Matthew Mpoke Bigg
NEW YORK TIMES
March 17, 2022,
I’m a transgender journalist covering the war in Ukraine
Here's how I ended up covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the frontlines for LGBTQ Nation.
March 17, 2022,
The Pride Parade in Kyiv, Ukraine, last September.
Credit...Sergey Dolzhenko/EPA, via Shutterstock
To look at videos from last year’s Pride Parade in Kyiv is to peer at a joyous moment of solidarity in the quest for gay rights in Ukraine. A video on YouTube shows a cheerful crowd of thousands. Some wave flags. Some carry banners. Drag queens dance on a float.
But the war that started when Russia invaded on Feb. 24 has forced Ukraine’s L.G.B.T.Q. movement to confront a threat not only to national sovereignty, but also to its own community.
A pro-Russian puppet government, they say, would be less supportive of the L.G.B.T.Q. agenda. Gay marriage would likely remain unrecognized, they say, and incidents of discrimination and hate crime would rise, as they have in Russian-backed separatist regions.
Gay rights activists who have spent years struggling for equality have responded to the invasion with an intensified commitment to their cause, while mobilizing their network to offer support to people in need.
“What has amazed me is how the activist community reacted,” said Lenny Emson, who leads KyivPride and uses the gender-neutral courtesy title Mx. “It’s very encouraging how people work and how people did not stay inside panicking. They organized themselves for the community.”
The conflict has confronted people who are gay, lesbian or gender nonconforming with the same agonizing choices as the rest of the country’s 44 million people. Some have fled as refugees or moved to Ukraine’s west in search of safety. Others have stayed to help relatives or because they are trapped in besieged towns or cities. Still others have joined Ukraine’s defense forces.
At the same time, some people who are L.G.B.T.Q. have faced problems unique to their sex or gender identity. Mx. Emson said that she was aware of about 100 transgender women who were in the process of attaining legal gender recognition when the war started. After the invasion, Ukraine banned men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country to ensure they could be conscripted for military service. The transgender women are effectively trapped “because of the letter ‘M’ in their passports,” Mx. Emson said.
Some people who are H.I.V. positive no longer have ready access to medication. Neither do people in the process of gender transition.
Protests that led to a revolution in 2014, during which Ukraine’s pro-Moscow president was overthrown in favor of a Western-leaning one, served to deepen ties between gay rights activists and other branches of civil society. The drive for human rights, which underpins gay rights, was central to the protests that centered on Kyiv’s Maidan Square.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has promoted what he has called “traditional values,” and has denounced what he views as the West’s cultural decadence, which is taken to include the extension of legal rights and cultural acceptance to people who are L.G.B.T.Q.
One sign of how Mr. Putin’s values could potentially be applied to Ukraine comes from Crimea, said Maksym Eristavi, a Ukrainian gay rights activist and journalist. The region was seized by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, along with parts of the eastern Donbas region. Human rights groups say both regions have seen a crackdown on human rights defenders and a rise in attacks on people who are L.G.B.T.Q.
“It just breaks my heart that we had eight years of fantastic success bringing Ukraine even further but now this is being sabotaged,” said Mr. Eristavi. Some recent Pride Parades in Ukraine have been met with counterdemonstrations, and rights groups point to a string of hate crimes in the country.
However, some activists say the overriding national goal of resisting the invasion could serve to increase the general public’s solidarity with people who are L.G.B.T.Q. Everybody is subject to Russia’s attacks, and straight Ukrainians can see that gay people are engaged in the same struggle for survival, several activists said.
Mr. Eristavi said the invasion “reignites the desire to fight back.”
Matthew Mpoke Bigg is a correspondent covering international news. He previously worked as a reporter, editor and bureau chief for Reuters and did postings in Nairobi, Abidjan, Atlanta, Jakarta and Accra.
To look at videos from last year’s Pride Parade in Kyiv is to peer at a joyous moment of solidarity in the quest for gay rights in Ukraine. A video on YouTube shows a cheerful crowd of thousands. Some wave flags. Some carry banners. Drag queens dance on a float.
But the war that started when Russia invaded on Feb. 24 has forced Ukraine’s L.G.B.T.Q. movement to confront a threat not only to national sovereignty, but also to its own community.
A pro-Russian puppet government, they say, would be less supportive of the L.G.B.T.Q. agenda. Gay marriage would likely remain unrecognized, they say, and incidents of discrimination and hate crime would rise, as they have in Russian-backed separatist regions.
Gay rights activists who have spent years struggling for equality have responded to the invasion with an intensified commitment to their cause, while mobilizing their network to offer support to people in need.
“What has amazed me is how the activist community reacted,” said Lenny Emson, who leads KyivPride and uses the gender-neutral courtesy title Mx. “It’s very encouraging how people work and how people did not stay inside panicking. They organized themselves for the community.”
The conflict has confronted people who are gay, lesbian or gender nonconforming with the same agonizing choices as the rest of the country’s 44 million people. Some have fled as refugees or moved to Ukraine’s west in search of safety. Others have stayed to help relatives or because they are trapped in besieged towns or cities. Still others have joined Ukraine’s defense forces.
At the same time, some people who are L.G.B.T.Q. have faced problems unique to their sex or gender identity. Mx. Emson said that she was aware of about 100 transgender women who were in the process of attaining legal gender recognition when the war started. After the invasion, Ukraine banned men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country to ensure they could be conscripted for military service. The transgender women are effectively trapped “because of the letter ‘M’ in their passports,” Mx. Emson said.
Some people who are H.I.V. positive no longer have ready access to medication. Neither do people in the process of gender transition.
Protests that led to a revolution in 2014, during which Ukraine’s pro-Moscow president was overthrown in favor of a Western-leaning one, served to deepen ties between gay rights activists and other branches of civil society. The drive for human rights, which underpins gay rights, was central to the protests that centered on Kyiv’s Maidan Square.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has promoted what he has called “traditional values,” and has denounced what he views as the West’s cultural decadence, which is taken to include the extension of legal rights and cultural acceptance to people who are L.G.B.T.Q.
One sign of how Mr. Putin’s values could potentially be applied to Ukraine comes from Crimea, said Maksym Eristavi, a Ukrainian gay rights activist and journalist. The region was seized by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, along with parts of the eastern Donbas region. Human rights groups say both regions have seen a crackdown on human rights defenders and a rise in attacks on people who are L.G.B.T.Q.
“It just breaks my heart that we had eight years of fantastic success bringing Ukraine even further but now this is being sabotaged,” said Mr. Eristavi. Some recent Pride Parades in Ukraine have been met with counterdemonstrations, and rights groups point to a string of hate crimes in the country.
However, some activists say the overriding national goal of resisting the invasion could serve to increase the general public’s solidarity with people who are L.G.B.T.Q. Everybody is subject to Russia’s attacks, and straight Ukrainians can see that gay people are engaged in the same struggle for survival, several activists said.
Mr. Eristavi said the invasion “reignites the desire to fight back.”
Matthew Mpoke Bigg is a correspondent covering international news. He previously worked as a reporter, editor and bureau chief for Reuters and did postings in Nairobi, Abidjan, Atlanta, Jakarta and Accra.
Here's how I ended up covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the frontlines for LGBTQ Nation.
LGBTQ Nation
Thursday, March 17, 2022
The regional council building in Kharkiv was bombarded in the early morning on March 17.
The regional council building in Kharkiv was bombarded in the early morning on March 17.
Photo: Sarah Ashton-Cirillo
Waking up in a car parked on a muddy alleyway 30 minutes from the front lines of the Battle for Kharkiv was an inconceivable notion to me 3 days ago. Yet in the front seat of a beaten down Jeep Cherokee, I slept. Artillery blasts and other sounds of war created a cacophony of destruction throughout the night. However, in a world where a former US President is refusing to outright condemn the barbaric and terroristic actions unleashed by the tyrannical head of Russia against a steadfast ally, and an out transgender journalist is at the front lines of the major European land war in 2022, is anything truly inconceivable?
No.
More than six years ago, pre-transition, I embarked on an attempt to cover the “Syrian Refugee Crisis.” Beginning in Turkey, and then heading into the Balkans, I crossed Europe, ending my voyage on the shores of the English Channel by spending several days in Calais, France inside the sprawling migrant encampment known as “The Jungle.”
In total, I went overland across 11 countries following the stories of these displaced peoples from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as several African nations, while also examining a European Union which was both unprepared and unwilling to fully integrate them into their societies. Ultimately, the book that came from it, Along the Tracks of Tears, was a woefully incomplete look into the lives of those whom I set out to report on, and this failure by me to dive fully into the deepest crevices of their torment is something that had haunted me ever since.
In 2015, I eagerly accepted the opportunity to go into Syria and speak directly with some of those fleeing from their home soil during the civil war there. Going so far as to cross the Bosphorus Strait and travel deep into the eastern part of Turkey, fear eventually swept over me. I caved to concerns of being kidnapped or killed and abruptly canceled my plans. Pangs of regret began to fill me from almost the moment of turning around, weighing heavily on my work.
Another aspect of that sojourn that gnawed at me was living as a male during my travels. At the time, pretending to be a guy wasn’t anything new. I’d lived as one for almost 40 years at that point, but guilt over the lie had begun to impede all of my undertakings, an impediment magnified by being given space among the majority Muslim male refugees who I presume would otherwise have shunned the true me. And so my publication, weighed down by those two burdens, fell far short of what it could have been.
Years passed.
Waking up in a car parked on a muddy alleyway 30 minutes from the front lines of the Battle for Kharkiv was an inconceivable notion to me 3 days ago. Yet in the front seat of a beaten down Jeep Cherokee, I slept. Artillery blasts and other sounds of war created a cacophony of destruction throughout the night. However, in a world where a former US President is refusing to outright condemn the barbaric and terroristic actions unleashed by the tyrannical head of Russia against a steadfast ally, and an out transgender journalist is at the front lines of the major European land war in 2022, is anything truly inconceivable?
No.
More than six years ago, pre-transition, I embarked on an attempt to cover the “Syrian Refugee Crisis.” Beginning in Turkey, and then heading into the Balkans, I crossed Europe, ending my voyage on the shores of the English Channel by spending several days in Calais, France inside the sprawling migrant encampment known as “The Jungle.”
In total, I went overland across 11 countries following the stories of these displaced peoples from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as several African nations, while also examining a European Union which was both unprepared and unwilling to fully integrate them into their societies. Ultimately, the book that came from it, Along the Tracks of Tears, was a woefully incomplete look into the lives of those whom I set out to report on, and this failure by me to dive fully into the deepest crevices of their torment is something that had haunted me ever since.
In 2015, I eagerly accepted the opportunity to go into Syria and speak directly with some of those fleeing from their home soil during the civil war there. Going so far as to cross the Bosphorus Strait and travel deep into the eastern part of Turkey, fear eventually swept over me. I caved to concerns of being kidnapped or killed and abruptly canceled my plans. Pangs of regret began to fill me from almost the moment of turning around, weighing heavily on my work.
Another aspect of that sojourn that gnawed at me was living as a male during my travels. At the time, pretending to be a guy wasn’t anything new. I’d lived as one for almost 40 years at that point, but guilt over the lie had begun to impede all of my undertakings, an impediment magnified by being given space among the majority Muslim male refugees who I presume would otherwise have shunned the true me. And so my publication, weighed down by those two burdens, fell far short of what it could have been.
Years passed.
An apartment building bombed in Kharkiv, Ukraine early overnight on March 16.
Sarah Ashton-Cirillo
In the time since, much has happened to me personally and professionally. I published a novel, finally transitioned, and eventually became heavily involved in Nevada politics, the last area leading to the launch of a politics and news portal focused on the state.
Then in 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine and with that arose an opportunity to create a follow-up to my 2015-2016 coverage of the previous European refugee crisis – and this time attempt to do it right.
Beginning in Poland and then crossing into Ukraine, before eventually traversing the Ukrainian countryside, I arrived at the front, intent on learning about every aspect of what the victims of the invasion are enduring through photography, interviews, and personal observation. Along the way, I also realized the stories I uncovered, and the intertwined narratives which wove them together, were both much deeper and broader than I’d initially comprehended.
That first night we took cover in the darkness, camouflaged against a sky offering a canopy of infinite blackness because it was simply too dangerous to traverse the city streets after curfew. As soon as the light of morning peaked, we headed into the ravaged city, checkpoint after checkpoint lining the streets. While in many areas of Ukraine the blockaded streets are manned by volunteers from the Territorial Defense Forces, those asking for documents in Kharkiv are members of the professional, full-time, Ukrainian Armed Forces. Though we were stopped at an innumerable number of checkpoints on the more than 1,000 km drive through the nation’s heartland, the last search, the last flash of my credentials upon entering the city’s center, was truly the most poignant. It separated me from reading about war, and having listened to it, to witnessing it.
After being waved through into the downtown corridor, destruction enveloped me. Burnt out vehicles, blown out windows, decimated apartment buildings, and deep craters all pocked the landscape. Death too was present.
And yet residents of Kharkiv moved deftly around these reminders of war crimes and terrorism, lining up to get medicine, buy food, and withdraw money from banks, as life continued through 24 hours a day of enemy bombardment and Ukrainian counter-offensives.
The apartment I procured while at the frontlines promised to offer an expansive visage of the city. It didn’t disappoint, but as I quickly learned life at war changes hourly, and so I’ve spent a total of three hours in the accommodations since I arrived here.
Around 6 pm on my second evening, the group I’m embedded with decided to take cover for the evening in a restaurant, and the same on our third. Chairs, some blankets, a pillow, and contagious amounts of patriotic courage from my hosts have helped me find sleep during the explosive nights.
Operating as a hub of activity for various security services, the restaurant is now the location where I work, eat, sleep, and digest the toll that the Russian invasion has taken on the population of Ukraine and the global community as a whole.
Two weeks have gone by since I’ve arrived in Europe and 10 days since I entered a nation during the throes of war. In that short span, a realization settled in.
I’m not the same writer. I’m not the same photographer. I’m not the same person.
I came to Ukraine to cover a refugee crisis, I’m now reporting on a war.
Is anything truly inconceivable?
No.
In the time since, much has happened to me personally and professionally. I published a novel, finally transitioned, and eventually became heavily involved in Nevada politics, the last area leading to the launch of a politics and news portal focused on the state.
Then in 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine and with that arose an opportunity to create a follow-up to my 2015-2016 coverage of the previous European refugee crisis – and this time attempt to do it right.
Beginning in Poland and then crossing into Ukraine, before eventually traversing the Ukrainian countryside, I arrived at the front, intent on learning about every aspect of what the victims of the invasion are enduring through photography, interviews, and personal observation. Along the way, I also realized the stories I uncovered, and the intertwined narratives which wove them together, were both much deeper and broader than I’d initially comprehended.
That first night we took cover in the darkness, camouflaged against a sky offering a canopy of infinite blackness because it was simply too dangerous to traverse the city streets after curfew. As soon as the light of morning peaked, we headed into the ravaged city, checkpoint after checkpoint lining the streets. While in many areas of Ukraine the blockaded streets are manned by volunteers from the Territorial Defense Forces, those asking for documents in Kharkiv are members of the professional, full-time, Ukrainian Armed Forces. Though we were stopped at an innumerable number of checkpoints on the more than 1,000 km drive through the nation’s heartland, the last search, the last flash of my credentials upon entering the city’s center, was truly the most poignant. It separated me from reading about war, and having listened to it, to witnessing it.
After being waved through into the downtown corridor, destruction enveloped me. Burnt out vehicles, blown out windows, decimated apartment buildings, and deep craters all pocked the landscape. Death too was present.
And yet residents of Kharkiv moved deftly around these reminders of war crimes and terrorism, lining up to get medicine, buy food, and withdraw money from banks, as life continued through 24 hours a day of enemy bombardment and Ukrainian counter-offensives.
The apartment I procured while at the frontlines promised to offer an expansive visage of the city. It didn’t disappoint, but as I quickly learned life at war changes hourly, and so I’ve spent a total of three hours in the accommodations since I arrived here.
Around 6 pm on my second evening, the group I’m embedded with decided to take cover for the evening in a restaurant, and the same on our third. Chairs, some blankets, a pillow, and contagious amounts of patriotic courage from my hosts have helped me find sleep during the explosive nights.
Operating as a hub of activity for various security services, the restaurant is now the location where I work, eat, sleep, and digest the toll that the Russian invasion has taken on the population of Ukraine and the global community as a whole.
Two weeks have gone by since I’ve arrived in Europe and 10 days since I entered a nation during the throes of war. In that short span, a realization settled in.
I’m not the same writer. I’m not the same photographer. I’m not the same person.
I came to Ukraine to cover a refugee crisis, I’m now reporting on a war.
Is anything truly inconceivable?
No.
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