PUERTO DE LA CRUZ (TENERIFE), Dec. 3 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The LGBTI Diversas Association has reported this Friday of the discriminatory attitude exercised by the Los Realejos City Council with an “ideological veto” that has blocked the projects that the entity had been developing in the municipality since its constitution.
In a press conference held at the headquarters of the group, representatives of Diversas reported the “serious” situation they are suffering generated by the City Council.
As they denounce, the municipal government (made up only by the Popular Party) has transferred the breakdown of all relations, the veto of any project developed in the municipality and they have also imposed “threatening conditions” to continue participating in the Technical Commission of the Affective-Sexual Education Plan.
The president of Diversas, Sergio Siverio, has reported that “the Councilor for Equality, Macarena Hernández, and the Councilor for Youth, José David Cabrera, transferred by order of their mayor, Manuel Domínguez, that Diversas would stop receiving public funding for criticizing the right and far right in a Pride manifesto “.
In his opinion, “it is an inadmissible ideological veto that reveals a campaign of hatred and censorship against our entity for the simple fact of defending our rights.”
Siverio reported that this decision, attributable only to the government group of the royal council, supposes “the unjustified blocking of social projects that were benefiting citizens, on education in diversity for institutes or awareness and visibility actions that improve living conditions of LGBTI people “.
According to data from the entity, more than 300 people from Los Realejos have benefited in 2021 from the free services of Diversas, being the second municipality on the island with the most users.
ACTIVIST INDIGNATION IN THE FACE OF INADMISSIBLE DISPLAYS OF HATE
For his part, the secretary of Diversas, Fran Baute, made a very critical assessment of the hostile and discriminatory attitude that the Los Realejos government group has endured for months.
“We are absolutely outraged by what is nothing but a totally ideological act of hatred that the PP is leading and that we are suffering for the exercise of our right to freedom of expression,” he said.
Baute reported that only two municipalities in the North have refused to join the Asterisco network, La Guancha and Los Realejos, “both governed by the PP, in a decision that responds to an express order from Manuel Domínguez.”
This network is made up of more than a dozen city councils governed by parties as disparate as the Canary Coalition, Yes you can, PSOE, Citizens, municipal parties or even the Popular Party, which, in the opinion of the entity, shows “ideological sectarianism presiding over this unjustified veto “.
The situation has reached such an extreme that, according to Siverio, “they have been able to force us to attend to vulnerable users on the street, because the city council temporarily refused to give us a municipal space to carry out an attention.”
Therefore, as they say, “they prefer to endanger LGBTI people in the municipality before collaborating with the only LGBTI entity that operates in this area of the island.”
In addition, they denounced that the City Council tries to carry out actions on this issue “to hide the veto”, ignoring the association and suggesting that other professionals or groups can better execute the actions that they promote in the municipality.
CLAIM “ACTIVIST SOLIDARITY”
In this sense, they asked for “activist solidarity” so that the comrades “do not let what is being done to them” pass, becoming “accomplices” in an attack that affects them but “tomorrow could affect anyone.”
Los Realejos, as they indicate, “has been a benchmark in affective-sexual education policies that the current government group, headed by Manuel Domínguez, is burying with the ideological attack that Diversas is suffering and that we will not allow to go unpunished. “.
They also demanded political responsibilities and insisted that they will continue to meet the demands of the LGBTI people in the municipality, “despite the ideological veto imposed by the PP.”