South Korea will celebrate gay pride on Saturday with the Korea Queer Love Festival (KQLF) in Hanbit Media Park in central Seoul. According to the website, this is the 13th KQLF in Seoul.

Indicating the stigma around homosexuality in South Korea, people at the festival who don’t want to be photographed will wear a ‘no photography’ sticker and a red band. Only press will be permitted to take photographs and videos of the festival, and they must get permission of the individuals captured before publishing.

In the run up to Saturday’s event, the festival included an art exhibition, Living with Red Ribbon, that tackles the negative perceptions of people with HIV and AIDS in Korea. ‘We hope this is useful to get right information about HIV/AIDS and a great opportunity to represent the activists’ opinion on this subject,’ the festival organizers said.

Tonight the festival is holding a discussion about anti-gay discrimination in South Korea, following the protests against Lady Gaga’s concert earlier this month.

The festival also celebrates the end of the 12th Seoul LGBT Film Festival which ran from 24 to 30 May with Korean films (Girl Princes, Wandering Stars, Summer Days in Bloom) and international films (The Perfect Family, Loose Cannons, Children of Srikandi).

Despite being more developed than Asian neighbours North Korea and China, South Korea’s LGBT community is still relatively underground, with few openly gay clubs, public displays of affection or celebrities.

Ukrainian capital’s first ever gay pride was cancelled yesterday amid fears of attacks from far right thugs.

Police advised pride organizers to abandon the march through the center of Kiev just 30 minutes before it was due to start, claiming 500 ultra-right football hooligans were en route to the rally point with the intention of preventing the event from going ahead.

Two activists were beaten up and tear gassed by a dozen youths in central Kiev after those already gathered for the march were evacuated with police escort.

Human rights group Amnesty International called on Ukranian authorities to take action to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and ensure they are able to exercise their human rights without fear of attacks.

Max Tucker, Ukraine campaigner at Amnesty International, said: ‘It has been clear from the start that the Kiev police department did not want this march to go ahead.

‘Their reluctance to commit to the event and to put adequate security measures in place to protect demonstrators left organisers fearing for their safety.’

According to Amnesty, senior Kiev police official had previously told pride organizers that he was not prepared to put his officers in harm’s way for the LGBT community.

Max Tucker added: ‘The Kiev authorities and police must work harder to ensure next year pride participants can feel confident they will be protected.’

Amnesty also expressed concern about a proposed law change which would ban ‘promoting homosexuality’.

The bill would amend several laws including the law on protection of public morals, the law on print media, the law on television and radio broadcasting, the law on publishing and the criminal code.

The provisions, if adopted by the Ukrainian Parliament, would directly discriminate against LGBT individuals in the exercise of their right to freedom of expression.

Max Tucker said: ‘Passing this bill would fly in the face of Ukraine’s international obligations to protect the right to freedom of expression and prohibit discrimination.’

Amnesty International has urged the Ukrainian parliament to reject the bill and ensure LGBT rights are protected.

The Pacific island nation of Fiji was due to celebrate it’s first ever march for gay rights today, but the IDAHO (International Day Against Homophobia) event was cancelled at the last minute by police.

Oceania Pride, the organisers of the march said that they received a permit last month but the police told them this morning that tonight’s march would have to be cancelled.

‘They said we cannot march today because they did not realise they had given a permit for gays to march,’ said Roshika Deo, a trustee of Oceania Pride.

The organisers were also told the police had received orders from the Ministry of Defence to cancel the march for IDAHO (International Day Against Homophobia).

Deo said the official who approved the permit did not know what homophobia meant. She said that despite this discrimination against LGBT people is rife in Fiji: ‘You pick up the newspaper and you read a lot of letters where there’s a lot of homophobia and transphobia’.

The march was to be Fiji’s first public LGBT rights event, after homosexuality was decriminalised in Fiji in 2010 and the Drodrolagi [Rainbow] Movement held a packed-out panel discussion for IDAHO last year.

The 1997 constitution of Fiji prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation, but following a military coup in 2006 that constitution was suspended in 2009. Since the coup Fiji residents’ freedom of speech, press, assembly and association has been ‘aggressively curtailed’, according to Human Rights Watch.

Rangoon and Mandalay, the two largest cities in Burma, will host public LGBT rights events for the first time on Thursday.

‘This year there have been some changes in Burma,’ one of the organisers of the events, Aung Myo Min from Human Rights Education Institute Burma (HREIB), told Gay Star News. ‘Whether the change is cosmetic or true, it’s better to test the water.’

Since 2010 in Burma there have been some momentous shifts away from years of political repression. Pro-gay rights events are the latest, even if they will be held indoors.

‘We’re not going to out on the street for a parade,’ says Aung Myo Min. ‘It will be an indoor event because of the situation in Burma. But we hope that we will have a gay parade in the future.’

HREIB have held events for IDAHO (International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia) on 17 May for the last three years for Burmese nationals in Thailand. This year they decided to hold them in Burma.

Aung Myo Min is not worried about the authorities because, he says ‘this is just a celebration of a historic event, when homosexuality was removed from the list of mental diseases. It’s not about human rights. It’s just about the dignity of the LGBT people. Our message is just to end homophobia - this is not a political issue.’

The organisers have permission from the local authorities for the event in Mandalay and they are inviting UN officials, NGOs, artists and writers. Writer Atta Kyaw will talk about LGBT rights and LGBT people in the entertainment industry will talk about their experiences of violence and harassment.

Aung Myo Min says violence against LGBT people is not as bad in Burma as it is in other places such as Africa and in the West but there is ‘silent homophobia’.

‘We published our poster on Facebook,’ said Aung Myo Min. ‘We had hundreds of comments. Some are very supportive but some are very homophobic. We still have a long way to go.’

Sunday’s Tokyo Rainbow Pride parade attracted 2,500 participants and 2,000 spectators.

After a difficult few years, and no Pride march at all in 2011, LGBT pride in Tokyo is back and the organisers promise that following this weekend’s success, Tokyo Rainbow Pride will be a annual event.

Spokesperson Lauren Anderson told Gay Star News: ‘Seeing same sex couples hold hands and hug in public was quite moving because you don’t ever really see that in Japan. The parade went completely smoothly and we were well looked after by the police.’

Speaker Taiga Ishikawa, one of the two first openly gay politicians to be elected in Japan, said that he is trying to bring LGBT rights to his district in north west Tokyo. The US Consul General of Osaka, Patrick Lineham talked about Hilary Clinton’s mission to show the world that LGBT rights are human rights.

According to AFP, Tokyo Rainbow Pride plan to expand to 50,000 participants in the parade in the next few years. Wataru Ishizaka, the other openly gay local politician to be elected, said that many Japanese LGBT people were still shy about openly revealing their identities. ‘Japanese sexual minorities are still concerned about their exposure to the public,’ he said.

See more photographs from the celebration here.

A tsunami warning that threatened to engulf the whole of Phuket island in Thailand drastically diminished crowds at this weekend’s Pride march.

One of the organisers, Rob Vermeer, told Gay Star News: ‘The rumour was that there’d be a tsunami that would swallow up not just the coastline but the whole of Phuket. Thais are very superstitious and easily believe things like that. Some Thais came, but quite a few staff and boys were ordered back home by their mothers. In Thai culture if mother says you jump, you jump. So a lot of boys just simply left because of that.’

Despite the rumours, there wasn’t a drop of water out of place at the Pride march on Saturday, but even though it was a beautifully sunny day the beaches were empty. 

‘We hoped we’d get 20,000 watching the parade, but it was more like 7,000-10,000 because of the stupid rumour. It was disappointing,’ said Vermeer, who owns Backstage bar in Patong town.

The Mayor of Patong gave a speech on Friday night, welcoming Phuket Pride into the public domain, after being held in the gay bars area of town in previous years. And Mr Gay World 2011, Francois Nel, MCed Friday’s concert.

Although the numbers he expected didn’t turn out for the parade, Vermeer said that the festival will be deemed a great success if it encourages his Thai counterparts to get more involved in the festival next year. ‘If we can get the Thais onboard, actively involved and going for it then we would count that as a very big success, and the first signs are positive,’ he said.

Phuket Pride will be back in 2013, from Monday 22 to Saturday 27 April.