Nepal will this year play host to a royal wedding with a difference when an openly gay Indian prince marries his partner at a Hindu temple in Kathmandu.
The ceremony is the start of what Nepalese lawmaker Sunil Babu Pant hopes will become a lucrative business for his country, whose once thriving tourist industry is still reeling from a civil war that ended in 2006.
Pant, the only openly gay member of Nepal’s parliament, has set up a travel agency catering specifically for homosexuals, who he says face severe discrimination in many Asian countries.
He believes Nepal, which has made large strides forward on gay rights issues in recent years, is well placed to cash in on an industry worth an estimated US$670 million worldwide.
“If we brought even one percent of that market to Nepal it would be big. But I’m hoping we can attract 10 percent,” said Pant, who was selected in May 2008 to represent a small communist party in Nepal’s parliament.
“The choices [for gay tourists] in this region are very limited, and there is really no competition from China or India. Nepal is one of the few places where adventure tourism is available to people,” he said.
Pant said he has been overwhelmed with enquiries since setting up his travel agency, Pink Mountain.
The company will offer gay-themed tours of Nepal’s major tourist sites as well as organize wedding ceremonies.
Pant’s plans have won the support of the tourism ministry in Nepal, a deeply conservative country that nonetheless has some of the most progressive policies on homosexuality in Asia.
Two years ago, the country’s Supreme Court ordered the government to enact laws to guarantee the rights of gays and lesbians after the Blue Diamond Society, a pressure group run by Pant, filed a petition.
The country’s new Constitution, currently being drafted by lawmakers, is expected to define marriage as a union between two adult individuals, regardless of gender, and to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Laxman Bhattarai, joint secretary in Nepal’s Tourism Ministry, said the government had no specific policies on gay tourism, but would support Pant’s enterprise.
“The government has declared its ambition of attracting a million tourists to Nepal in 2011 which is a big increase,” he said.
“Nepal is a safe place to come now. We want to develop new tourist destinations and get people coming back after the civil war. If he can help us in any way, we are happy,” Bhattarai said.
The wedding of Indian prince Manvendra Singh Gohil, scion of the family that once ruled Rajpipla in the western state of Gujarat, looks likely to create the kind of publicity Nepal’s tourism business so desperately needs.
Pant says he is motivated by a desire to help boost Nepal’s struggling economy, and hopes the initiative will create jobs.
“Some of Nepal’s best hairstylists and beauticians are from the LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] community,” he said. “They have seen all kinds of struggles in the past and have had problems finding jobs. Holding gay weddings in Nepal is a win-win situation for them and for the country.”
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate