Edward Tarletski
Edward Zinowevich Tarletski, also known by the stage names Norma Pospolita and Madame Zhu-Zhu is a Belarusian drag performer, recording artist, entertainer, journalist, gay activist, and costume designer, living in Stockholm, Sweden. He was born in Minsk, Belarus on 5 February 1969. Edward Tarletski graduated as a photographer and a journalist in European Humanities University in 1996. Since 2000, he has been a member of the Belarusian Association of Journalists.
Life in Belarus
In 1990, Tarletski was one of two people who hunger striked for returning the Church of Saints Simon and Helena building to the Catholic community in Minsk.Between 1993 and 1998, Tarletski worked as a journalist for the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and as an editor of youth programming at the Belarusian state television station; at the same time he published articles in the Belarusian Catholic magazine "Nasha vera".
Edward Tarletski was the first Belarusian person to publicly come out in 1998. In the same year, he founded BELARUS LAMBDA LEAGUE, the first LGBT organization in Belarus.
On 19 April 1999, Tarletski organized the first ever gay public action in Belarus, when LGBT rights activists demonstrated to protest the authorities' refusal to register their organization. Edward Tarletski told RFE/RL that the Belarusian authorities are guided by Soviet stereotypes in their unwillingness to recognize the existence of a "non-traditional sexual orientation" in Belarus. Tarletski added that the demonstrators also wanted to protest a recent seminar organized by the Belarusian Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church at which some participants called homosexuals "servants of the devil" and proposed punishing them by electrocution.
Two years later, during the action "Gays against Fascism", which took place on 3 July 2001 in the memorial complex to victims of Holocaust "Yama" in Minsk, Traletski stated:At the public action "Gays against fascism" which was held at memorial "Maly Trostenets extermination camp" during the Belarus Gay Pride in Minsk on 5 September 5, 2001, Edward Tarletski said:
In 1998–2005, Tarletski published and edited Belarusian LGBT magazines FORUM LAMBDA and TABOO.
Between 1999 and 2002, Edward Tarletski held the position of Chairman of the Organizing Committee of Belarus Gay Pride festivals.
In 2005, Edward Tarletski started his career as a drag entertainer in the LGBT club named Babylon'' in Minsk, Belarus.