Queer Pacific Islanders call for greater acceptance, self-love and decriminalisation during Sydney WorldPride

From a young age, Chamoru activist Roquin-Jon Quichocho Siongeo from Guam knew something about them was special.

"There was always a little part of me that always knew I was different," Roquin-Jon said.

After months of being called names at school, Roquin-Jon came out at the age of 12 to a mostly accepting family.

"My grandmother was definitely one of the first people within my immediate family that I came out to and she was really supportive," Roquin-Jon said.

"And I think it is one of those rare instances that we actually see one of our elders embracing their queer children as their core descendants."

But outside of the family circle it was a different story, a challenge Roquin-Jon navigated daily.

And while a lack of social acceptance and even anti-LGBTQI+ laws make it impossible for many queer Pacific Islanders to freely honour their sexual identity back home on the islands, there is hope in sight for change.

Roquin-Jon was one of a number of sexually- and gender-diverse Pasifika activists who came together in Sydney this week for the Sydney WorldPride Pacific Caucus, where they lobbied MPs and church leaders for equal rights and societal acceptance for their communities.  

A long, proud queer history

The Pacific region has long hosted alternative expressions of gender.

Joey Joleen Mataele from Tonga identifies as a "fakaleiti" or simply "leiti", which translates to "like a lady".

President of the Tongan Leitis Association, Joey Joleen said their main priority was to gain wider acceptance in the community. 

"We don't really want to work on the decriminalisation until we work on the basics, there are other matters on the ground that need to be changed [like] being bullied, being harassed in schools, being harassed in the rural areas," Joey Joleen said.

"We need to work on those things, let alone the cross-dressing law is still in there, so we need to change those laws."

In Samoa, people assigned male at birth who live as women are known as fa'afafine, which translates to "in the fashion of a woman".

Dressing as a different gender has been decriminalised in Samoa, and fa'afafine Fagalima Tuatagaloa said it had made things easier for her community.

"We are widely accepted in the community due to a lot of contributions made by the society, not just in families, but in other communities, like church communities, village communities," said Fagalima, who is a member of the country's Fa'afafine Association.

But others in the Samoan rainbow community are not protected by the law.

"They are still not coming out of the closets, and so we respect their privacy and their individual concerns as well," she said.

Queer Melanesian experience 'more traumatic' 

It is a similar situation in several Melanesian countries according to Ratu Eroni Dina, the executive director of the Trans Affirmative Action Guild.

Eroni is from Fiji but also represents other rainbow communities in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands.

"The queer Melanesian experience is quite different from the Polynesian queer experience," Eroni said.

"It is much more tragic, it is much more traumatic — tomorrow is not promised for queer people in Melanesia; that is the reality of what it is like on the ground.

Eroni said LGBTQI+ people in Solomon Islands have not been able to organise an advocacy group for "fear for their livelihoods, the fear for their actual existence, and, of course, security".

"Queer people do exist, we know that they exist in isolation from each other, because for them to come together and formalise it will mean receiving a pushback from institutions, [like] the church."

Eroni said the visibility of queer people on the ground in Solomon Islands was "zero to none".

While Fiji has decriminalised homosexuality, there is still "a gap between legislation and the practice on the ground" according to Isikeli Vulavou, who is chief executive of the Pacific Sexual and Gender Diversity Network.

"Part of the work that our members in Fiji are doing is trying to narrow that gap so that they reduce that experience of stigma, discrimination and violence of our members," Isikeli said.

Anti-discrimination laws needed

According to the Human Dignity Trust, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Kiribati, Samoa, Tuvalu and the Cook Islands still have anti-LGBTQI+ laws.

Monash University human rights lawyer Paula Gerber said the laws criminalising same-sex sexual conduct between consenting adults were enacted under British rule in the region.

But she said anti-discrimination laws were lacking, which had seen people discriminated against "in terms of access to health care, or to education, or to housing, or to employment because of their sexual orientation or their gender identity".

"So having the sort of the protections and anti-discrimination laws would have a great impact on how they can live their lives with dignity."

People of faith must 'dig deep' 

While conservative religious views are often at odds with LGBTQI+ rights in the Pacific, this week in Sydney, the general secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches, Reverend James Bhagwan, was at the table and listening at the Sydney WorldPride Pacific Caucus.

"I am grateful for the invitation to be able to engage and this requires for every single person who is a person of faith to dig deep," the reverend said.

"The task is now to go back and find ways to respectfully share the messages, the lessons from our rainbow community to our Christian community in the Pacific; that is my role."

For Roquin-Jon, it is all about acceptance and love.

"There are parts of us that don't believe that all of us in our entirety can be held and cared for and looked after, but that couldn't be further from the truth," Roquin-Jon said.