Feminita Organization Claims Almaty Akimat Trying to Prevent “Lesbian Qurultay”

The feminist initiative Feminita announced that it would organize a conference in Almaty on October 7-10, 2024, titled “Ecology and Its Impact on The LBQT Community: How We Survive Crises and Imagine our Future.” On the day of the event, there was no venue for it. Hotels and coworking centers refused to provide premises for the event, which its organizers described as a “Lesbian Quryltay,” Orda.kz reports.

On the Feminita Instagram page, activists Zhanar Sekerbayeva and Gulzada Serzhan have stated that the Almaty Akimat is preventing the conference.

Our environmental conference is being hampered by the Almaty city administration. Four hotels and one coworking space have refused to allow us to hold the conference. They all say that there is some list that includes Feminita. We will look for a new location. And we will still hold our event, Zhanar Sekerbayeva said. 

The event’s organizers believe the Akimat is “pressuring businesses.”

We roam like true nomads. The whole city is at our disposal. Well then, the Akimat wants the streets (of Almaty) to become lesbian, Gulzada Serzhan stated.

The conference announcement states that participation in the “Quryltay” is free, and its main goal is to organize sessions and workshops on the topic of the environment, eco-activism, veganism/vegetarianism, new ethics, and LBQT activism.

The conference organizers told an Orda.kz journalist that they had managed to find a place to hold it, but immediately after that, the power went out in the entire building.

Yes, we found a place, the sixth one, where we were finally able to settle in and are now holding our sessions. We will be there today and tomorrow, and on the ninth we will move to another place. The lights were turned off in this room because of us, and this affected the work of all the organizations that are inside this complex. And the Akimat employees are walking around here: they come in and out, they look round, says Zhanar Sekerbaeva. 

According to her, the conference is dedicated to environmental issues, climate change, and its impact on various communities of women in Central Asia. More than forty women from different regions of Kazakhstan are participating in the conference.

In May, it was reported that Gulzada Serzhan and Gulbakyt Utebayeva, Feminita  members, were fined for protesting against Bishimbayev's "lenient sentence."

Original Author: Alia Askarova