For Immediate Release

For more information about G/SRAT contact: Stephan Sastrawidjaja 212-216-1278

For more information about the 2004 Felipa Awards contact: Benjamin Prayz 212-216-1823

(New York, June 2, 2004) The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) will be honoring a leading lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender human rights group, the Gender/Sexuality Rights Association of Taiwan (G/SRAT), at its annual Felipa Awards events in New York on June 7 and San Francisco on June 9.

With roots in Taiwan’s feminist movement, G/SRAT has been the leader in fighting police harassment and arrest of gay men in Taipei, responding to homophobic representations in the media and government programs, training activists, organizing protests and working on HIV issues. Part legal advocate, part media watchdog, part public information disseminator, G/SRAT has been a full-time community builder connecting the LGBT community and creating alliances with sexuality, women’s, youth, healthcare and other human rights movements.

“The Felipa Award is intended to recognize the special courage and impact of global LGBT human rights activists,” said Paula Ettelbrick, IGLHRC’s Executive Director. “G/SRAT’s dedication to the principles of human rights for sexual minorities has had a lasting impact in Taiwan and serves as a model for all of us.”

Receiving the award on behalf of G/SRAT is WANG Ping, a founding member and the current Secretary General of G/SRAT. She is the principal architect for the group’s work, whose leadership in sexual rights and HIV advocacy has been widely recognized in Taiwan and beyond. Traveling with WANG are other members of G/SRAT:

• CHEN Yu-Rong, the director of the LGBT News Agency and an editor of G & L Magazine, one of the first commercially published gay and lesbian magazines in public circulation in Chinese-speaking East Asia;
• NI Chia-Chen, G/SRAT’s international liaison director who has worked primarily with youth and on HIV issues; NI edited Taiwan’s first handbook on Women and AIDS;
• DING Nai-Fei, a feminist scholar who is a member of the Center for the Study of Sexualities at the National Central University; she is the author of Obscene Things: Sexual Politics in Jin Ping Mei, published by Duke University Press.

Aside from honoring the group’s work, IGLHRC provides its Felipa Awardee with a $5,000 stipend to assist in furthering its sexual rights work. IGLHRC has also arranged a series of meetings and forums in New York and San Francisco with LGBT and HIV groups. At a public forum on June 8, G/SRAT members--with Charlotte Bunch of Rutgers University’s Center for Women’s Global Leadership, Pauline Park of NYAGRA and Margaret Satterthwaite of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice--will be discussing sexual rights as human rights at NYU Law School’s Lipton Hall. In San Francisco, on June 10, G/SRAT members will speak on their work combating police harassment at the SF LGBT Community Center with members of Amnesty International’s OutFront program.

Monday, June 7th - Felipa Awards - New York

6:00-8:00 p.m. at the Open Society Institute, 400 West 59th Street
Tickets start at $100

Tuesday, June 8th – “Sexing Feminism, Sexing Rights, Sexual Rights are Human Rights” – panel discussion

6:30-8:30 p.m. at NYU Law School, 110 W. 3rd Street

Wednesday, June 9th – Felipa Awards – San Francisco

6:00-8:00 p.m. at the Golden Gate Room at Fort Mason Center, Landmark Building A
Tickets start at $100

Thursday, June 10th – “Securing Accountability: Strategies to Contest the Policing of Sexuality” – panel discussion

6:30-8:30 p.m. at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market Street, Ceremonial Room 400

For more information on the Felipa Awards or any of the public forums featuring G/SRAT, please go to http://www.iglhrc.org