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- Big brother part two - 24th April 2024
Minority rights have always been fundamental for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, because as well as being morally justified, important information is often given by those who lead alternative lifestyles, and this is now highlighted by the closure of a gay centre in China’s capital, amid increasing official bigotry.
Previously Phil has described how he was helped to break into the South Wales Echo office car when he was a cub reporter, recalled his early career as a journalist, the importance of experience in the job, and made clear that the ‘calls’ to emergency services as well as court cases are central to any media operation.
He has also explored how poorly paid most journalism is when trainee reporters had to live in squalid flats, the vital role of expenses, and about one of his most important stories on the now-scrapped 53 year-old BBC Cymru Wales (BBC CW) TV Current Affairs series, Week In Week Out (WIWO), which won an award even after it was axed, long after his career really took off.
Phil has explained too how crucial it is actually to speak to people, the virtue of speed as well as accuracy, why knowledge of ‘history’ is vital, how certain material was removed from TV Current Affairs programmes when secret cameras had to be used, and some of those he has interviewed.
Earlier he disclosed why investigative journalism is needed now more than ever although others have different opinions, and how information from trusted sources is crucial.
Protecting minority rights is massively important (for journalists like me particularly), although others seem to have a different view.
I am (as far as I know) completely straight, but I freely acknowledge the centrality of tolerance.
This goes hand-in-hand with having a free media, which is also vital, and (apart from anything else) journalists must be aware that major information can come from any source, including a gay person, and if you are seen as a bigot he or she won’t come forward with it.
All of this has been put centre stage by appalling events around the world.
For example we have just witnessed yet more ramping up of an official crackdown on gay people in China.
in that country police officers question gay-rights advocates, as well as their families, and university chiefs punish students for handing out rainbow flags
Officials in China press landlords to evict non-profit groups such as gay organisations.
Some officials and state-backed scholars call same-sex love an affront to mainstream Chinese morality, and a threat to young people whose patriotic duty is to marry and have more babies for the Motherland.
The latest example of this policy masterminded by President Xi Jinping, is the closure in May of the Beijing LGBT Centre when “forces beyond its control” were cited.
Everyone, though, knows the truth – that the state closed it down.
Those officials might have been irked by the fact that, over 15 years in existence, the centre had some high-profile successes, including a court victory in 2014 against a clinic offering electroshock therapy to ‘convert’ gay patients.
All of this follows a familiar, depressing, pattern that we see in other autocratic regimes.
For instance since 2006, under Vladimir Putin, regions in Russia have enacted varying laws restricting the distribution of materials promoting LGBT relationships to minors.
In June 2013, a federal law criminalising the distribution of materials among minors in support of “non-traditional sexual relationships” was enacted.
The law has resulted in numerous arrests of Russian LGBT citizens publicly opposing the law and there has reportedly been a surge of anti-gay protests, violence, and hate crimes.
It has received international condemnation from human rights observers, LGBT activists, and media outlets.
The law was ruled to be inconsistent with protection of freedom of expression by the European Court of Human Rights.
In 2022, the ruling was extended to apply to anyone regardless of age, thus making any expression deemed a promotion of non-traditional sexual relationships illegal.
There has also been a wave of torture and killings of gay men in Chechnya.
In Hungary the story, unfortunately, is similar.
There, the government has passed legislation that restricts the civil rights of LGBT Hungarians – such as ending the legal recognition of transgender citizens, and banning LGBT content or displays for minors.
THIS law was condemned by seventeen EU countries.
In July 2021, the EU Commission started legal action against Hungary as well as Poland for violations of fundamental rights of LGBTQI people.
It’s not much better for media freedom in these places either.
Outlawing gay rights and banning a free media, appear to be in lock-step for many parts of the world…
The memories of Phil’s extraordinary decades long award-winning career in journalism (during which prejudice and bigotry towards gay people was more prevalent) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A Good Story’. Order it now.
Another book, though, has not been published, because it was to have included names.
Tomorrow – ‘Another page of gay news part two’, where The Eye reports the growing unease of giving a gay person a top international job, even though she had visited a country which has outlawed homosexuality, and appeared on television interviewing a man who was later charged with producing indecent images of children.
