DSN Statements
Here you’ll find all the statements issued by the DSN
Solidarity Statements
August 6, 2024
Decolonizing Sexualities Network (DSN) would like to express its total solidarity with the Guarani and Kaiowá people who are under attack at this time on their own land in Douradina, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, by white settlers seeking to steal their land. This attack on the Guarani and Kaiowá people has been going on for many years but it intensified considerably on Saturday August 3, thus two days prior to the debate in the Federal Supreme Court about the demarcation of indigenous lands, a discussion which is expected to last until December 2024. In those debates at issue is whether indigenous peoples will have the right to lands they have lived on only since October 5, 1988, the date the Federal Constitution was promulgated, or if they will have the right to their ancestral lands from well prior to that date including prior to colonization. Obviously indigenous organizations such as the coalitional APIB (Articulation of Indigenous Peoples) seek the latter. Indeed, across the period of colonization, which continues today, indigenous peoples have been massacred, left to die, and forced off of their land, such that their presence in 1988 represents only a fraction of their living space.
DSN, in solidarity with the Guarani and Kaiowá people, strongly condemns the attacks against them and affirms their right, and the right of all indigenous peoples everywhere, to their ancestral lands.
Signed,
Paola Bacchetta and Sandeep Bakshi
Co-Directors, Decolonizing Sexualities Network
https://decolonizingsexualities.org/
6 de Agosto de 2024
A Decolonizing Sexualities Network (DSN) gostaria de expressar sua total solidariedade aos povos Guarani e Kaiowá que estão sob ataque neste momento em sua própria terra em Douradina, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brasil, por colonos brancos que buscam roubar suas terras. Este ataque aos povos Guarani e Kaiowá, mulheres, homens, e outros, começou no sábado, 3 de agosto, portanto, dois dias antes do debate no Supremo Tribunal Federal sobre a demarcação de terras indígenas, que deve durar até dezembro de 2024. Nesses debates, o que está em questão é se os povos indígenas teriam ou não o direito às terras em que vivem apenas desde 5 de outubro de 1988, data em que a Constituição Federal foi promulgada, ou teriam o direito às suas terras ancestrais anteriores a essa data, incluindo antes da colonização. Obviamente, organizações indígenas como a APIB (Articulação dos Povos Indígenas) de coalizão buscam o último. De fato, ao longo do período de colonização, que continua até hoje, povos indígenas foram massacrados, deixados para morrer e expulsos de suas terras, de modo que sua presença em 1988 representa apenas uma fração de seu espaço vital. A DSN, em solidariedade aos povos Guarani e Kaiowá, condena veementemente os ataques contra eles e afirma seu direito, e o direito de todos os povos indígenas em todos os lugares, às suas terras ancestrais.
Assinado,
Paola Bacchetta and Sandeep Bakshi
Codiretores, Decolonizing Sexualities Network
https://decolonizingsexualities.org/
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Decolonizing Sexualities Network (DSN) Statement of Solidarity with Palestine
26 May 2021
We express unconditional support for the liberation of Palestine, including Palestinian LGBTIQ+ people and organisations such as Al-Qaws and their campaigns for liberation.
The Decolonizing Sexualities Network (DSN) - a transnational community of academics, activists and artivists across the global norths and souths - condemns in the strongest terms possible the recent violence against Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah and Gaza and the ongoing occupation. We also call upon the British government to acknowledge its responsibilities to the Palestinian people since establishing the conditions under the British mandate from 1948 which led to the Nakba.
We express unconditional support for the liberation of Palestine, including Palestinian LGBTIQ+ people and organisations such as Al-Qaws and their campaigns for liberation. We call upon academics, activists and artivists, particularly feminist, antiracist and LGBTIQ+ people in the global north, to demand that their governments immediately cease providing military, financial and other aid to Israel, so as to end the murders and brutalising of all Palestinian people.
Decolonizing Sexualities Network (DSN) Statement of Solidarity with LBGTQI+ People in Ghana
28 February 2021
We stand with our queer friends and organisers in Ghana and all over the world as they organise to dismantle colonial genders and sexualities that criminalise queer existence.
It is with utter horror that the DSN takes note of the attack on queer communities in Ghana. The Ghanaian government and Church colluded in an unprecedented attack on queer communities in Ghana by closing down the offices of an organisation that works with and for LGBTQI+ people in the country.
The DSN has members from every continent. It has been involved in queer mobilisation across the global north and south for the last decade and it is incumbent upon us not to give the comfort of our silence to institutional repression of our queer communities across the world. We support our queer siblings in Ghana and stand in solidarity with their mobilisation for queer liberation. Ghanaian queer communities are part of the larger queer communities of the world and the DSN is committed to supporting their lives, actions and political movements.
Ghana has inherited in its post-independence legacy forms of queerphobia instated under British colonialism across the global south. We stand with our queer friends and organisers in Ghana and all over the world as they organise to dismantle colonial genders and sexualities that criminalise queer existence. We understand that at this particular juncture in history, the field of genders and sexualities is steeped in colonial and continued postcolonial queerphobia on the one hand, and neo-colonial, newly weaponised, saviour human rights agendas and humanitarianisms (read ‘civilising mission’) on the other.
The DSN, whilst refusing to partake in either of the positions, stands firmly in support behind queer communities in Ghana and the world to imagine a future, without State, institutional or other harassment or threats to life itself, for queer people to thrive.
DSN Board of Coordinators
Paola Bacchetta, Suhraiya Jivraj, Silvia Posocco, Sandeep Bakshi
Statement by the group The Silent Majority in Ghana:
Article of interest on queers in Ghana: