Angel Valdes | February 9, 2023
In an interview with Radio Panama, Ricardo Beteta, president of the Association of New Men and Women of Panama, I consider that the agreement with the Ombudsman’s Office on the National Observatory of Human Rights of the LGTBTIQ+ Population is a very important step for this group, as well He referred to the Pink Egg project that has made homophobia visible in our country.
“With the advice of the Ombudsman’s Office, we are forming 11 LGTBIQ+ groups that are going to meet periodically every two weeks to carry out an analysis, be able to present complaints, make a political agenda on hate speech, crimes of gender violence, which this roundtable is to finally make visible that the stigma of discrimination against our population is a reality”, indicated Beteta.
According to Beteta, the contribution they can provide to this observatory is important to bring a series of data that is not registered in our country “for the Panamanian state we do not exist, if you are looking for information, data about our reality does not exist, what we seek is to correct this type of situation, finally being able to register the institutional discrimination that still exists in Panama, being able to make visible hate crimes, the complaints of discrimination that still persist in our country and being able to document them with the support of the Ombudsman’s Office and that it does not remain as something anecdotal but to follow up ”.
Regarding the delivery of the Pink Egg in this year 2023, Beteta considers that this project has made homophobia visible in our country “the social exercise that is the Pink Egg is the precursor of making visible issues of homophobia, issues in the media of the discourse of hate that unfortunately still persists in our country, make it visible because many people did not understand what homophobia is, but with the Pink Egg exercise, which is one of the most successful projects we have had and taught the population about hate speech ”.
