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A number of brands including Ugg, Puma, Abercrombie & Fitch and Apple have teamed up with LGBT+ artists and activists.
Today (1 June) officially marks the start of Pride Month, and many big companies have released Pride clothing collections – as is now traditional.
It’s a month for LGBT+ people to celebrate how far we’ve come while also recognising the work that still needs to be done.
Every year, big name brands take part in Pride celebrations – usually with the launch of clothing collections embossed with rainbows.
However, some brands come under fire for chasing after the “pink pound” with their Pride clothing and ignoring LGBT+ people for the rest of the year.
LGBT refugees from South Sudan, Uganda and DR Congo protest to demand protection as refugees
Credit: AFP
When Bijoux Ferrazza realised she was transgender, she took a good look around her. Transgender women are nowhere to be seen in Cameroon. Every once in a while, they make headlines, but it was usually because they have been arrested, beaten up or murdered.
Bijoux weighed her options and concluded she only had one: if she wanted to live publicly as a woman – in other words, if she wanted to survive – she had to leave her country.
She did not want to meet the same fate as Cameroonian social media star Shakiro, who, alongside another transgender woman, was arrested on a charge of homosexuality and sent to prison.
same-sex activity is already punishable by up to five years in prison.. PHOTO: AFP
Several hundred protesters rallied Sunday in Dakar to demand that homosexuality be made a crime in Senegal, according to AFP journalists.
It is not illegal to identify as gay in the deeply conservative Muslim nation, but same-sex activity is already punishable by up to five years in prison. x
Religious leaders and civil-society figures addressed hundreds of jubilant protesters, who had gathered in a central square for the rally organised by And Samm Jikko Yi, a civil-society collective that promotes “correct values”.
Ousmane Kouta, a representative of a student religious group, told the crowd that Senegal is a country of faith and values.