The veteran LGBT+ and human rights activist took a stand in Qatar last week – and was swiftly told to leave the country. He talks about his many critics, his evangelical Christian mother and what drives him to keep putting himself in danger
I speak to Peter Tatchell by Zoom from Sydney, where he has recently arrived after his day in Qatar, protesting against that nation’s human rights abuses. He hasn’t slept in three days but is perfectly lucid and the weariness only tells in his minute corrections: “No, let me rephrase that”; “Sorry, let me think.” He is 70 years old, wrung out, back in Australia where he was born and raised, talking to me while fielding frequent phone calls. Has he no plans just to hang out for a bit, see some cousins? He’s a bit bemused by the question: “That’d be a very fine thing. But after Qatar I’ve got two other campaigns coming up – quiet time would be a stretch. I, with many others, have contributed to so many positive changes. It’s a great motivator.”
The protest in Qatar, which happened on 25 October, comprised only Tatchell and a colleague, Simon Harris, from Tatchell’s eponymous foundation. It featured a single placard, which they had smuggled into the country between the pages of a copy of the Daily Telegraph. “The only existing broadsheet newspaper today,” he says, pleased at the irony of the paper coming in handy, despite itself. The wording on the placard was: “Qatar arrests, jails & subjects LGBTs to ‘conversion’ #QatarAntiGay.” “I never dictated the terms,” he says. “I took the message directly from my contacts in Qatar.”
