ABC7 broadcasted the first half of Rémy’s speech. Watch it here:
Read Rémy’s entire speech here:
Two men : one on my left, one on my right. Both wearing black clothes and both holding a smartphone directed to me.
When I was in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia last week, they popped up at least 5 times. I was there to assist the organisers of the first ever Pride March in the region.
In the last week, the Georgian Pride organisers received hundreds of death threats, got robbed and their phones got hacked. In the very end they had to postpone the Pride March because of safety reasons.
In the last decade the International Network against LGBTQI-rights was able to organise itself as never before.
Fellow LGBTQI-friends and allies, the fight for equality is not over.
In the last 6 months, I have been doing research in the Central European country Hungary on the connections between Hungarian high-ranking government officials and Russian homophobes and transphobes close to Vladimir Putin.
What I found was a network set up by the Russians to wage transphobia and homophobia all around the world.
The fight against LGBTQI-rights is an inherent part of Russia’s foreign policy to undermine liberal democracy.
The same people and institutions that are accused of influencing the presidential elections in the USA and the invasion of Eastern Ukraine also pop up in this international anti-LGBTQI network.
Since the nineties – the American-based World Congress of Families has been executing Russia’s soft power strategy in the West. With its close connections to many governments – including the current White House – they were very effective in spreading transphobia and homophobia.
It is not a coincidence that since Hungarian politicians are meeting with Russian officials – through the World Congress of Families – that the country has constitutionally banned same-sex marriage, implemented a family policy aimed on fostering the traditional family and that the speaker of the Hungarian Parliament calls child adoption by same-sex couples the same as pedophilia.
And do you think that this just limits itself to the Hungarian borders?
Since 2014, Hungary has been vetoing every policy proposal to improve the legal conditions for the LGBTQI-community in the European Union.
Russia is already indirectly influencing LGBTQI-politics in the West.
Fellow LGBTQI-friends and allies, we are standing here – Today – at a cornerstone in history.
50 years after our sisters and brothers at this very place started the modern LGBTQI-movement, we accomplished something nobody would have ever imagined.
BUT we should not get blindfolded. There are not to be underestimated threats to our equality movement.
Our enemies are starting to get well-organised and are often able to operate their activities under the radar.
Therefore it is important that we do perceive the threats as real. This is not just a threat to our friends in Chechnya, Georgia or Hungary – It is a threat to all of us.
Therefore, I am calling for all of you to join and help me in investigating this international homophobic and transphobic network and help me fighting them.
We need to know exactly what the threats are and who our enemies are.
Fellow LGBTQI-friends and allies, we should not just celebrate what we have accomplished in those 50 years Today, but we should also celebrate the fight ahead of us.
Nobody is equal until we all are equal.
Thank you! Happy Pride!
Rémy Bonny 