PRESS STATEMENT
CONTACT MELANIE NATHAN commissionermnathan@gmail.com
AFRICAN HUMAN RIGHTS COALITION CALLS ON WORLD PRIDE 2025 D.C., TO RESIST THROUGH BOYCOTT, CITING DANGERS OF TRUMP ADMINISTRATION FOR FOREIGN VISITORS
March 15, 2025
New York - African Human Rights Coalition is calling on LGBTQI+ Africans and LGBTQI+ people worldwide to refrain from attending WorldPride in the United States of America, because the event is being held in a venue, Washington D.C., the USA, governed now by an antagonistic fascist regime which presents distinct dangers to foreign LGBTQI+ attendees.
While commending WorldPride, Capital Pride Alliance, and Inter pride for all the hard work, over several years, to put this event together, no one could have predicted the current state of the USA, and the organizations must revisit this contextually and with deep concern. Although probably impossible to hold elsewhere at such late notice, WorldPride must consider withdrawing the event from the U.S.A., and come out with a strong statement condemning the U.S. for the dangerous environment it presents to LGBTQI+ people entering the country, the current human rights infractions, and the decimation of democracy, trans rights and the general attack on LGBTQI+ communities, in the US and around the world.
The conference is scheduled for May 17- June 08, 2025. WorldPride website notes:
"2025 marks the 50th Anniversary of Pride celebrations in Washington, DC! The Capital Pride Alliance is excited for Washington, DC to host WorldPride 2025 and share this momentous and exciting milestone with our international community. WorldPride DC 2025 will feature a vibrant and innovative slate of events and cultural programs that will highlight the best that Washington, DC has to offer. From music to film, from the National Mall to Embassy Row, you will experience the world through Washington’s multi-faceted and multi-cultural community. Come and celebrate with us May 17 – June 8, 2025!
This is not business as usual and not a time for celebration but rather the time for resistance: Notably the plans for this occurred long before Trump-Musk-Vance seized power and changed the face of America in less than 60 days!
First we must recognize that the United States is not business as usual. The State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, as well agencies such as the FBI are led by Trump appointed loyalists who share his anti-LGBTQI animus, are generally unqualified, and are incapable of doing the job required to welcome and keep LGBTQI+ visitors safe.
The U.S.A. is no longer a free Democratic country that WorldPride signed up for. The United States under Trump-Musk-Vance is adopting anti-LGBTQI+, white supremacist, anti-women, racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, and antisemitic policies, all fascist principles, and adding to this, by the hour. Trans people are under extreme attack all across the country. In DC, the Republican majority MAGA Party of Trump has gone too far with its hate by ordering, as policy, the misgendering of a trans member of the United States Congress, while seated in the House.
The United States has also summarily and without notice revoked USAID that was critical to LGBTQI+ interests, protection, safety, health and survival, all across the world, causing extreme harm to our global communities. The United States also suspended its refugee program which is especially harmful to LGBTQI+ refugees whose resettlement processes have been disrupted, after many years of extreme vetting and hardship in the refugee camps of hostile host countries.
The United States is not a safe country for LGBTQI+ people to travel to in terms of entry and border related issues. In addition Washington DC, which is a “district” and does not have the umbrella protection of a State, and is unsafe for all LGBTQI+ people in terms of a multitude of considerations.
When Capital Pride Alliance asserts it has deployed safety measures and engaged with agencies, we do not believe the desired result is possible to accomplish, given the lies, incompetence and animus of this administration and its appointed leadership. With this knowledge and information, WorldPride, together with all its sponsors and partners, will be responsible, for the outcomes and harms that may follow. Guarantees in a fascist climate are worthless. If the organizations plan to go forward they owe it to attendees to issue warnings and prepare an arsenal of lawyers, getting the funding to accommodate the likely millions of dollars of litigation that may ensue.
People across the globe boycotted conferences and sports event held in South Africa to protest Apartheid. Holding a LGBTQI+ event at a time when LGBTQI+ people are a specific target of the fascist Trump administration, has a similar stench.
The US LGBTQI+ community will ultimately benefit from this. Local Prides are the ones who will show resistance through protest on the streets of America during Pride season. Their protest and resistance is vastly different to that of foreigners on USA soil, and considering that foreigners are better off protesting US policies outside of the USA. This distinction is of critical importance at a time like this.America's LGBTQI+ communities would likely encourage our LGBTQI+ family to protest the United States in centers across the world, in solidarity with our protests planned for PRIDE MONTH, across this country.
Here are some guidelines for boycotting U.S.A. as a venue:
1. Do not spend your dollars in America at this time, especially in DC. Many of the businesses you will be supporting have provided funding and votes that got Trump elected. This pro-fascist regime will benefit from your spending. Americans, are boycotting consumer spending. Do not bring your tourist dollars.
2. Trans people especially will not be safe entering US airports or crossing borders for this event. You are more likely than not to have a mark on your back. That can ultimately lead to detention by customs and border officials. If you are trans you will more than likely find yourself a target, and could be detained. This will result in being held among detainees of your unauthentic gender. If you are LGBTQI+ you will also face similar danger. All could land in a detention center, perhaps as far off as 1000 miles from your arrival airport, and all this, even though you may have a visa. You could easily “disappear” for a period of time into this chaotic overcrowded system, as it stands right now. If you are in detention, this status could linger for many months before being released to a flight back home. This is happening already with all different categories of visitors and even with green card holders.
While the conference organizers have said they will protect the interests of attendees, the lying Trump administration (with Kristi Noem the new head of the Department of Homeland Security,) cannot be trusted, despite the good faith efforts of Capital Pride Alliance, which noted on their website:
"The health and safety of all attendees, participants, and volunteers of our events as well as the communities in which the events take place are our highest priorities. Capital Pride Alliance will continue to implement policies and procedures designed to address health and safety concerns as we would during our regular, large-scale celebrations. Our plans include coordinating with municipal and federal agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security, as well as using safety teams made up of community members with diverse representation. We will ensure that our events are safe spaces for our community."
3. If you are South African, the South African ambassador, Hon. Ebrahim Rasool has just been expelled from DC and sent back to South Africa. Foreigners in a country usually have the protection of their embassy. This is no longer available to you as a South African in the USA. The same could apply to any other country. Remember Trump says that African countries are “shithole countries.” The trump administration is also presiding over strained relationships with many other countries including Canada, Denmark, Thailand, and more.
4. All tourism and conferences should boycott the USA. Do you want to support a country that voted for fascism, anti-LGBTQI+ policies and the ongoing actual persecution for trans people.
5. The Trump Government is racist. LGBTQI+ people of color, and Muslims, and especially Africans, entering the U.S. will be at greater risk than their white counterparts. For this reason all LGBTQI+ including white members of the community should join this boycott, in solidarity.
6. African Human Rights Coalition, where we work with LGBTQI+ asylum seekers and refugees, we are observing, in real time, a fascist and Hitleresque trajectory employed by the Trump-Musk-Vance administration. If you would not have shown up to an Adolf Hitler venue in 1939, you should not do so to a Trump venue in 2025.
This does not mean you do not support your American LGBTQI+ family. Quite the contrary. If you recall the South African Apartheid era, it was the South Africans who were most impacted by Apartheid, who begged for the world to bring sanctions and boycotts to South Africa, hoping to end the scourge of inequality. They were willing to suffer the impact to bring Apartheid to its knees. They were successful. LGBTQI+ Americans should adopt similar sentiment in their greater interests and that of their global family.
Your boycott protects you, while your absence is a noisy way to express your resistance. In this instance, because this is a global conference, showing up is not resistance it endorses business as usual, even if you think you can speak out while in the USA. Resistance will be when America’s own LGBTQI+ communities parade through the streets on PRIDE, and they will be doing this with great vigor and pride, more than ever.
To be in solidarity with our minorities and to express outrage, the world must boycott the United States, to make the critical statement, that until America returns its country to the all the People, to coin a Mandela term, it will be “the skunk of the world.”
African Human Rights Coalition calls on WorldPride to come out and make the strongest of condemnation and solidarity statements, to cite all the harms and antagonism that this current United States presents to its LGBTQI+ citizens, as well as the toward LGBTQI+ world, as a basis for WorldPride to withdraw from DC in the United States. Perhaps it not too late for another country to step in. If WorldPride cannot find in itself to do this, it must go to great lengths to warn its attendees and provide much heightened mechanisms for protection and safety, especially at the borders.
In solidarity,
Melanie Nathan.
Executive Director
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