Tolerant Caribbean island of Guadeloupe should reach out to LGBT+ tourists
LGBTphobic assaults were worrisome 8 years ago, but now have largely vanished
In a press release, LGBT+ rights organisations from Guadeloupe, the diaspora and Haiti, as well as this news site, denounced the Comité du Tourisme des Îles de Guadeloupe for making no effort to publicise how attractive Guadeloupe can be for LGBT+ tourists, leaving the impression that the archipelago is stuck in its homophobic past.
This is the associations’ press release, issued on August 11, 2023:
We would like to thank [the French advocacy organisation] Stop Homophobie for having deleted racist comments about Guadeloupe that had been added to a post on Instagram about the flop of the latest “Pride de Guadeloupe”. The failure of that Pride march was not necessarily due to homophobia – as alleged in the deleted comments – but rather to shortcomings in organization, coordination and security.
The Pride organizer’s explanations of the failure, however, were not convincing in stating that “people withdrew for security and logistics, because you need a civil liability certificate, and if you’re not rich enough to afford one, you don’t have the right to demonstrate”.
We, the organizations defending the rights of LGBT+ people, would like to point out that Guadeloupe is a safe destination for the LGBT+ public, and that LGBTphobic assaults that took place there as recently as eight years ago have significantly receded and diminished, thanks to the awareness-raising work undertaken with [human rights advocacy organisations] Amalgame Humani’s, Secret’s Out, and members of Diivineslgbtqia+ on site.
Today, LGBT+ people wishing to visit Guadeloupe will find an environment where very friendly parties are held regularly in all four corners of the archipelago.
We would also like to point out that the lack of involvement on the part of the Comité du Tourisme des Iles de Guadeloupe (CTIG) in the development of LGBT+ friendly tourism still contributes to the image of an island with a closed mindset and lesbophobic, anti-gay and transphobic inhabitants, when in fact the Guadeloupean population is more receptive to sexual and gender diversity than ever before.
At a time when other Caribbean nations compete for LGBT+ tourists, we denounce this completely anachronistic inertia and call for a substantial change.
Signed:
On behalf of the Board of Directors, Leïla, President of Secret’s Out (Guadeloupe)
Ms Viviane Melyon-de France, President of Amalgame Humani’s (Guadeloupe)
Ms Pierrette Pyram Ambrosio, President of Diivineslgbtqi+ Visibilité – Représentativité Afro-Carïbéen.nes LGBTQIA+ (Paris – Ile-de-France and diaspora)
M. Moïse Manoël-Florisse, journalist with Erasing 76 Crimes and native of Guadeloupe (Paris – Ile-de-France)
Mr. Fritzner Henry, President of Gran Lakou Fòlklorik (Jacmel – Haiti)
Steeve Grand-jean , journalist and human rights activist, coordinator of Action pour l’Inclusion et l’Émancipation Sociale (Cap-Haïtien – Haïti)
