INDONESIA

LGBT Rights Get Prime Time in Nepal

LGBT Rights Get Prime Time in Nepal

Nepal’s law recognizes a third gender and the country is one its way to becoming the first South Asia country to allow same-sex marriage.

Sunil Pant—the countries first openly gay member of parliament is largely responsible for the changes.

He has founded a travel agency focusing on LGBT couples thinking of tying the knot in Nepal, started a prime time TV station and now a national radio program.

Transgender man Bishnu Adhikari is busy recording the daily radio program Pa-hi-chaan,or Identity. It’s broadcast on 16 FM stations across the country.

“In this program we usually talk about political rights, discrimination in education, health and many more issues. We interview members of Parliament, lawyers, teachers and activists.”

He says they have a great connection with their listeners.

“We have a toll free number they can call. We get more calls each day. Many of the callers want to come to our office and want to share their problem with us. After listening to our program some of the people come to our office with their parents for counseling.”

The program is running by the rights group Blue Diamond Society.

Manisha Dhakal is with the group.

“It helps us to change the perception of the people towards the LGBT community. Before, they had negative thoughts towards the LGBT community. But when we telecast our program, people’s thinking started to change and there has been a positive change towards our community. After listening the program, some family member have visited Blue Diamond Society and they now can accept their child’s sexual identity.” 

The program was designed by the countries first openly gay parliamentarian Sunil Pant.

“Journalists have been very friendly to LGBT issues, but it is fact that they never understood LGBT issues in-depth enough. So it was kind of little frustrating for us after so many times we tried because journalist are busy on their area, their beat. So they could never give enough time to understand LGBT issues. So idea was that why not we try our own media? Then we designed our program.”

Teachers are one of the shows target groups.

RB Thapa a high school teacher is often interviewed on the show and as a result has changed his views.

“One of my own children is third gender. At the beginning, I was very anxious about it. Now, I am not. I used to be nervous about about people would think about my child.  We used to think that we knew everything. Now I realized that I was completely wrong regarding the issue and the community. I came to know that I was misinformed.”

  • Nepal
  • LGBT
  • radio
  • Sunil Pant
  • Sunil Neupane

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