This year’s online-only Taiwan LGBT Pride parade on Saturday next week is to feature interactive “stages” with celebrity performances and drag queen shows, organizer Taiwan Rainbow Civil Action Association said.
In place of the event’s normal parade through downtown Taipei, the 19th edition of the event would include five interactive stages — Main Stage, Party Float, International Pride Issues, Parade Issues and Chat Box — accessible through the event’s Web site, event.taiwanpride.lgbt, the association said.
The lineup for this year’s event includes celebrity performances, drag queen shows, chat rooms and online shopping from 2pm to 5:30pm, it said.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
The organizers last month announced that the parade would be held virtually this year due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Association spokesperson Tai Yu-hsun (戴佑勳) on Tuesday said that even though the nation’s COVID-19 situation has been improving, it was too late to reverse preparations for an online event, which started when domestic cases were still climbing.
“When we were planning for the parade earlier in the year, we were just about to enter a level 3 COVID-19 alert. So, if we made any changes now, it would affect the agreements we have with our collaborators,” Tai said.
Restrictions on public gatherings were introduced after a nationwide level 3 alert was announced on May 19 following a surge in domestic cases. With daily local case numbers regularly in the single digits, the Central Epidemic Command Center on July 27 announced a return to a level 2 alert.
About 130,000 people attended last year’s parade, which followed a record-breaking turnout of 200,000 in 2019 — the same year Taiwan became the first nation in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage.
Association chairman Fletcher Hong (小鯨) said that despite recent progress, society has not yet reached true equality for people in the LGBT community.
“We often see areas, such as in shops or restrooms, labeled as ‘gender friendly’ spaces, but the purpose of that is so people can be themselves instead of having it as a place of refuge... We need to make being ‘friendly’ a part of our daily normal life,” Hong said.
Another focus of the event is HIV/AIDS education.
Chiu Yi-chi (邱奕頎), a director at the Persons with HIV/AIDS Rights Advocacy Association of Taiwan, said there was still a stigma attached to those infected with HIV — despite growing evidence that those with undetectable levels of the virus can no longer transmit it to sexual partners.
“Sometimes HIV positive people are turned away by dentists because they fear that they might not be able to fully disinfect their equipment,” Chiu said, adding that long-term nursing facilities sometimes refuse to let those with HIV share rooms with other patients.
Chiu said he hoped the work by his organization would help people in Taiwan learn more about medical advancements related to HIV and AIDS, and reduce stigmatization by introducing people to the friends and families of those with the disease.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,