DESPITE developments in the country, Fijians continue to shun and openly persecute members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTQI) community, claims DIVA for Equality’s Frances Tawake.
Ms Tawake said in her work as a human rights activist, she had met members of the community who had been rejected from their families and sought their intervention.
She said the plight of many of these individuals were sad because they often ended up resorting to the streets, sex work and other illegal activities in their desperation to live normal lives as many of them were single mothers and survivors of sexual abuse.
“The sad reality in Fiji is that when people suit up to go to church on Sundays, there are children, single mothers, sex workers who are from well-off families waking up from the pavements of our streets because they have been rejected from their very homes,” she said.
“The fact that people choose to look beyond the differences of these people choosing to take aggressive actions against their own family members is inhumane.”
Meanwhile, during the Women Defend Commons symposium at the Kadavu Secondary School last week, members of the community shared their experiences of having to end up in the streets as they did not have anywhere to turn to.
Others told of how they resorted to drugs, alcohol and other illegal means in their desperation to find sanity among the complicated problems they dealt with apart from their sexuality.
