A 6am dawn service at Auckland's St-Matthew-in-the-City church, and a quiet gathering at Hamilton's Riff-Raff statue will mark this year's International Transgender Day of Remembrance this Thursday. Rocky statue on Hamilton's Victoria Street The International Day of Remembrance recognises transgender people all over the world who have died as victims of violence. The day also allows transgender to gather in solidarity and present to society in a loving and peaceful way generating awareness and education about transgender and the issues we face. Trans support networks NZ Transgender and GenderBridge will host the Auckland event, and are also launching All Trans Forum, a Yahoo! webspace that allows transgender to share information and stories as well as helping further the recommendations of the Transgender Inquiry, To Be Who I Am, released earlier this year by the Human Rights Commission. Organiser Cathy Parker of Genderbridge says the Transgender Day of Remembrance is an opportunity to highlight the issues of discrimination faced by the transgender community as well as a time to remember those in our community who have died. Another organiser, Hana Tatere who works for the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective, says young Maori and Pacific Transgender street workers are a group at high risk of violence and this day is a chance to highlight their issues. The dawn service is open to all, from 6am on Thursday 20 November at St-Matthew-in-the-City church in central Auckland. Hamilton, the city with a statue of Riff-Raff from the Rocky Horror Picture Show in its CBD,will also join in the world-wide commemoration from trans people this year for the first time. There will be a quiet gathering at the statue on Victoria Street on Thursday from 8:30pm onwards. Attendees are encouraged to bring flowers and/or a candle. Lisa Stone, a researcher on transgender issues, is organising the event with support from Agenda Waikato and Hamilton Pride. She says the gathering aims to "create visibility for anti-transgender violence and genderbashing, and honour all transgender people that were killed in violent attacks." She hopes Transgender Remembrance Day will become a recurrent event for Hamilton's LGBTTI community. For further information, please contact Lisa Stone on stoneage1@xtra.co.nz.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News Staff
First published: Tuesday, 18th November 2008 - 12:54pm