https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/27/gay-relationships-still-criminalised-countries-report
Gay relationships are still criminalised in 72 countries, report finds
50 years after Britain’s partial decriminalisation of homosexuality, in eight countries it can still result in death penalty
Fifty years after homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales, 72 other countries and territories worldwide continue to criminalise same-sex relationships, including 45 in which sexual relationships between women are outlawed.
There are eight countries in which homosexuality can result in a death penalty, and dozens more in which homosexual acts can result in a prison sentence, according to an annual report by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA).
But Britain was by no means a frontrunner when it moved 50 years ago to partly decriminalise homosexuality. Some 20 other countries had already led the way, including France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Brazil and Argentina, all of whom had legalised it well before 1900.
In Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, homosexuality is still punishable by death, under sharia law. The same applies in parts of Somalia and northern Nigeria. In two other countries – Syria and Iraq – the death penalty is carried out by non-state actors, including Islamic State.
The report notes that, although the potential exists for a death penalty to be handed down under sharia courts in at least five other countries – Pakistan, Afghanistan, the UAE, Qatar and Mauritania
A co-author of the ILGA report, Aengus Carroll, said it remained the case that there was “no country in the world where LGBT people are safe from discrimination, stigmatisation or violence”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/27/gay-relationships-still-criminalised-countries-report
https://www.humandignitytrust.org/lgbt-the-law/map-of-criminalisation/
Map of Countries that Criminalise LGBT People
Key Facts
- 72
jurisdictions criminalise private, consensual, same-sex sexual activity. The majority of these jurisdictions explicitly criminalise sex between men via ‘sodomy’, ‘buggery’ and ‘unnatural offences’ laws. Almost half of them are Commonwealth jurisdictions.
.
- 44
jurisdictions criminalise private, consensual sexual activity between women using laws against ‘lesbianism’[…]
- 11
jurisdictions in which the death penalty is imposed or at least a possibility for private, consensual same-sex sexual activity. At least 6 of these implement the death penalty – Iran, Northern Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen – and the death penalty is a legal possibility in Afghanistan, Brunei, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar and UAE.
- 15
jurisdictions criminalise the gender identity and/or expression of transgender people, using so-called ‘cross-dressing’, ‘impersonation’ and ‘disguise’ laws. In many more countries transgender people are targeted by a range of laws that criminalise same-sex activity and vagrancy, hooliganism and public order offences.
https://www.humandignitytrust.org/lgbt-the-law/map-of-criminalisation/
http://internap.hrw.org/features/features/lgbt_laws/
Among countries that expressly forbid expression of transgender identities, at least three, Brunei, Oman and Kuwait, have national laws that criminalize “posing as” or “imitating” a person of a different sex. Saudi Arabia has no codified law, but police routinely arrest people based on their gender expression. Malaysia also criminalizes “posing as” a different sex, not in its federal criminal code but in the Sharia codes of each of its states and its federal territory. Nigeria criminalizes transgender and gender nonconforming people in its northern states under Sharia.
The maps addressing criminalization of same-sex conduct include the 70 countries with national laws forbidding same-sex conduct. But others bear mention. The UAE has no federal law against homosexual conduct, but several emirates, do in their own penal codes
In Indonesia, Aceh province is semi-autonomous and criminalizes same-sex conduct under Sharia (Islamic law).
In South Korea, the military criminal code punishes same-sex conduct with up to two years in prison, even though criminal sanctions for same-sex conduct do not apply to the civilian population.
Human Dignity Trust has reported that 15 countries maintain unequal ages of consent
http://internap.hrw.org/features/features/lgbt_laws/
https://www.theweek.co.uk/96298/the-countries-where-homosexuality-is-still-illegal
The countries where homosexuality is illegal
Singapore court upholds law criminalising gay sex
The LGBT rights movement in Singapore subsequently regained momentum in the wake of India’s decision in 2018 to scrap similar legislation left over “from its own period under British rule”, reports Malaysia-based news site The Star.
Europe
No countries in Europe have laws explicitly preventing homosexual activities. However, The Guardian reports that increasing numbers of politicians and church leaders have been stirring homophobia to rally bases and provoke fear among voters in Eastern Europe.
The future looks even bleaker, with Amnesty International warning that “legal rights are diminishing for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people across the African continent”.
In the overwhelmingly Islamic Middle East, it is quicker to highlight the countries that do not currently have anti-gay laws than those that do. In several nations same-sex relations are punishable by death.
Bahrain, Israel and Jordan are the only countries in the region that do not outlaw homosexuality. Even in these countries, police protections offered to sexual minorities are minimal and vigilante justice often prevails.
Iraq decriminalised homosexuality in 2003, but the subsequent collapse of its government and territorial claims by the extremist Islamic State (Isis) led to widespread persecution and informal punishment of homosexuals, including execution.
Meanwhile, Asia has a mixed record on gay rights. Many countries on the continent have never passed any form of anti-gay legislation, including Cambodia, South Korea, Taiwan, Laos and the Philippines, while Japan decriminalised homosexuality almost 140 years ago.
https://www.theweek.co.uk/96298/the-countries-where-homosexuality-is-still-illegal
https://www.ft.com/content/393b3145-9567-4bfc-9ebc-0e92e4e2ddde
Singapore high court upholds law criminalising gay sex
Singapore high court upholds law criminalising gay sex
City state rejects three separate appeals arguing that the legislation is unconstitutional
Singapore’s high court has upheld a colonial-era law that criminalises sex between men, putting the international financial centre at odds with the liberal trend to embrace same-sex relationships.
Under Singaporean law, a man found guilty of “gross indecency” with another man faces up to two years in prison. M Ravi, a lawyer who represented one of the appeals, said the court ruling was “shocking” but not surprising. The continued criminalisation of homosexuality in Singapore bucks moves elsewhere in the region to embrace LGBT rights that was invigorated by Taiwan’s decision to legalise gay marriage last year. This made it the first Asian jurisdiction to allow same-sex unions.
He pointed to drafting legislation in Thailand that would allow broad marriage equality. “Once Thailand passes that [law] we believe there could be very significant progress on LGBT rights in countries like Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar,” said Mr Robertson.
In India, where the supreme court struck down a similar colonial-era provision to the one upheld in Singapore, even traditional heavy industry employers such as Tata Steel are taking steps to embrace LGBT employees.
While some parts of Asia have embraced LGBT rights, Brunei was last year forced to back down on new laws that would make gay sex and adultery punishable with death by stoning.
https://www.ft.com/content/393b3145-9567-4bfc-9ebc-0e92e4e2ddde
The report follows research published last week into lesbian and bisexual women’s experiences of persecution for their sexual orientation. The research found ‘corrective rape’ and forced marriages are common in some countries on the basis that this can ‘cure’ them.
Many countries only criminalise sex between men due to historic penal codes from British colonial rule which define sex as penile penetration. However, a growing number are criminalising sex between women as they believe doing so strengthens laws against men as the countries can assert the legislation is ‘gender neutral’ and therefore not discriminatory.
https://www.humandignitytrust.org/lgbt-the-law/map-of-criminalisation/
Mapping anti-gay laws in Africa
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/lgbti-lgbt-gay-human-rights-law-africa-uganda-kenya-nigeria-cameroon
Kenya high court rules to maintain laws criminalising homosexuality
Activists vow not to give up after crushing court ruling for Africa’s LGBT+ community
As Bhutan scraps gay sex ban, what pro-LGBT+ steps have others taken?
By Reuters | Posted by Jahnavi Gupta | New Delhi
UPDATED ON DEC 11, 2020 06:05 PM IST
As countries around the world move to dismantle often centuries-old laws banning gay sex, Bhutan has become the latest nation to take steps to ease restrictions on same-sex relationships.
The United Nations has called on nations to throw out anti-LGBT+ laws, saying they legitimise discrimination against LGBT+ people and expose them to hate crimes, police abuse, torture and family violence.
Here are the latest nine countries to remove bans on same-sex relations:
C.et: what about your LGBT refugees that get stabbed and sliced every other day in the Kukuma refugee camp? Is it how the UN treats their brothers?
Kenyan LGBT refugees live in fear of rape and assault
Lesbian and gay refugees live in fear for their lives in the Kakuma refugee camp, with, they say, the police and UN doing little to help
Nairobi — Eva Nabagala hoped she and her young son would be safe from her family when they fled Uganda for a Kenyan refugee camp — but instead she was attacked and raped there as punishment for being a lesbian.
She’s one of a group of about 300 gay, lesbian and transgender refugees in Kakuma refugee camp in northwestern Kenya, who say other refugees repeatedly attack them because of their sexual orientation. The group say police and the UN refugee agency, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), have failed to protect them.
Stephen Sebuuma, another Ugandan refugee in Kakuma, said refugees armed with iron bars, sticks and machetes damaged their houses on three occasions, injuring four adults and two children. “Police insult us instead of helping us.”
UNHCR Kenya said as soon as they were informed of the attack, they contacted Kenya’s Refugee Affairs Secretariat, and sent an ambulance. UNHCR also contacted police, which had started investigations, the agency said. But Sebuuma said the police never helped them.
Lesbians, gays live in fear of attacks in Kenyan refugee camp
“I have been threatened with death, I have been beaten, I have been harassed sexually, and I have been sexually abused,” a lesbian refugee from Ugandan said.
April 28, 2020, 1:43 PM BST
By Reuters
UNHCR Kenya told Reuters that police investigate reports of violence, assault, or other crimes and UNHCR offers support to survivors.
“Whenever we are informed … we do our utmost to provide medical, legal and social-economic support and psychosocial counseling to survivors,” the agency said.
Kenya’s national police spokesman Charles Owino said he was unaware of any violence against the group of refugees.
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/lesbians-gays-live-fear-attacks-kenyan-refugee-camp-n1194126
A protest staged by embattled and exhausted LGBT+ refugees from a camp in Kakuma, Kenya ended in violence as police officers allegedly “teargassed, beat and brutally assaulted” demonstrators.
Queer refugees donned rainbow face masks for a peaceful protest outside the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) office in the northwestern town.
The group – adults and children alike, many fleeing from neighbouring Uganda’s vicious anti-LGBT laws – have reported being under siege from assaults in recent months at the Kakuma refugee camp.
Demonstrators were calling on UNHCR organisers for increased camp security after months of being pelted with violence from Kakuma locals and fellow refugees.
Last year alone, queer Ugandans have been bludgeoned with machetes, had community centres mobbed only for LGBT+ staff to be arrested, a doctor crack the skull of a lesbian and a gay-friendly club raided leading to 127 LGBT+ people being arrested by army and police officers.
Embattled queer folk have fled to Kenya, but last year the country’s courts called to continue criminalising gay sex.
A group of homophobic people reportedly attacked a trans Ugandan refugee in broad daylight at a Kenyan camp, slicing his neck, punching him and then pulling on his genitals.
C: there are also several accounts of rapes.
Gay refugees sent back to ‘homophobic Kenya camp’
C: underlying question about the UN, when people like trump abuse power, when countries like china forbids technology enabling LGBT people to meet (apps were the only LGBT people could meet) in the whole of China, as there organisations and even bars are quasi-inexistent.
And since the UN has a systematic history of inviting the worst perpetrators of human right to preside and lead commissions and committees.
Click on this link to read more about the ongoing situation in the UNHCH Kakuma camp:
https://www.inthenameofhumanrights.com/2021/04/lgbt-refugees-in-unhcr-camp-threatened.html
In over 40 countries, laws against homosexuality are a lasting legacy of British rule
Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) was introduced by the British in 1861, inspired by the 1553 Buggery Act that outlawed homosexuality in England. It was reportedly imposed to protect soldiers and colonial administrators from “corruption” out of a fear that these men sent far from home (and their wives) would turn to homosexuality, according to British Colonialism and the Criminalization of Homosexuality, a book by Enze Han and Joseph O’Mahoney.
As the largest country in the Commonwealth, India’s landmark decision sends a message to other former British colonies that have stuck with draconian laws against homosexuality. Of the 70 countries around the world that criminalise homosexuality, at least 42 were once under some kind of British control. And their modern-day laws are often direct descendants of the 19th century British laws.
https://qz.com/india/1380947/section-377-the-former-british-colonies-with-laws-against-gay-people/
https://www.businessinsider.com/lgbtq-rights-around-the-world-maps-2018-10?
10 maps showing how different LGBTQ rights are around the world
Same-sex acts can still carry the death penalty in at least a dozen countries.
Same-sex activity can be a capital offense in Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.
Some 68 countries still criminalize homosexuality, most of them majority-Muslim nations in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa.
Even where homosexuality is legal, there are laws in place that make living openly difficult.
https://www.businessinsider.com/lgbtq-rights-around-the-world-maps-2018-10?
https://www.businessinsider.com/lgbtq-rights-around-the-world-maps-2018-10?
In Russia, a federal law makes it illegal to distribute “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” to children.
Critics say it’s so broad that it can be used to ban Pride parades and arrest people for even identifying as a member of the LGBTQ community on social media.
Brazil, Ecuador, and the tiny Mediterranean island nation of Malta are the only three countries to ban so-called conversion therapy.
Only 5% of UN member states have provisions in their constitutions barring discrimination based on sexual orientation.
South Africa was the first country to include sexual orientation protections in its constitution, which it did in 1997.
Few countries outside of Europe and the Americas allow same-sex couples to adopt children.
https://www.businessinsider.com/lgbtq-rights-around-the-world-maps-2018-10?
Map Shows Where It’s Illegal To Be Gay – 30 Years Since WHO Declassified Homosexuality As Disease
But 70 countries in the world still criminalise LGBT+ sexual acts between adults.
Additionally, being LGBT is illegal in Gaza (Palestine), the Cook Islands and some provinces in Indonesia. While in several other countries, are still seeing cases of de facto criminalization.
The report shows that despite the rhetoric that “it’s getting easier to be LGBT+”–staggering parts of the world remain without fundamental rights in employment, marriage, adoption and the prevention of crimes.
6 In 10 LGBT+ Europeans Fear Assault If They Hold Hands In Public
LGBT activists in ‘disbelief’ after Botswana strikes down laws criminalising homosexuality
Botswana’s High Court ruled on Tuesday to decriminalise same-sex relations, making it the latest African nation to do so.
“Human dignity is harmed when minority groups are marginalised,” Judge Michael Leburu told a packed courtroom in the capital Gaborone, adding that the ban was “discriminatory”.
Homophobia in Africa
Botswana is just the latest African nation to legalise same-sex relations. Earlier this year, Angola took similar measures, while Mozambique decriminalised gay sex in 2015. In South Africa, homosexuality has been legal since the end of Apartheid, in 1996.
Zambia’s president says ‘no to homosexuality’
C.et: religion? Rather people whose plan is to plague and feed on half the population while formatting make a job of a joke (of) consuming (the) (opposite) sex.
PRESS STATEMENT
UNAIDS applauds the vote by Bhutan’s parliament to repeal laws that criminalize and discriminate against LGBT people
GENEVA, 14 December 2020
Bhutan becomes the latest country to decriminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations. Since 2014, Angola, Botswana, Gabon, India, Mozambique, Nauru, Palau, the Seychelles and Trinidad and Tobago have all taken the same measure. However, consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized in at least 68 countries and territories worldwide
LGBTQ+ Refugees in UNHRC Refugee Camp at Kakuma, Kenya.
We are interacting with a group of LGBT refugees who are currently in UNHCR Kakuma camp, Block 13. There are 180 people in Block 13, living in squalid conditions. Having fled from their homes in neighbouring countries because of homophobia and transphobia they are still living in fear, despite the reasonable assumption that they would be protected from further violence. They are being targeted as LGBT people by other refugees in the camp and by local people and suffer ongoing brutal attacks and arson in the camp under the watch of UNCHR Kenya.
Refugees run their own businesses in Kenya
C: IN THE SAME REFUGEE CAMP, ONE GROUP DOES OFFICIAL BUSINESS WHILE ANOTHER GET VIOLENTLY ATTACKED.
“Constant fear” for gay refugees in Europe’s shelters
BERLIN — Alaa Ammar fled Syria to escape not just civil war but also the threat of persecution as a gay man. Yet when he arrived in The Netherlands last spring, he did not find the safe haven he craved.
The AP found out about scores of documented cases in The Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, with the abuse usually coming from fellow refugees and sometimes security staff and translators.
In Germany, the Lesbian and Gay Federation counted 106 cases of violence against homosexual and transgender refugees in the Berlin region from August through the end of January. Most of the cases came from refugee centers, and 13 included sexual abuse.
Last year, the federation placed 50 people in private homes because the migrant centers were too dangerous.
“These asylum shelters are law-free areas,” he said.
Last year, the federation placed 50 people in private homes because the migrant centers were too dangerous.
“Gay refugees live in constant fear in the big shelters,” said the 40-year-old Syrian refugee.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/refugees-europe-migrants-shelters-gay-asylum-seekers-attack-abuse-lgbt/
Smotrich: Shaffir ‘stupid’ for blaming religious right for anti-LGBT violence
Democratic Camp politician says rabbis, ministers and MKs are ‘igniting hatred’ that leads to assaults
“The knife that stabbed a 16-year-old boy this week is the same knife that stabbed Maya in 2018, the same knife that murdered Shira at the Gay Pride parade,” tweeted Shaffir, referring to an assault on trans woman Maya Hadad last year and to Shira Banki, a 16-year-old girl who was killed in 2015 during an attack on participants in the Jerusalem gay pride march.
“This hatred is kindled by rabbis, ministers and MKs,” she said. “[It is a] hatred that turns the proud community into citizens who cannot walk safely in Israel. No more.”
About Conversion Therapy
What is “conversion therapy?”
Conversion therapy refers to any of several dangerous and discredited practices aimed at changing an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
Does conversion therapy work?
No. Conversion therapy is based on the outdated and false notion that being LGBTQ is a mental illness that should be cured, despite all major medical associations’ agreement that LGBTQ identities are a normal variant of human nature. The American Psychiatric Association has not treated homosexuality as a mental illness since 1973, and being transgender is no longer treated as a mental illness since “gender identity disorder” was removed from psychological diagnostic manuals in 2013.
Is conversion therapy harmful?
Yes. The risks of conversion therapy extend far beyond its ineffectiveness, and the time and money wasted on “therapies” that don’t work. Conversion therapy is strongly associated with negative mental health outcomes and greater rates of attempting suicide.
According to The Trevor Project’s 2020 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, 10% of LGBTQ youth reported undergoing conversion therapy, with 78% reporting it occurred when they were under age 18. Youth who reported undergoing conversion therapy reported more than twice the rate of attempting suicide in the past year compared to those who did not.
- Shame
- Guilt
- Helplessness
- Hopelessness
- Loss of faith
- Decreased self-esteem
- Increased self-hatred
- Social withdrawal
- Feeling dehumanized and untrue to self
- Depression
- Increased substance abuse
- High-risk sexual behaviors
- Suicidality
Conversion therapy as a form of family rejection
‘I still have flashbacks’: the ‘global epidemic’ of LGBT conversion therapy
It sounds like a historical horror, but ‘treatment’ for sexual orientation remains legal in most of the world, including the UK
Shurka ended up in conversion therapy for five years. He saw four therapists in four states at a cost of $35,000 (£27,000). He was instructed to use Viagra when having sex with women. He was told he was a “classic case” of someone with too many female role models and was instructed to avoid his mother and sisters.
It remains legal in the UK, where a nationwide survey published in July as part of the government’s LGBT action plan found that 2% of the 108,000 LGBT respondents had undergone conversion therapy and 5% had been offered it. In 2015, the charity Stonewall found that one in 10 health and social care staff had witnessed colleagues express the belief that sexual orientation can be “cured”. A 2009 survey of more than 1,300 mental health professionals found that more than 200 had offered conversion therapy.
The conversion therapy lasted seven days, during which Alimi, then 17, was locked in a dark room and made to fast and pray around the clock.
What form of conversion therapy did she experience? “Prayer ministry, healing ministry, deliverance ministry,” she says, referring to spiritual interventions sometimes termed “praying away the gay”.
It happens in the Muslim faith, Sikh faith … many black pentecostal communities will send their child back to Nigeria or Uganda, where ‘corrective rape’ therapy happens.
“My experience of speaking to our members is that it has been prolific in the church in recent times,” she says. “In the 90s and 00s, every city in the UK would have a church doing it.
“But the majority who have experienced conversion therapy in the UK go through it on a Sunday morning in their regular church service.
Shurka ended up in conversion therapy for five years. He saw four therapists in four states at a cost of $35,000 (£27,000). He was instructed to use Viagra when having sex with women. He was told he was a “classic case” of someone with too many female role models and was instructed to avoid his mother and sisters.
Undercover at a so-called gay conversion camp
https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/undercover-called-gay-conversion-camp-46038064
C: I am happy that it stops, but 20 years for what did not appear to be grievous harm is nuts. God knows how much LGBT are persecuted. If we send in prison everyone who participated in it…singling out one perpetrator-and break on them hell loose- while everyone else are able every day to destroy lives doing the same thing but with more PC and under the banner of TLC or law and order. Does not feel very enlightened.
Despite widespread condemnation and scientific evidence that gay conversion therapy does not work, the cruel torture is only illegal in four countries across the world. Germany was the most recent country to ban the practice along with Brazil, Ecuador and Malta. LGBT rights were decreasing across the world even before the Coronavirus pandemic
“More worryingly, we have recently witnessed within the EU anti-LGBTI incidents such as attacks on prides, the adoption of ‘LGBTI ideology-free zone’ declarations, fines for LGBTI-friendly advertisements and others.
Bachelet is now calling on all member states, like the U.K., Hungary and Poland who are actively making moves to erode rights, not to use the coronavirus crisis as an excuse to undermine LGBT+ rights.
UN expert calls for global ban on practices of so-called “conversion therapy”
GENEVA (8 July 2020) – Practices known as “conversion therapy” inflict severe pain and suffering on lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and gender-diverse (LGBT) persons, often resulting in long-lasting psychological and physical damage, a UN expert told the Human Rights Council while calling for a global ban.
From some 130 submissions from States, civil society organisations, faith-based organisations, medical practitioners, and individuals who had been subjected to such practices, he heard conversion is attempted through beatings, rape, electrocution, forced medication, isolation and confinement, forced nudity, verbal offense and humiliation and other acts of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse.
“These interventions exclusively target LGBT persons with the specific aim of interfering in their personal integrity and autonomy because their sexual orientation or gender identity do not fall under what is perceived by certain persons as a desirable norm,” Madrigal-Borloz said. “They are inherently degrading and discriminatory and rooted in the belief that LGBT persons are somehow inferior, and that they must at any cost modify their orientation or identity to remedy that supposed inferiority.”
The expert said dismantling such biases and prejudices requires the concerted action of States, the medical community and civil society, including faith-based organisations, to ensure a worldwide ban on the practices.
“These interventions exclusively target LGBT persons with the specific aim of interfering in their personal integrity and autonomy because their sexual orientation or gender identity do not fall under what is perceived by certain persons as a desirable norm,” Madrigal-Borloz said. “They are inherently degrading and discriminatory and rooted in the belief that LGBT persons are somehow inferior, and that they must at any cost modify their orientation or identity to remedy that supposed inferiority.”
The expert said dismantling such biases and prejudices requires the concerted action of States, the medical community and civil society, including faith-based organisations, to ensure a worldwide ban on the practices.
Donald Trump
45th President of the United States
https://www.glaad.org/gap/donald-trump
C: have a look above (click on the link) kink, to what manipulative lies just strangely acquainted to the tactics of traffickers anyway coming from this casino owner tax-evader subverted SOB.
Since the moment Donald Trump and Mike Pence walked into the White House, they have attacked the progress we have made toward full equality for the LGBTQ community and undermined the rights of countless Americans.
https://www.hrc.org/resources/trumps-timeline-of-hate
End the persecution of LGBTI people in Chechnya
Chechen authorities deny that gay people exist but also incite homophobic violence by telling people to murder their own family members because of their sexual orientation.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/get-involved/take-action/chechnya-stop-abducting-and-killing-gay-men/
Anti-LGBT Violence in Chechnya
When Filing “Official Complaints” Isn’t an Option
For several weeks now, a brutal campaign against LGBT people has been sweeping through Chechnya. Law enforcement and security agency officials under control of the ruthless head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, have rounded up dozens of men on suspicion of being gay, torturing and humiliating the victims. Some of the men have forcibly disappeared. Others were returned to their families barely alive from beatings. At least three men apparently have died since this brutal campaign began.
Kadyrov’s press secretary immediately described the report as “absolute lies and disinformation,” contending that there were no gay people in Chechnya and then adding cynically, “If there were such people in Chechnya, law-enforcement agencies wouldn’t need to have anything to do with them because their relatives would send them somewhere from which there is no returning.”
These days, very few people in Chechnya dare speak to human rights monitors or journalists even anonymously because the climate of fear is overwhelming and people have been largely intimidated into silence. Filing an official complaint against local security officials is extremely dangerous, as retaliation by local authorities is practically inevitable. https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/04/04/anti-lgbt-violence-chechnya
Queer History and the Holocaust
Same-sex sexuality in the prisoner society
The first studies of the Holocaust and concentration camps were written by survivors. These early works set up homophobic patterns that have proved durable.
Men with the pink triangle were almost always in the lowest ranks of the prisoner society and only very rarely gained positions of power
History of the persecution of queer men and women
Until the 1970s, historians failed to discuss the Nazi persecution of homosexuals.
If queer men have received only limited attention in histories of the Holocaust, research into histories of queer women in Nazi Germany is even more under-researched.
Significantly, Claudia Schopmann and Alexander Wäldner have shown that some women were indeed sentenced under §175.
Overall, for women as for men, persecution often took place intersectionally – that is, same-sex sexuality was rarely the only factor. The repressive climate against female conduct in general, and queer women in particular, also played a role.
This erasure of lesbian persecution is characteristic of German historiography (which represents almost all of the research on this topic). Research on lesbians has long not been recognized or seen as relevant for wider histories of Nazi Germany.
But the discomfort about and erasure of queer sexuality in studies of the Holocaust demonstrates that the history of this genocide has too often been written normatively, violently, and with prejudice.
How We’ve Suppressed the Queer History of the Holocaust
Even in the Nazi camps, homophobia ‘helped’ inmates distance themselves from those considered ‘other.’ Even today, Jewish gay and lesbian victims are still erased from how we talk about the Holocaust
While we may believe that this homophobia was a natural outgrowth of 1930s society, the opposite was the case. Redlich was from the Czechoslovakian town of Olomouc. Similarly to Weimar Germany, Czechoslovakia had a vocal movement calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality, there was a gay subculture, with bars, journals, novels, and activists.
Scholars like Insa Eschebach have pointed out that homophobia among those who were themselves victims of the Holocaust was a specific product of the concentration camp society.
This homophobia was not a byproduct of the Nazis’ prejudice; the prisoners viewed same sex desire as a personification of all that was wrong in the violent world of the camps.
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/node/127916
Following several years of escalating persecution under the Nazi regime, more than six million Jewish people were murdered during the Holocaust.
Alongside Romany Gypsies and people with disabilities, members of the LGBT community were also targeted by the Nazis in their efforts to eradicate entire communities who they portrayed as a threat to the ‘German people’.
Between 1933 and 1945, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested in Nazi Germany as ‘homosexuals’, of whom 50,000 were sentenced, and between 5,000 and 15,000 were sent to concentration camps. Lesbians, bi women and trans people, whose experiences remain under-researched, were also targeted. It is unclear how many LGBT people perished in these camps.
As homosexuality was only decriminalised in Germany decades after the Second World War, many LGBT survivors could not publicly give voice to their stories and experiences.
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/node/127916
International Holocaust Remembrance Day reminds us of the millions of Roma, Jewish, lesbians, gays, intersex and transgender people, persons with disabilities, political opponents, Jehovah witnesses and other victims of the Holocaust.
The United Nations chose 27 January because it was on 27 January 1945 that the Soviet Army liberated the prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Every 27th of January, the world pays tribute to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and reaffirms the unwavering commitment to counter antisemitism, antigypsyism, racism, and other forms of intolerance that may lead to group-targeted violence.
Roma, LGBT and Disability Organisations Stand Together on International Holocaust Remembrance day
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day the European Roma and Travellers Forum (ERTF), European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), Roma Virtual Network (RVN), the European Region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA – Europe), the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer Youth and Student Organization (IGLYO) and the European Disability Forum (EDF) call on national governments and inter-governmental organisations to ensure the safety of all minorities who are targets for Europe’s extremists.
Non-Jewish victims of Nazi persecution and murder
Complexity and respect
Greater differentiation of Nazi victim groups is needed, not to create a
hierarchy of suffering, but to genuinely understand why and how individual
people came to be persecuted and killed. Each victim, whether Jew, Roma,
gay, disabled, Communist, trade-unionist, Pole or Soviet prisoner of war, is
surely entitled to the uniqueness of their own suffering and death. https://www.holocausteducation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/1.-Non-JewishVictimsOfNaziPersecutionMurder-Digital.pdf
Non-Jewish victims of Nazi persecution and murder
The course of the development of Roma and Sinti persecution reveals a lot about the qualities of the Nazi regime. While initially there was no formal policy towards the Roma, ‘anti-Gypsy initiatives emerged from numerous agencies, above all the police and the SS but also the academic community’ (Connelly 2010: 275). For example, ‘Gypsies’ were not specified in the racial legislation of 1933-34 but the authorities nevertheless applied the laws in such a way that Roma and Sinti were sterilised without any legal basis
The course of the development of Roma and Sinti persecution reveals a lot about the qualities of the Nazi regime. While initially there was no formal policy towards the Roma, ‘anti-Gypsy initiatives emerged from numerous agencies, above all the police and the SS but also the academic community’ (Connelly 2010: 275). For example, ‘Gypsies’ were not specified in the racial legislation of 1933-34 but the authorities nevertheless applied the laws in such a way that Roma and Sinti were sterilised without any legal basis
While the Nazi regime never planned nor intended to kill every last person from this group wherever they could find them, the move to deport ‘Gypsies’ eastwards en masse in 1942 did not prevent thousands dying either in gas chambers, or in overcrowded ghettos nor did it stop many more being killed by Nazis and their collaborators throughout Eastern Europe. How many were killed remains a subject of debate: while ‘most estimates put the figure in the 190,000-250,000 range, there is a possibility that it could be as high as half a million’ (Levene 2013: 132).
The Persecution of the Roma Is Often Left Out of the Holocaust Story. Victims’ Families Are Fighting to Change That
Sándor, who died in 2000, was able to survive Nazi persecution because of his music, but hundreds of thousands of Roma were murdered during the Holocaust. Many more faced persecution, displacement, forced labor, forced medical experimentation and sterilization, violence and imprisonment.
Roma and Sinti people, often derogatorily referred to as “gypsies,” are members of an ethnic group with deep roots across Europe.
While Sinti are of Western and Central Europe origin, Roma are those of Eastern and South Eastern Europe origin.
It wasn’t until 1982 that Germany officially recognized the persecution against Roma as a genocide based on race. France apologized for its collaboration in Nazi crimes against Roma and Sinti in 2016.
https://time.com/5719540/roma-holocaust-remembrance/
Nazis murdered a quarter of Europe’s Roma, but history still overlooks this genocide
In the immediate postwar period, war crimes against Roma were not prosecuted. Survivors struggled to get recognition and compensation for the persecution they experienced. Roma victims were also not acknowledged in monuments commemorating the Nazis’ victims.
The genocide against the Roma is described by Professor Eve Rosenhaft, a historian of modern Germany, as “the forgotten Holocaust”.
As curator of The Wiener Holocaust Library’s current exhibition, Forgotten Victims: The Nazi Genocide of the Roma and Sinti, I aimed to explore this often over-looked history.
Historical Amnesia: The Romani Holocaust
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4418585?seq=1
C.et: What about how LGBT, and gypsies by the way have been shunned of commemorative do?
just like with the LGBT, until recently even denied commemoration by all countries involved.
Thank you to the university teacher who first told me about this other aspect of denial.
Some countries demand sterilisation or completed surgical procedures before allowing transpeople to change their gender status.
Controlling Bodies, Denying Identities
Human Rights Violations against Trans People in the Netherlands
Dutch law allows trans people to change their gender on official documents only on condition that they have altered their bodies through hormones and surgery, and that they are permanently and irreversibly infertile.
These requirements routinely leave trans people with identity documents that do not match their deeply felt gender identity, resulting in frequent public humiliation, vulnerability to discrimination, and great difficulty finding or holding a job.
C.et: the big problem that it is there is that we talk about the need to change on paper one’s gender to be permitted to dress and behave or do the activities more traditionally assigned to the opposite gender. This should not be the case at all. I contend that nowadays society will pressurise people wanting to simply dress with clothes fanatically assigned to the opposite sex, or even aspire to activities or even aspire to marry the same sex to have to get operated…to be…’reassigned’.
According to the law, transsexual people who wish to undergo surgery to alter their bodies can change their papers only after they have completed the lengthy medical trajectory. It takes years, not weeks or months, before people meet the conditions imposed by article 1:28.
For trans people who do not want surgery, and who will therefore never be able to change their gender markers under the current legislation, these obstacles last a lifetime.
Controlling Bodies, Denying Identities
Human Rights Violations against Trans People in the Netherlands
Dutch law allows trans people to change their gender on official documents only on condition that they have altered their bodies through hormones and surgery, and that they are permanently and irreversibly infertile.
These requirements routinely leave trans people with identity documents that do not match their deeply felt gender identity, resulting in frequent public humiliation, vulnerability to discrimination, and great difficulty finding or holding a job.
According to the law, transsexual people who wish to undergo surgery to alter their bodies can change their papers only after they have completed the lengthy medical trajectory. It takes years, not weeks or months, before people meet the conditions imposed by article 1:28.
For trans people who do not want surgery, and who will therefore never be able to change their gender markers under the current legislation, these obstacles last a lifetime.
FRAMING REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE IN THE CONTEXT OF INSTITUTIONALIZED TRANSPHOBIA GLOBALLY
Historically, the movement for reproductive rights and justice hasn’t been the most trans-inclusive space. Reproductive justice is, in essence, about the right to have a child, or to not have a child. For trans and gender diverse people, this goes beyond access to abortion and/or fertility treatments, to include the right to retain our fertility.
In countries where forced sterilization is a requirement to gain access to legal gender recognition, we are made to choose between incorrect identity documents that place our safety at risk, or coerced infertility. Where psycho-pathologizing diagnoses are a requirement to access legal gender recognition and/or medical transition, we are forced to conform to binary gender ‘norms’ that deny us the right to pursue, or express our desire for, genetic parenthood. This includes trans men/trans masculine people becoming pregnant, and trans women/trans feminine people impregnating another person.
Sexual and Reproductive Rights
Transgender People
Reproductive rights of transgender people
The reproductive rights of transgender people are first and foremost affected by compulsory sex reassignment surgery and/or sterilization. Civil Codes can require transgender people to take hormones and undergo surgery to alter their bodies and be permanently and irreversibly sterilized before they can have their gender legally recognized. These requirements violate transgender people’s rights to personal autonomy and physical integrity, and deny them the ability to define their own gender identity, Human Rights Watch stated.
https://www.gfmer.ch/srr/transgenderpeople.htm
3.3.2.1 Medicalisation
Surgery and sterilisation
Across the 28 EU and three EFTA states, there remains a requirement in a number of jurisdictions that, in
order to be formally acknowledged in their preferred gender, trans and intersex people must: (a) undergo
gender confirmation surgery; and (b) show evidence that they have undertaken a process of sterilisation
or are otherwise incapable of reproducing (see Table 2 below).
Surgical requirements reflect an (incorrect) assumption that physical interventions are an inherent part
of gender transition processes and that Europe’s trans people inevitably desire to change their bodies,
particularly their sex characteristics
As Table 2 illustrates, the European Union and EFTA jurisdictions which currently require surgical intervention include the Czech Republic and Estonia. In Romania, certain courts have interpreted Article 4(2), Point L of Government Ordinance No.41 of 31 January 2003 to specifically require surgical procedures. Countries which currently impose sterilisation include Finland and Slovakia.
In the past decade, however, there has been a clear shift in European attitudes towards the acceptability of physical intervention requirements. As detailed in Chapter 2, various United Nations and Council of Europe human rights actors, including the ECtHR, have pushed back against the legitimacy of involuntary surgery and sterilisation. Their criticisms are reflected in the increasing number of EU and EFTA legislatures which have positively removed physical intervention requirements from their national laws. Examples of jurisdictions which have taken such steps in the last decade include: Spain (2007); Portugal (2011); Netherlands (2013); Denmark (2014); Croatia (2014); Norway (2016); France (2016); Belgium (2017) and Luxembourg (2018). In Malta, Article 3(4) of the Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sex Characteristics Act 2015 explicitly guarantees gender recognition rights without ‘proof of a surgical procedure for total or partial genital reassignment…’.
Sexual Assault and the LGBTQ Community
In contrast, there is ample evidence that societal prejudice causes significant medical, psychological and other harms to LGBTQ people. For example, research on the issue of family acceptance of LGBTQ youth conducted at San Francisco State University found that “compared with LGBTQ young people who were not rejected or were only a little rejected by their parents and caregivers because of their gay or transgender identity, highly rejected LGBTQ young people were:
https://www.hrc.org/resources/the-lies-and-dangers-of-reparative-therapy
- In more than half the world, LGBT people may not be protected from discrimination by workplace law
- LGBT people around the world are subject to physical and sexual violence by both state and non-state actors
- They are discriminated against in education, health and social care and employment
- Many LGBT people are rejected by family and from other forms of social assistance
- Most governments deny trans people the right to legally change their name and gender from those that were assigned to them at birth. A quarter of the world’s population believes that trans people should not be granted full legal recognition of their gender identity
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/our-work/campaigns/campaigning-global-lgbt-equality
