Human Rights Commission: Excluding LGBTQ+ Themes from Film Festival Entries Violates Equality Rights

A ruling has been made that the institution demanding the exclusion of films featuring sexual minorities from the film festival submission list violated the right to equality.

Yonhap News

On the 11th, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) announced that it judged the institution against which a complaint was filed for demanding the exclusion of films featuring sexual minorities from the screening list, in a women's film festival project application last year by the complainant (a women's organization), to have violated the right to equality.

The women's organization applied for the women's film festival project last year and was selected as the project executor, but received a request from the institution in question to exclude films featuring sexual minorities from the submitted screening list. During this process, the organization filed a complaint with the NHRCK, stating that they heard discriminatory remarks from the institution such as "Not all citizens agree," and "Children whose gender identity is not established may develop incorrect perceptions of gender."

The institution explained, "This film festival is a project implemented with the purpose of realizing gender equality that the majority of general citizens can participate in and empathize with," and added, "Since there are citizens who oppose homosexuality or are even more minority ex-homosexual citizens, we requested modifications to avoid favoring or excluding either side."

The NHRCK judged that the state and local governments have the duty to protect socially vulnerable groups and to strive to improve discrimination and prejudice against minorities. Even if conflicts and confrontations arise due to differences in opinions between groups, efforts must be made to ensure that socially marginalized groups are not subjected to unreasonable discrimination in the process. Accordingly, the act of demanding the exclusion of films featuring sexual minorities from the screening list and not approving the implementation plan for the film festival subsidy project because the complainant did not accept the demand was deemed a violation of the right to equality guaranteed by Article 11 of the Constitution.

The NHRCK stated, "We recommended that the institution in question prepare measures to prevent recurrence and conduct human rights education for managerial staff."