
relations are technically criminalised by a colonial penal code, and while this
is no longer strictly enforced, activists say it is still used by authorities
to discriminate and extort.
"They
use it as an excuse to make money and harass people but they don't bring the
cases to court," said Aung Myo Min, an openly gay Myanmar exile and
director of the Human Rights Education Institute of Burma, based in Thailand.
He
said there were numerous instances of sexual violence and humiliation of gay
people in public.
"Many
cases are not reported because the victims keep silent out of shame and fear of
repercussions."
In
a country under army control for nearly five decades, broaching any kind of
anti-discrimination or human rights issue is hugely sensitive.
"The
man who starts to ask for rights in the gay community will be sent to
prison," said another Yangon-based HIV/AIDS activist in his fifties.
The
Internet offers a forum for gay men to meet, deemed safer than public cruising:
Tin Soe met his boyfriend on Facebook, for example, but he said many were
afraid to put their photos on gay websites.
In
light of such discretion, raising public health awareness isn't easy.
In
some areas, such as the big cities of Yangon and Mandalay, as many as 29
percent of men having sex with men are HIV positive, according to a 2010 report
by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.
"We
have a lot of activists in this country but we can't campaign very openly. We
will have a workshop in a hotel but without big posters and loudspeakers. We do
it low profile," said Tin Soe.
While
lesbianism is also largely hidden in Myanmar, Aung Myo Min said it was more
acceptable to the militarised and macho culture, in which many fail to
differentiate between homosexual and transgender people.
"The
woman who wants to be a man is excusable," he said.
A
52-year-old in Yangon said things had improved since his teenage years, when
"people would use sling shots against us," but he warned there was
still a long road ahead to a truly tolerant Myanmar.
"We
want to be like Thailand, where gay people have equal chances," he said.
By Rob Bryan (AFP) – 6 hours
ago
