by Mike Andrew - SGN Staff Writer

LGBT activists in Havana staged a kiss-in June 28 in advance of Cuba's second annual Pride march, and charged the Cuban government with failing to comply with their international treaty obligations on human rights.

The 'Kiss-In for Diversity and Equality' at the Ramon Fonst sports arena was organized by Project Rainbow, an 'anti-capitalist and independent LGBT group,' to mark the Stonewall uprising.

The group was founded last year by Yasmin Portales Machado, who has described herself on her blog as 'a mother, a feminist, and a critical Marxist.'

'With this public and affectionate action we invite you to make the LGBT community in Cuba visible,' the group said in a statement. 'We are part of the nation.'

Fifty people signed a petition calling for civil rights and delivered it to Cuba's legislative body, the National Assembly of People's Power, said Ignacio Estrada, a Gay activist and anti-Castro dissident.

'Our document calls on the Cuban government to fully comply with international agreements it has signed on human rights, especially those that apply to LGBT rights,' Estrada said after delivering the petition.

The petition also calls on lawmakers to launch an investigation of the Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP), labor camps created by Fidel Castro during the 1960s, and it demands that the government officials responsible for the camps be put on trial.

Critics of the Castro government say the camps were used to imprison innocent LGBT people as well as the regime's political opponents.

Activists also demanded that authorities stop applying the law on so-called 'pre-criminal dangerousness' to LGBT Cubans, and instead investigate the complaints of LGBT Cubans who are beaten or fired from their jobs because of their sexual orientation, Estrada said.

Estrada also said that the National Center for Sex Education (Cenesex), the LGBT rights organization headed by Mariela Castro - President Raul Castro's daughter and Fidel's niece - would not be involved in the Pride march.

Instead, three independent LGBT groups would sponsor the march, Estrada said: the Cuban League Against AIDS, the Open Door Foundation, and LGBT Observatory.

Estrada married Transgender activist Wendy Iriepa last year after her sex reassignment surgery. At the time, Iriepa claimed that Mariela Castro fired her from her job at Cenesex for associating with a dissident.

Fidel Castro publicly apologized for his government's mistreatment of LGBT Cubans in an interview published August 30, 2010.

'Those were moments of great injustice,' Castro told the Mexican newspaper La Jornada. 'Great injustice!'

He added, 'If any person was responsible, it's me!'

Reports on the July 1 Pride march were not immediately available. The parade was to start at the old Capitol Building (once the seat of the Cuban government), move down Paseo del Prado, and end at the Malecon, a seaside esplanade.

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