Beijing activists drive home the message in homophobia protest
THREE Chinese men have launched a protest campaign against homophobia, sending bright red lorries with slogans denouncing homosexual “conversion therapy” through major cities in China.
Artist Wu Qiong said the protest was inspired by the 2017 film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri in which a woman uses billboards to draw attention to her daughter’s murder.
The three lorries – the brainchild of Mr Wu, Lin He, a gay policeman and Zheng Hongbin, an art curator – are protesting against “treatment” clinics that claim to turn people hetrosexual. It also aims to build awareness with China’s 1.4billion people that “homosexuality is not a disease,” said Mr Wu, who is straight.
Being gay is not a crime in China, but Mr Wu and rights experts say there remains a lack of public understanding. Part of that stems from inconsistent official terminology – in 2001, the Chinese Society of Psychiatry removed homosexuality from a list of mental disorders, though vague references remain to “sexual orientation disorder”.
Many public hospitals and private clinics in China offer “conversion” treatments, which can include arbitrary confinement, forced medication and even electroshock therapy, according to Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group, which has called on Beijing to ban the practices. The crowdfunded lorry campaign is making stops at these “treatment” centres; Mr Wu estimates there are roughly 100 in the country. They started rolling around the streets of Shanghai and will visit seven cities, including Beijing.
One lorry carries the slogan: “To cure a ‘disease’ that does not exist?” A second says: “The diagnostic criteria for mental disorders in China still retain ‘sexual orientation disorder.’” And a third says: “It’s been 19 years, why?” referring to the 2001 change that the activists feel need to be clarified.
Social attitudes in China are slowly shifting and conversion “cures” are in- creasingly recognised as a sham – a court in 2017 ordered a psychiatric hospital to compensate a gay man forced to undergo such therapy.
But China does not have a law protecting individuals from discrimination due to sexual orientation or gender identity, says Human Rights Watch.
So far, the lorries have toured unopposed, and the project’s social media account, followed by nine million people, has escaped censorship; Chinese state media have even covered the project. “We are not breaking the law. It’s just three trucks driving on the road,” said Mr Zheng, 32, who is heterosexual.