Thu 16 Jun 2016 In: Our Communities View at Wayback View at NDHA
Following the events that have unfolded in the past few days, LGBTI community member Ollin, who grew up in Xalapa and is now based in New Zealand, shares her thoughts. What happened in Orlando a few days ago is an act of incredible hatred and madness. No words suffice to describe the horror and despair that the family members of those 49 people, as well as the multiple injured, must be feeling. The world mourns with them on what is now the aftermath of the largest massacre in the modern history of the United States. Thousands of candles have been lit to honour them and their families. And I mourn too. Protestors in Xalapa hold a sign that reads: "Don't get used to the shootings, Justice to the victims of Madame" I mourn for the many Mexican people that were killed in a gay bar just three weeks before, for their families. I mourn for those who have no solace in the thought of the entire world saying a prayer for their deceased loved ones. I mourn because, when I went to the vigil in Auckland to honour the fifty lost souls, nobody even offered a thought to the other several that had just been killed in a grotesquely similar scenario in my hometown. Nobody even knew. Nobody even knows if there are twenty dead, as people have counted, or seven, as the government has claimed. Not even I would have known about it, had my friends in Mexico not written about it on social media. There is no space for political debate in this time of mourning, but I can’t help but wonder. Do souls have different worth? Are they valued differently depending on where they come to die? Is their worth proportional to their skin colour? Their last name? Their sexual orientation? There has been a lot of talk recently about oppression, racism, xenophobia, homophobia and islamophobia. All different faces of ignorance; a whole heap of people ignoring what it means to be oppressed, and to be the oppressor. We need to stand together. We are a community within communities. We have known oppression, we have known what it is to be a minority. We have known what it is to fight back when you well know you are not on the winning side. Discrimination? I think we know that. So why are we letting it happen? People just like us, partying just the same way as us, loving just the way we love, are getting killed worldwide, every day. And we seem to be blind to it. We only mourn for those who speak the same language as us, who have the same culture as us. How many more massacres do we need to realise that the world is made of humans worth protection and love? We have resented and fought alienation, why are we perpetrating it? In this sad time, we seek answers. It is tempting to blind ourselves with anger, but we must allow for a moment to reflect on the deeper causes of these massacres. It is more important than ever to understand that these deaths could only have taken place in a system in which intolerance and oppression are commonplace. And I am not talking about religion, in the case of Mateen, or corruption, in the case of Mexico. I am referring to a larger system in which it is somehow acceptable that LGBTI people, specially people of colour, suffer from discrimination on a daily basis. These killings are a cry for help, a signal, that we must stand united to fight for equal recognition. Sexual orientation or race don't make us less worthy, by any means. How many more deaths will it take for us to halt the oppression that many still feel? Mateen pulled the trigger, but the real weapon is the oppressive and intolerant system of beliefs - not a single religion - which discriminates some lives over others. Let’s do our part and avoid perpetuating the same dynamics. Ollin P. Raynaud - 16th June 2016