PUBLIC STATEMENT
28 June 2025
To anyone who feels alone or powerless in the struggle for equality, remember that from the streets of New York in 1969 to every corner of the globe today, Pride echoes in solidarity and shines a light on our fight for dignity.
Today, 28 June, marks the 56th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the spark that ignited the global Pride movement. We walk in solidarity with those whose courage even when faced with repression forever changed the course of our fight for love and freedom.
Across the world, LGBTI individuals continue to face unimaginable violence from harassment to death, often for no other reason than for being who they are. LGBTI people still live in fear in as many as 70 countries where “homosexual” activity is criminalized, and in more than 10 of those, consensual same sex activity is punishable by death.
Crackdowns on Pride across the globe is apparent with authoritarianism governments looking for a sector to blame for their leadership’s weaknesses. The Hungarian Parliament swiftly passed a law that effectively bans Pride marches. The law prohibits assemblies deemed to violate the anti-LGBTI “Propaganda Law”, which falsely portrays LGBTI visibility as ‘harmful to children’.
President Trump’s administration has also relentlessly attacked transgender people’s basic freedoms. Authorities are changing official rules that will deny accurate passports to trans, intersex, and non-binary people by requiring their gender to be recorded as the sex they were assigned at birth.
In places where the state fails to safeguard our rights, we take to the streets. We demand that governments enact laws that uphold equality and non-discrimination for marriage equality, legal gender recognition, protections from “hate crimes” and invasive “corrective” surgeries on intersex people. Amnesty International Philippines continues to call for the passage of the Comprehensive Anti-Discrimination and the SOGIE Equality bills, which remains stalled in Congress despite nearly two decades of lobbying. We are also urging LGUs to pass ordinances that uphold equality, protects and fulfill human rights of LGBTI people.
Wherever legal safeguards are lacking, grassroots movements are winning change, showing that pushing back on discriminatory laws makes a difference. This is us taking back the narrative against the normalization of hate. When our right to protest is undermined, we are driven to build communities of human rights defenders, across different movements of resistance, to confront discrimination in all its forms.
To all of us marching for Pride this June, we remember that Pride is Power, Pride is Love.