Wherever human beings are most savagely oppressed, you can be certain that gay men and lesbians will be bearing the heaviest violence. And so, in Lukashenko's Belarus. In day to day life there lesbians and gay men physically personify the front line of a timeless struggle to uphold human decency. Boldly facing down an enforced invisibility ferociously imposed through unrelenting brutality – a litany of murders, rapes, police beatings, and horrific assaults – young lesbian and gay citizens of this unhappy republic have been striving for many years for the cultural expression explicitly forbidden them, and which will ultimately bestow the inevitable key to their nation's freedom. With the dictatorship's crushing once again this year of another attempt at a Gay Cultural Festival in Minsk, the London Metropolitan Police sponsored Community Safety Office at 24 Peter Street, London, W1, hosts the 2005 ILGCN Moonbow Lesbian and Gay 'Cultural Festival in Exile' for Belarus, from October 7 to 9. Activities run from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm (to 6:00 pm on Saturday), prior to follow-on activities around London. Enjoy free presentations, discussions, art, video, literature, drama, and music, with low-cost nightclub tie-ins. Telephone 020 7734 7687 for further information. A full schedule appears on www.ilgcn.org

Ian Stewart
Secretary General for Literature
International Lesbian and Gay Cultural Network