Altogether, more than 180 alleged homosexuals have been arrested in the three largely Muslim countries.
The U.N. has issued a stern rebuke against the recent harassment and arrests of LGBT people in three largely Muslim countries.
“We are deeply concerned by a wave of arrests in Azerbaijan, Egypt and Indonesia of more than 180 people perceived to be [LGBT],” said U.N. human rights spokesperson Rupert Colville.
“Arresting or detaining people based on their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity is by definition arbitrary and violates international law.”
In Azerbaijan, U.N. experts reported, some 80 people thought to be gay or transgender have been arrested in the past month.
Some reportedly have been subjected to beatings and electric shocks, with the heads of trans women forcibly shaved.
In Egypt, where a conviction on sodomy charges can land you in prison for up to six years, seven people were arrested after rainbow flags flew at a Cairo rock concert.
In the days that followed, police arrested more than 50 alleged homosexuals, in some cases entrapping them via dating apps and chatrooms. “Arresting and detaining people for legitimately expressing themselves—including by displaying a rainbow flag—is also arbitrary and violates individuals’ right to freedom of expression,” says Colville.
While homosexuality is not illegal in most of Indonesia, the government has banned LGBT representations in the media, including Grindr and queer emojis.
Last week more than 50 men were arrested in a raid on a gay sauna in Jakarta. While a majority have been released, several were charged with violating the vague “Law on Pornography,” used to arrest people for consensual same-sex relations.
The particulars in these attacks differ, but the pretenses for them are flimsy or outright false: Charges of prostitution, debauchery or “hooliganism.”
Victims are pressured to reveal the names of other alleged homosexuals and frequently face physical violence and forced anal examinations.
“Azerbaijan, Egypt and Indonesia should take immediate action to release anyone detained on the basis of their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity,” said Colville, calling for discriminatory laws to be repealed.
At the same time, the White House, the State Department, and U.N. Representative Nikki Haley have been largely silent about these atrocities against the global LGBT community.
The last time Haley addressed LGBT rights was two weeks after reports of anti-gay pogroms in Chechnya.
“We continue to be disturbed by reports of kidnapping, torture, and murder of people in Chechnya based on their sexual orientation,” Haley wrote in a statement in April. “We are against all forms of discrimination, including against people based on sexual orientation.”
Guess that’ll just have to hold us for a while, huh?
Source: NewNowNext,
Dan Avery, October 14, 2017
In Africa, LGBT rights activists worry about Trump impact
DAKAR, SENEGAL — Gay rights activist Joseph Achille Tiedjou is worried every day that he will be harassed or arrested in Cameroon.
Defending LGBT rights can be dangerous in Africa, where many countries have laws against homosexuality. But in recent years activists have stepped out of the shadows, empowered by the support of the Obama administration and the international community.
Now many fear the Trump administration will undermine those gains, and that their exposure could make them more vulnerable if support fades.
"I have so many worries with the new administration," the 32-year-old Tiedjou said, pointing out Trump's ban on transgender people in the U.S. military. "Obama was known to be very engaged. Hillary Clinton was a champion of LGBT rights and made many guarantees in addressing these issues specifically."
Obama's administration made LGBT rights a major domestic and foreign policy, though some in Africa saw it as pushing "Western ideals." The Obama administration also created a special envoy position on LGBT rights. The Trump administration has said it will keep the post, but concerns remain.
"The difference with the previous administration was that the rights of LGBT people were explicitly part of foreign policy. So LGBT groups around the world could absolutely rely on the moral and, indeed, material support that came from the U.S. government and that made a huge difference," said Graeme Reid, director of Human Rights Watch's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program. "Under this administration, we are no longer going to be seeing that proactive engagement around LGBT rights."
Though the Trump administration's overseas policies on LGBT rights remain to be seen, the erosion of domestic advances directly undermines the authority of the U.S. to speak out internationally, Reid said. He cited the pushback against federal protections and the appointment of "openly homophobic officials" to senior government positions.
The U.S. recently joined a dozen other countries to vote against a U.N. Human Rights Council resolution that urged countries not to use the death penalty for specific forms of conduct, including consensual same-sex relations. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the vote was made "because of broader concerns with the resolution's approach in condemning the death penalty in all circumstances" but said the U.S. "unequivocally condemns the application of the death penalty for conduct such as homosexuality."
Same-sex acts are illegal in more than 33 African countries and can lead to death sentences in parts of at least four, including Mauritania, Sudan, northern Nigeria and southern Somalia, according to Amnesty International.
Homosexuality is criminalized in the East African countries of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. In Tanzania, authorities recently stopped health providers from non-governmental organizations from providing services to LGBT people.
In Cameroon, a strong ally of the U.S. in the fight against extremism, Human Rights Watch has documented high levels of arrests of LGBT people.
Colonial-era anti-gay laws are still in place in Ghana and are implemented from time to time, and a high level of social intolerance and family violence exists against the LGBT community.
In Gambia, where former leader Yahya Jammeh made "aggravated homosexuality" punishable by life in prison, activists are waiting to see whether new President Adama Barrow will amend the law.
In Senegal, violence is directed at LGBT communities, along with arrests, according to Human Rights Watch.
"In practice the act is criminalized so it can be used broadly to detain people based on their orientation," said Francois Patuel, a West Africa researcher for Amnesty International.
But despite setbacks in some countries there have been some gains, Patuel said.
The African Commission on Human and People's Rights in 2014 adopted a resolution condemning violence and discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. South Africa's constitution specifically protects the rights of LGBT and allows same-sex marriage.
The United States has provided support for HIV/AIDS and other programs that indirectly have enabled gay rights groups to form in some sub-Saharan African countries. Patuel urged that such support not be revoked under the Trump administration.
In Mali, activist and journalist N'Deye Traore said social media has been used to incite hatred against the LGBT community, discouraging people from publicly advocating change and forcing many to live in hiding and at risk of exposure to HIV/AIDS.
Traore said she worries about the example set by the Trump administration.
"It is the life of human beings that is at stake and must be respected!" she said. "I urge the American president to seize and at least tolerate this community for sustainable development in America and around the world."
Source: The Associated Press, Carley Petesch, October 15, 2017
It’s not illegal to be gay in Indonesia, but police are cracking down anyway
JAKARTA, Indonesia — In Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, homosexuality is legal and the state largely stays out of issues of private morality. But as conservative religious groups become more prominent in political life here, police are increasingly finding other ways to crack down on LGBT communities.
This weekend they arrested 58 Indonesians and foreigners at a Jakarta sauna popular with gay men, allegedly for violating the country's pornography laws. Indonesia's pornography legislation — passed in 2008 and often criticized by legal experts and human rights activists for being too vague — technically prohibits any public depiction of sex for profit, but in practice it is often used against politically vulnerable groups.
“We’ve increasingly seen police targeting LGBT groups using pornography laws,” said Ricky Gunawan, the director of the Community Legal Aid Institute in Jakarta. In fact, last week’s incident was the third of its kind that has been reported this year. In April, police in the city of Surabaya broke up a party at a hotel for similar reasons, arresting 14 men, and in May, 141 men were arrested at a sauna in Jakarta.
“These communities have always been targeted by police, but we've seen this worsen since 2016, when a number of high-level politicians made statements portraying LGBT communities as immoral or a threat to the nation,” Gunawan said.
There have been several public comments that may have led police to believe a crackdown was in order, but the most famous was probably delivered by Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu, who said last year that the LGBT agenda was like a “proxy war” threatening national sovereignty.
“This is a kind of modern warfare,” he said, according to Tempo magazine. “It's dangerous as we can't see who our foes are, but out of the blue everyone is brainwashed — now the [LGBT] community is demanding more freedom, it really is a threat.”
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said last year that the job of police was to defend LGBT communities and other groups from discrimination, but he has largely stayed on the sidelines of the debate as the crackdown has intensified.
Since the end of 2016, radical Islamists have also been playing a larger role in Indonesia's politics. Groups like the Islamic Defenders Front, or FPI, were influential in organizing mass rallies calling for the imprisonment of Christian Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama for allegedly committing blasphemy against Islam. They got their wish in May.
Ironically, pornography laws have also been used to target Islamist FPI leader Rizieq Shihab. Police accused him of violating them by sending sexually explicit images by phone, or “sexting,” with a mistress. He fled the country, and many analysts suspected authorities were using the laws to clip the wings of an Islamist movement that had gotten too powerful for their liking.
But even in more liberal cities like Jakarta, where gay clubs and queer advocacy groups operate openly, the spate of arrests has had a chilling effect on the LGBT community.
“The situation right now is very sad,” said Azril Hadimirza, the head of People's Diversity Network, a new support organization for LGBT Indonesians and other minorities. “LGBT persons have always faced discrimination in the workplace, or in their family lives, but now the police are using the power of the state against us in our private spaces, too.
Source:
The Washington Post, Vincent Bevins, October 12, 2017
Repression worsens in Indonesia and Egypt
Indonesian and Egyptian leaders have made news through repressive, wrong-headed responses to the existence of LGBTI people.
The following news briefs are modestly edited and slightly expanded versions of items from UNAIDS’s Equal Eyes recap of the world’s LGBTI news, UNAIDS reports:
Indonesia’s House of Representatives said it will pass a law to ban all positive representations of LGBT people on television, including films, TV shows, and advertising.
Under the bill, all shows would need to be screened in advance to make sure that no films, TV shows or advertising would violate the ban.
Also in Indonesia, police raided a sauna and arrested 58 men, including six foreigners, under charges of providing pornographic services. Although homosexual activity is not explicitly criminalized except in two provinces, police routinely use charges of debauchery and prostitution to detain people who are assumed to be gay.
From Egypt came reports that the Coptic Church is organizing a conference to increase awareness on how to “recover” from homosexuality and to teach church patrons how to conduct gay “conversions” — a widely discredited and unsuccessful practice that leads to emotional trauma.
Also in Egypt, what started as a few people waving rainbow flags at a rock concert escalated significantly to anywhere from 30 to 57 arrests of supposed lesbian, gay, and bisexuals on charges of debauchery and inciting sexual deviancy.
Many groups have spoken out against these actions, including the Arab Foundation for Freedoms and Equality and the concert’s rock band Mashrou’ Leila. Concurrently, the Supreme Council for Media Regulation issued a blanket ban on all positive “appearance of homosexuals or their slogans in the media” stating:
“Homosexuality is a sickness and disgrace that would be better hidden from view and not promoted for dissemination until it is treated and its disgrace removed.”
Source:
Erasing 76 crimes, Colin Stewart, October 12, 2017
⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us:
deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.
Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!
"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
