Adopting the same ‘Freedom to love’ tagline as the original Singapore event, the first large-scale Pink Dot event in Taiwan was held in Huashan Creative Park in Taipei on Saturday.

Organised by Gay & Lesbian Awakening Day (GLAD), a LGBT group comprising students from a dozen universities in northern Taiwan, the concert and rally on Saturday is the fourth Pink Dot event to be held in Taiwan.

Chang Ming-Hsu, Chair of 2015 PinkDot Tw and convener of GLAD, told Gay Star News that about 1,000 people stayed in the park throughout the event while an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 people attended in total.

In 2011, a Pink Dot flash mob was formed in Kaohsiung while two other events were held this year at the Kaohsiung LGBT Pride Parade on May 16 and at the National Cheng Kung University in Tainan on May 17.

With Taipei being home to Asia’s largest gay pride parade with some 50,000 attendees each year, Chang told Gay Star News he hopes for the Pink Dot event to allow more opportunities for interaction and communication between LGBTs and Taiwanese society at large.

‘LGBT people are not special and "far away", we might be the stranger you had just met on the street, the shop assistant this morning, or your close friends and family members. We need to not just be "seen" but we need more communication and understanding.’

‘As we see Pink Dot SG to be a good avenue for the LGBT community to connect with mainstream society, we hope for the Pink Dot event in Taipei to be another way to further the movement in addition to the Taiwan pride parade.’

Pink Dot events have also been held in Hong Kong, Okinawa (Japan), Montreal and Toronto (Canada), Utah (US) and other cities.

Pink Dot will held in Singapore on June 13. A first-of-its-kind LGBT students’ network comprising representatives from five LGBT groups from three universities will be officially launched at the event.



(Video for Pink Dot Sg 2015)