In Solidarity with the LGBTQ+ Community: Against Exclusion and Persecution

Statement by the Revolutionary Socialists

The Revolutionary Socialists strongly denounced the arrest of seven individuals for raising the pride flag, which represents diversity, freedom, and acceptance of differences, during a concert on Friday, September 22. We also reject entirely all smear, defamation, and exclusion campaigns targeting the LGBTQ+ community. These campaigns are simply an intensification of hatred directed toward people because of their sexual orientation.

The Revolutionary Socialists believe that the actual sexual crimes that should be firmly prosecuted include virginity tests, mass harassment, sexual violations in prisons and detention centers, coercing women into sex work, and female genital mutilation (FGM).

The movement views the systematic campaign executed by the regime’s media against the raising of the diversity flag at a concert, along with the arrest of seven attendees, as merely an attempt to divert attention from the real crimes being committed against society by the oppressive authorities. These crimes range from impoverishment policies affecting tens of millions to repressive policies that have resulted in the imprisonment of tens of thousands to the policy of relinquishing land, where the regime has gifted Egyptian territories to its Gulf allies.

As the movement declares its solidarity with the right to diversity and difference, it reaffirms its defense of the right to be free from exclusion, persecution, and harassment and the freedom to express this diversity openly. The movement emphasizes that freedom is indivisible, and the struggle for comprehensive social and political liberation can only succeed by resisting all forms of oppression, exclusion, and defamation and by defending all those persecuted because of their gender, sexual orientation, race, color, or religion.