Trans people 'hunted for fun' in Kuwait

Image via Wikipedia

Source: Kuwait Times

Arbitrary arrest, detention, torture and sexual assaults on transgender persons have increased in Kuwait during the last four years, says the Human Rights Watch (HRW). Transgender ‘women’ are individuals who are born male but identify themselves as female. “They hunt us down for fun” was the title of a HRW report on the issue of transgender, launched at the Le Royal Hotel yesterday.

Nadim Houry, HRW Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director, slammed authorities for using Article 198 of the amended 2007 law to arrest, abuse and persecute a transgender. The 63-page report bears documents and testimonies by transgender women victimized by Kuwaiti police since 2008.

“The law has been a huge enabling factor to arrest and abuse members of the transgender. It is like giving a green light to authorities, not only to police but even members of society, to arrest and torture transgender persons and use force and impunity against them.”

According to Houry, the frequency of torture and abuses against the transgendered has definitely increased to a tremendous level in the past four years.

“Just before amending the law, we did not see such a huge number of abuses against transgender,” he added. HRW slammed Kuwaiti police for torturing and sexually abusing transgender women and called on the Gulf state to hold officers accountable.

“Our key recommendations are clear, we want the authorities here to investigate the torture, sexual assault and ill-treatment of detainees and prosecute those responsible in accordance with the law,” Al-Houry mentioned citing the content of the report.

“We want Kuwait to ensure that until its repeal (of amended 2007 law) the law is not applied to anyone who has been diagnosed with gender identity disorder,” the report added. Rasha Moumneh, HRW researcher, read out summary reports of about 40 transgender women who were arrested, harassed and abused by Kuwaiti police.

Transgender women reported that sexual assault they endured at the hands of policemen includes touching, groping, rape and blackmailing them into non-consensual sex by threatening to arrest them if they did not comply.

Transgender women have also reported degrading and humiliating treatment by police, which includes being forced to strip and parade around a police station, being forced to dance for officers, sexual humiliation and verbal intimidation.  According to Moumneh, a common complaint among transgender women is police blackmail for sex under threat of arrest. One of the testimonies read was the case of Rima, 27, who admitted to virtually being a sex slave during college days.

“In October 2009 I passed a checkpoint right outside my university gate. I got scared of course and turned back, but the policeman got suspicious. I stayed on campus for five hours until I was sure that the checkpoint moved. The next day I saw the same police officer. When I was walking towards my car, he stopped me and asked for my ID. I gave it to him, and immediately the sexual harassment started. He forced me to take off my top so he could see my breast, right in the middle of the parking lot. When I told him he had no right to treat me that way, he said “either you take my number and meet me for sex or I will take you to prison.” 

To avoid arrest and torture, Rima accepted the offer from the police officer and was enslaved for the rest of college, the testimony says.

Transgender women reported being arrested even when they were wearing male clothing and then later being forced by police to dress in women’s clothing. In some cases documented by Human Rights Watch, transgender women said police arrested them because they had a “soft voice” or “smooth skin.”  Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East Director, noted in a statement that “No one-regardless of his or her gender identity-deserves to be arrested on the basis of a vague, arbitrary law and then abused and tortured by police.”

“The Kuwaiti government has a duty to protect all of its residents, including groups who face popular disapproval, from brutal police behavior and the application of an unfair law,” she said in a statement.

Related articles

• The strange treatment of trans people in Malaysia's media (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• Breakthrough on transgender rights in ... Kyrgyzstan (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

LGBT refugee support in the Netherlands: Meeting report

Source: GK Platform

[Google translation]

By Michel Becker

Following the international (legal) congress 'Fleeing homophobia and seeking safety in Europe' has a theme day Netherlands Refugee gender-specific persecution organized. At the seminar we wanted some more on the practical implementation and (legal) support LGBT refugees.

One of the conclusions that emerged from Fleeing homophobia was, "Determining someone's sexual orientation or gender identity should, in principle, based on self-identification and should not be covered by medical or psychiatric categories. Interviewers, adjudicating officials, policy makers, the judiciary and legal professionals should be trained and educated in order to better understand a person's sexual orientation and / or gender identity, and should avoid becoming useless to rely on stereotypes." So there is still a task for, among other things, Refugees.

As guest speakers we have Boris Dittrich (advocacy director of Human Rights Watch), Prof. Thomas Spijkerboer (professor gender migration and management sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and Michel Becker (paralegal Refugees Central Ontario) were asked to tell something about their profession and a discussion suggestions and recommendations to get rid of.

After an impressive film clip about the life of gay men in Uganda Boris bite the head off with a lecture on the position of gay people in countries where homosexuality is prohibited by law. With some poignant examples, he knew the current state of affairs in the world to sketch. Thomas continued with an interesting account of the legal aspects of cases involving homosexuality a flight motive. Which he sarcastically remarked that statements from the highest administrative court (Division of the Council of State) at some points punctuated with homophobia. It is really remarkable that where the Netherlands in equality primarily seeks the best of the class to be our country in the area of gay rights (protection to gay refugees) along with Austria, one of worst countries in Europe are .

After lunch, where there was extensive networking, Michel went on the practical aspects of counseling of gay refugees. Gevluchte many gay men do not dare at first to indicate that they fled because of their homosexuality. How do you mention this? Shows how a refugee and that he's gay? Michel then interviewed three clients who sometimes poignant and sometimes shocking told how the situation in the country of origin for gay men. Interviewed a man of 31 from Iraq, which currently has a repeated application does because he is in a first procedure has not indicated that he had fled because of his sexual orientation, a 31-year-old woman from Uganda whose asylum application was rejected and for which professional the court has been entered and a 21-year-old man from Cameroon who granted residence.

What were their experiences in both their homeland and in the Netherlands? They have something in the (legal) guidance missed, and they give us this? What is desirable and what is not? It is especially important by the interviewees that there is a mutual respect and that employees are not particularly biased. Only then can a proper trust be built and there is room to talk about even more intimate affairs. However, there must be at the outset to make clear that it is essential that the actual flight patterns are put forward.

In the open discussion led by moderator Trees Wijn, head asylum Refugees, recommendations were also shared their own experiences. After all, that was purpose of this day, besides imparting tools to correct their own (legal) assistance to improve. That is quite successful. At the dedication of the attendees will not lie. The theme of gender-specific persecution is again put on the map. There will be following these days, specific recommendations. Thus, for the first reception of refugees actually a homosexual network must be formed by including COC, Refugees and Secret Garden, so that clients ropes made ​​in the local gay community and the asylum procedure. Especially considering the exceptionally sad circumstances in which clients often end up like them in a refugee center (AZC) are placed with predominantly Muslim refugee, this is a big issue.

Gay men fleeing in the Netherlands should feel safe so they get more and openly discuss the asylum procedure. This should include employees of Refugee and Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) are trained in intercultural communication, knowledge of country information and personal approach. Only then can the Netherlands a safe future for refugees who have everything and everyone to leave in all freedom and security to live.

Related articles

• Major report finds EU countries using prejudice to reject LGBTI asylum claims (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Beirut as an LGBT refuge? "It’s not great"

Image via Wikipedia

Source: Globalpost

By Don Duncan

The Algerian secret service gave transsexual Randa Lamri an ultimatum: Leave the country within 10 days or risk imprisonment and the defamation of her family.

Lamri, like many persecuted gays, lesbians and transexuals in the region, looked to Beirut for refuge.

“I was scared for my security and for the future of my family,” says Lamri, 39, who came to Lebanon on a tourist visa and immediately set about securing a work visa so that she could stay longer.

A founding member of an underground lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) rights association in Algeria called Abu Nahas, Lamri’s way of life had begun to provoke anonymous death threats from Islamist groups and persistent calls and visits to her workplace and family home from authorities.

Finally, the pressure became too much for her to bear.

“My brother-in-law told me: ‘If you die or go to prison and we find out why, your family will be disgraced and I’ll divorce your sister,’” Lamri says over coffee recently in an east Beirut café. She is tall with long jet-black hair and speaks in hushed words punctuated by the occasional toothy giggle.

Like many of the dozens of LGBTI people who flee to Lebanon from Middle Eastern and North African countries each year, Lamri joined up with a network of acquaintances, many of whom she’d met through activism back in Algeria. Relieved to have escaped the dangers facing her at home, Lamri quickly settled into her new-found freedoms in Lebanon.

“Life is much better here than in Algeria,” she says. “Dressing like a woman in Algeria can lead you to anything from three months to three years in prison. Here, there are no laws against transsexualism.”

Many LGBTI refugees here depart home in such haste that there is not enough time to go through the minimum two-month long visa process to get to Europe or North America. So Lebanon has, for many, become the only feasible refuge. It has a simpler visa procedure (many can get it on arrival at the airport) and enjoys a general perception in the region that its capital Beirut is a liberal, relatively gay-friendly city.

“I think the first place they think of [coming to if they can't get to Europe or North America] would be Beirut, primarily because there is an LGBT infrastructure,” says Rasha Moumneh, researcher for the Middle East and North Africa for Human Rights Watch. “You have LGBT organizations, you have the UNHCR here, which is very aware of the specificities of LGBT asylum seekers and refugees.”

The “LGBT infrastructure” Moumneh mentions includes the only openly active LGBTI NGO in the region, Helem, as well as various LGBTI-sensitized services such as ReStart, a clinic which offers psychological counseling for refugees fleeing traumatic conditions, a UNHCR office which is familiar with and sensitized to the specific needs and vulnerabilities of the LGBTI community, as well as a pretty vibrant gay scene of bars, cafes and nightclubs.

“I didn’t think Lebanon was going to be as liberal as it is,” says Lamri, who entered the country in 2009.

It is hard to find an accurate figure of how many LGBTI people fleeing their countries arrive in Lebanon yearly. Out of fear of deportation, many stay away from registering themselves with any NGO or with the UNHCR. Many of those who do register, cite other reasons for fleeing, such as war and internal strife in the case of Iraqis and Syrians. The UNHCR office in Beirut says it gets up to two dozen people annually claiming refugee status for reasons related to their sexuality or gender status. Gay rights groups cite similar figures but acknowledge that this may be just the tip of the iceberg. Some activists say the true figure could be as much as triple the UNHCR figure.

From time to time the numbers spike severely, when there are political developments in other countries, sending members of the LGBTI community fleeing. A coordinated campaign in Iraq in 2009, against gay men primarily, led by the Shia Mahadi Army militia and the Sunni Al Qaeda in Mespotamia militia, claimed the lives of hundreds. Iraqi gay men, or men suspected of being gay, were hunted down in a move to “clean” the morality of Iraq which had been “corrupted” by the foreign influence brought by the U.S invasion in 2003.

A Human Rights Watch report details a litany of threats and torture that Iraqi men faced – being burnt alive, being hung in public places, decapitations, castrations, rape, anuses being glued shut. The campaign sent hundreds fleeing, many to Beirut.

Hamdia, a 20-year-old Iraqi gay man living in Beirut, had already fled before the 2009 homophobic campaign of violence, which has made it unlikely he will ever move back. His family fled to Syria in 2006, after his 11-year-old brother was kidnapped by a gang and was released for a $60,000 ransom. Hamida, who goes by a pseudonym, was still in high school at the time and finished it in Damascus, but the $60,000 ransom meant that his family could no longer afford to send him to London for university as planned. He now studies fashion design in Beirut.

“In Syria, you don’t feel safe. You have the secret police and they are watching you,” he says in his apartment in the west Beirut neighborhood of Hamra. “In Iraq, they think Beirut is like Europe and they have this picture that it is perfect. Beirut is better, sure, but it’s not great.”

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In Honduras, monthly protests against unsolved murders of LGBT

By Paul Canning

Every month, outside the Ministerio Público (Public Ministry) in downtown Tegucigalpa, Honduras, LGBT are protesting 85 unsolved murders. The protests are happening on the 13th of each month "because Walter Tróchez was killed on December 13, 2009," said leader Donis Reyes.

Trochez was a political activist and LGBT rights leader who was killed after threats and previous attacks. His death lead to worldwide protests including by Amnesty International.

LGBT Honduran groups say that there have been 54 murders since January 2010. In all cases, the police has not arrested and prosecuted the perpetrators, Reyes said. "There is total impunity, no murder solved," Reyes said.
The protesters were dressed in costumes that mimicked death and the goddess Themis, who represents justice, and carrying signs that said: "No more crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity in Honduras" and "Justice for Walter Tróchez".

In early 2011, representatives of the LGBT community met with Human Rights Minister, Ana Pineda, to discuss the problems. The demonstrators presented the project "Building Public Safety Initiative in Tegucigalpa Sexual Diversity", which asked the Public Ministry, in particular the Human Rights Prosecutor, to investigate the deaths of their comrades and make a robust response. Pineda has said that:

“Homophobia is a reprehensible act from every point of view when it is an individual doing it, but even worse when it is because of an action or lack thereof by a state servant.”

Both the United Nations and the U.S. government have expressed concern over the murder of LGBT and have requested the State to comply with measures to ensure their safety and punish crimes against them.

Since the 2009 coup, LGBT groups have reported increased targeted and brutal persecution and many people have fled the country. The persecution against the LGBT community is more than just political. It reflects a worrying change in the attitude and policy of the Honduran government from that of ousted President Manuel Zelaya. Fundamentalist religious groups have a large degree of influence within the elite interests that were behind the coup; the same groups who openly denounce homosexuality as a sickness.

“We knew what a coup meant and how that would harm us. That’s why we protested against [the coup],” said Iván Banegas, coordinator of the group Colectivo Violeta, an LGBT rights group.

“After the coup, the army and police came down especially hard on the transsexuals, many of whom live on prostitution and were in the streets in the middle of the curfews,” he said.

However the situation was bad before the coup. In May 2009, one month before the coup, Human Rights Watch warned that Honduran police systematically abused LGBT Hondurans.

Those fleeing to the US however face an asylum system which may reject them, or in the case of Honduran Miguel Caceres Juarez continue to detain him despite a judge granting 'withholding of removal', a form of immigration protection for people who have suffered or fear persecution in their native countries.

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• Fear and repression: LGB+T life in Honduras (madikazemi.blogspot.com)  
• Action alert: US authorities won't release recognised gay Honduran refugee (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• New map of murders of transgender people around the world (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Why is Obama refusing to protect detained asylum seekers, migrants from rape?

Source: National Immigrant Justice Centre

Sexual violence is pervasive in America’s prisons and jails. Congress took an important step to prevent sexual abuse in prison when it passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which set a “zero-tolerance standard” for prison rape and created guidelines to hold correctional facilities accountable for protecting inmates. But the Obama administration refuses to apply these protections to the 400,000 immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers it detains every year, even though a 2010 report by Human Rights Watch uncovered numerous allegations of sexual abuse in immigration detention facilities.

This exemption is flawed and dangerous and It is time for the Obama administration to apply PREA’s common-sense standards to all immigration detention facilities. This policy brief examines the need for PREA protection in immigration detention facilities and the important impact this measure would have.

Take Action: Protect the human rights of detained immigrants

Tell US Attorney General Eric Holder to uphold his committment to universal protection for all people in American prisons and jails. Ask him to implement the PREA regulations and include immigration detention facilities as mandated by Congress and international law.

• Send an email to Holder at www.immigrantjustice.org/action/prea or call (202) 353-1555.

Policy Brief PREA

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Iranian official media reports three sodomy executions

By Paul Canning

An Iranian media report picked up by an exiled Iranian opposition group says that three men were executed for homosexual sex 4 September. The report mentions 'lavat', articles 108 and 110 of the Islamic Penal Code.

Article 108 says "sodomy (or lavat) is sexual intercourse between men”, and article 110 says ”punishment for sodomy is killing; the Sharia judge decides on how to carry out the killing".

The report on the official ISNA Iranian news website was viewed by Soheila Vahdati, an independent human rights defender based in San Francisco working with Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Iranian Queer Organisation (IRQO).

She confirmed that the translation of the official report by the opposition group Iran Human Rights was accurate.

Numerous sources including international NGOs have reported the use of rape charges rather than sodomy in execution cases and the use of such charges against opposition activists and others whom the Iranian regime wants to punish.

The executions took place in the South-Western Iranian city of Ahwaz, near the Iraqi border, which is predominately Iranian Arab (Ahwazi), a minority which has suffered repression. However a source indicated that those executed may have been brought there from another part of Iran. The Iranian media report is based on a statement by the Prosecutor General of Ahwaz.

Vahdati said:

"From the text of the original news it is clear that the main "crime" was sodomy and that they had been involved in kidnapping, etc. too. [But] no article of the Penal Code has been quoted for kidnapping. That is, chances are they would not be considered people deserving to be killed if they were not involved in same sax relationship."

"The main reason for killing the .. three people is obviously sodomy, though [the report says] they had committed other illegitimate activities like kidnapping and theft associated with harassment - but there is no explanation of the details of kidnapping and theft .. which if it was true, must have made a lot of noise in town and there would have been a hint about it too."

The Iranian media report, she said, however does go into detail regarding three others executed at the same time.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its report 'We are a Buried Generation: Discrimination and Violence Against Sexual Minorities in Iran', released last December stated that because trials on moral charges in Iran are usually held in camera, it is difficult to determine what proportion of those charged and executed for same-sex conduct are gay and in what proportion the alleged offense was consensual.

Because of the lack of transparency, Human Rights Watch said:

"it cannot be ruled out that Iran is sentencing sexual minorities who engage in consensual same-sex relations to death under the guise that they have committed forcible sodomy or rape."

Their report also documents serious abuses, including due-process violations that occurred during the prosecution of sexual minorities charged with crimes.

Those charged with engaging in consensual same-sex offenses stand little chance, HRW say, of receiving a fair trial.

"Judges ignore penal code evidentiary guidelines in sodomy cases and often rely instead on confessions extracted through physical torture and extreme psychological pressure. Both Iranian and international law consider such evidence inadmissible."

The Iranian government maintains that "most of these individuals have been charged for forcible sodomy or rape."

In January a stoning sentence against two teenagers in the Kurdistan city of Piranshahr in northwest Iran was reported, it was not clear whether this was for rape or sodomy Also in January the government run Iranian judiciary website reported that three men were hanged for allegedly raping a teenage boy. In February Amnesty International issued an action alert regarding a death sentence for 'lavat' given to a teenage boy in the city of Shiraz.

Updated to add: Mohammad Mustafaei, the Iranian lawyer well known for defending stoning victim Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani and who is in exile in Norway, has written an open letter to president Ahmadinejad in protest of the execution of the three, says Gay Middle East. He called the execution arbitrary and demanded further clarifications:

“Where the cases approved by the Supreme Court and given a hearing as well as permission for execution?” “Where the three represented by lawyers, and what are their names?” are some of the questions he posed.

“Three men under the pretext of being ‘gay’ and committing sodomy were sentenced to death and executed”. 

Mustafaei said that they may have been tortured by the authorities to confess for the “crime”.

“Mr. President,” he protested, “you have blood on your hands.” 

Related articles

• Resource: The Iranian Queer Organization (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• "The first time I was raped": one gay Iranian's ordeal (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• In Iran, report says brave LGBT distributed leaflets against homophobia (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

In Cameroon, arrested gays 'tortured into confessing homosexuality'

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In Uganda, HIV prevention undermined by lack of human rights

Image via Wikipedia

Source: Global Pulse

By Katherine Todrys

I met Hellene in a Ugandan prison. She was 16 years old and living in rural Uganda when she was raped, leaving her pregnant and HIV-positive. Hellene told me that her rapists also kidnapped a child in her care, and she was arrested soon after.

When I spoke with her, Hellene had been in prison for six months and did not even know the charges against her. She had received no treatment following her rape, and no antiretroviral therapy; nor did she know that treatment to prevent the spread of HIV to her baby even existed. She was forced to do backbreaking labor in the prison fields, and beaten in the stomach when she worked too slowly.

Uganda has sometimes been considered a success story in fighting HIV and has been a darling of international donors.

The U.S. has poured over $1 billion into the country for AIDS programs. But throughout Uganda there are people like Hellene (not her real name) who are passed over, denied treatment, or simply invisible to the country’s HIV prevention and treatment programs. Groups such as gay men, migrants, drug users, sex workers, and people with disabilities, as well as prisoners, are commonly left out.

When President George W. Bush founded the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003, it was an enormous step forward in funding for the global AIDS response. However, PEPFAR was far from perfect. Under President Bush, ideology sometimes trumped public health, compromising the effectiveness of PEPFAR’s billions. Effective approaches were undermined by earmarked funding for abstinence-only education in countries including Uganda; prohibitions on funding for needle exchange programs; and prohibitions on purchasing less-expensive generic medications. Ugandan laws criminalizing homosexual sex, condom bonfires, and virginity parades discouraged people needing information or treatment from seeking it.

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In Honduras, violent homophobia is 'rampant'

Vigil in front of Honduran Parliament

Source: Latinamerica Press

By Alejandro F. Ludeña

While the communities around the world celebrate Gay Pride Day on June 28, the date is infamous in Honduras.

Forty years after the Stonewall riots, when a group of homosexuals stood up to police to fight a raid on a New York City bar, a milestone for the gay movement, that day Honduras saw the Americas’ first coup d’état of the 21st century. In the aftermath, a slew of human rights violations occurred, many of them violence against Honduras’ gay community.

Homophobia in Honduras, sadly, is rampant. Attacks against homosexuals were worrying way before the coup.

In May 2009, one month before the coup that unseated President Manuel Zelaya, who governed from 2006 to 2009, US rights organization Human Rights Watch warned that Honduran police systematically abused homosexual Hondurans.

The report recommended that Zelaya’s then government investigate the wave of violence against homosexual and transgendered Hondurans and reports of police brutality, extortion and other abuses and find those responsible.

But after Zelaya was ousted, the crimes grew in number exponentially. According to data from Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, based on local Honduran sexual defense groups, at least 38 people in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered communities were killed since the coup. Most victims were transgendered prostitutes on the streets of Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, the country’s largest cities.

Politically-motivated crimes

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In US, asylum and migrant detainees "bounced around the country"

Image via Wikipedia

Source: Human Rights Watch

Detained immigrants facing deportation in the United States are being transferred, often repeatedly, to remote detention centers by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Human Rights Watch say in a new report analyzing 12 years of data.

The 37-page report, "A Costly Move: Far and Frequent Transfers Impede Hearings for Immigrant Detainees in the United States," says transfers separate detained immigrants, including legal permanent residents, refugees, and undocumented people, from the attorneys, witnesses, and evidence they need to defend against deportation. That can violate their right to fair treatment in court, slow down asylum or deportation proceedings, and extend their time in detention, Human Rights Watch said.

"Transfers don't just move people, they push aside their rights," said Alison Parker, US program director and author of the report. "They can prevent immigrants, like those lawfully here or in need of asylum from persecution, from having an attorney or defending their right to remain in the United States."

Human Rights Watch's analysis of 2 million transfer records over 12 years shows that over 46 percent of transferred detainees were moved two or more times. One egregious case involved a detainee who was transferred 66 times. On average, each transferred detainee traveled 370 miles; and one frequent transfer pattern (from Pennsylvania to Texas) covered 1,642 miles. Such long-distance and repetitive transfers can make attorney-client relationships unworkable, separate immigrants from the evidence they need to present in court, and make family visits so costly that they rarely, if ever, occur.

One immigration attorney said:

"I have never represented someone who has not been in more than three detention facilities. Could be El Paso, Texas, a facility in Arizona, or they send people to Hawaii.... I have been practicing immigration law for more than a decade. Never once have I been notified of [my client's] transfer. Never."

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Kyrgyzstan: Can a Gay Man Get a Fair Trial?

Image via Wikipedia

Originally published in Eurasia.net

By Chris Rickleton

An appellate case involving a young homosexual man convicted of distributing pornographic films is shaping up as an important test for gay rights in Kyrgyzstan. Local rights activists contend that that the defendant, Mikhail Kudryashov, was entrapped and is a victim of gender-related bias at the hands of police and prosecutors.

Kudryashov’s appeal is currently being heard in Bishkek after a lower court found him guilty this past winter, handing out an 18-month suspended sentence and validating the confiscation of personal property, including a video camera. The defendant claims that in mid-2010 a young man phoned him out of the blue and told him, “I haven’t known for a long time.” The phrase was a code that closeted homosexuals used at the time to gain entry into the gay community. Having earned his trust, the young man persuaded Kudryashov to meet with him and sell him two films of an erotic nature as a one-time “favor.” Kudryashov, who had not previously sold films, freely admits that he agreed to the transaction.

But Kudryashov insists he did not commit a crime, contending that he sold “erotic” rather than “pornographic” films. Under Kyrgyz law, the distribution of pornographic material is illegal, while the dissemination of erotic material is not. The law does not clearly define the boundary between the two categories. Prosecutors argue that the two films Kudryashov sold were pornographic, not erotic.

For two months, Kudryashov’s new “friend” disappeared without trace. In October, he called again, begging Kudryashov for more films, offering a substantial amount of money, according to the defendant. When they met, members of the Financial Police burst into the premises, confiscating the discs and arresting Kudryashov. He was then detained, interrogated and beaten for several hours, he asserts. Doctors at a Bishkek clinic subsequently certified him as having suffered a concussion, soft tissue bruising and blurred vision.

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Four ways the EU can stop migrants drowning as they flee North Africa

Bodies washed up after a migrant boat sank off Lampedusa

Source: EU observer
 
By Judith Sunderland

A man named Mohammed posted this plea on the Migrants at Sea website three days after a rickety boat capsized on 6 April in rough seas just 39 miles from Lampedusa:

"i wont to know if my brother is there with the eritreans died in the sea his name is sebah tahir nuru." 

The long-expected exodus by sea from war-torn Libya has begun, and with it the tragic and avoidable loss of life.

Leading EU member states such as France and the UK are active players in the UN Security-Council-mandated Nato air operations to protect Libya's civilian population. Yet when it comes to civilians fleeing Libya by boat, EU states seem more concerned with domestic politics than saving lives.

More than 200 people, including children, are presumed dead in the 6 April tragedy. Two young women died on 13 April when the small boat that held them and over 200 others smashed into rocks off Sicily. As many as 800 more people who have left Libya by boat in the following days are unaccounted for.

A survivor of an unsuccessful crossing told me there were 72 people in his boat when it left Libya. When the boat was already in distress, what appeared to be a military helicopter hovered above and dropped some water and biscuits. The captain of the boat decided to remain in the area, believing the helicopter would send a rescue team. None came. As the boat, now out of fuel, drifted, the occupants saw what looked like an aircraft carrier and tried to convey that they were in distress, but received no help. The boat drifted for two weeks before the currents pushed it back to Libya. Only nine out of the 72 people on board survived.

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Online, international LGBT activism steps up

Image by PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE via Flickr

Source: Campus Progress

By Jessica Mowles

In January the world mourned the death of David Kato, a prominent Ugandan LGBTQ rights activist. Social media deeply shaped Kato’s life and death. His name first became known when Ugandan magazine Rolling Stone, which isn’t the U.S. rock-and-roll magazine, published Facebook photos of him and other Ugandans, labeling them homosexuals and calling for their death. Online petitions sprang up around the world, pushing for the Ugandan government to penalize the publication, as Kato and others were threatened and harassed as a result of the article.

When Kato was beaten to death by an intruder into his home, who police say was Enock Nsubuga, vigils were quickly organized across the United States, Europe, and South Africa via Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets.

The United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, addressed the role of the public in decriminalizing homosexuality in her remarks on Kato’s murder. “Today, with the presence of social media and internet-based campaigns, the potential impact of public education is greater than ever,” she said.

Around the world each year, thousands of LGBTQ people are murdered, sentenced to stoning, raped, threatened with deportation, or are otherwise harassed. Exact numbers are impossible to calculate worldwide, but in the United States alone, nearly 1,500 hate crimes against LGBTQ people were reported in 2009. Headlines of LGBTQ people undergoing everything from harassment to murder are far more prevalent than they did ten years ago. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that extreme violence and discrimination against LGBTQ folks still exists in every corner of the globe. Even so, recent increased attention to human rights abuses that target LGBTQ people reflects greater universal acceptance of LGBTQ rights. And the ways human rights organizations are advocating for LGBTQ rights increasingly relies on young people’s use of social media.

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In Europe, "torture and severe abuses" of migrants documented

Source: New Europe

By Simone Troller

I was not prepared to document torture and severe abuses when I started researching the human rights situation for migrants in Europe. After all, I was working on Western Europe, the developed world with a rule of law, independent judiciaries, functioning social services, and oversight bodies.

Yet, speaking with hundreds of adult and child migrants across Europe over the past several years, I heard credible, detailed, and consistently corroborated accounts of serious abuses:

• Greek coast guards punctured rubber boats carrying adults and children before pushing them back toward Turkey. Some migrants never made it to shore.
• Ukrainian officials tortured migrants and asylum seekers with electric shocks after Hungary and Slovakia deported them, often after denying them an opportunity to lodge asylum claims.
• The French airport border police tried to deport a 5-year-old Comorian boy alone to Yemen, a country he had passed through, not knowing where his parents were or why he had arrived by himself.
• Various ships passed by and ignored a damaged, leaking, overcrowded rubber boat drifting for days in the Mediterranean. After finally being rescued by a Turkish freighter, the 140 sick and exhausted African migrants had to wait another four days to disembark as Italy and Malta debated which was responsible for taking them.

These abuses do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they are the consequence of European governments’ boundless efforts to deter, stem, or divert the flow of migrants and asylum seekers trying to enter Europe.

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Genocide and persecution on the grounds of sexual orientation: definitions and questions concerning international protection

The memorial plaque at Sachsenhausen to homosexual victims of the Nazis

By Bruce Leimsidor

In the past two decades considerable progress, at least on paper, has been made in granting international protection to people persecuted because of their sexual orientation.  Starting in the early 1990s, individual western countries, such as the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and several European countries began granting asylum to applicants basing their claims on persecution because of sexual orientation.  In 1993 the UNHCR stated that persecuted sexual minorities could qualify for international protection under the Geneva Convention as members of a social group.

In 2004, following the UNHCR recommendation, the European Commission of the EU, in its Qualifications Directive, mandated that people suffering persecution because of sexual orientation were to be protected under the criteria of the 1951 Geneva Convention as members in a social group, and in 2006, a group of highly regarded experts on international human rights law underscored the principles on the application of international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity in great detail in the Yogakarta Principles.

In 2008 the UNHCR issued the ‘UNHCR Guidance Note on Refugee Claims Relating to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity,’ which incorporated the Yogakarta Principles and advised signatories to the 1951 Convention to grant asylum to persecuted LGBT as persecuted members of a social group. The UNHCR Guidance Note specifically addressed and designated as invalid many of the reasons for which EU countries had rejected LGBT asylum cases, even after the issuance of the Qualifications Directive and its incorporation into local asylum law (1).   Even though there are still serious problems in the handling of LGBT asylum cases in many Western countries (2), the understanding of the protection needs of sexual minorities fleeing persecution in many areas of the world, and the willingness of Western countries to grant international protection to such cases, has increased, and continues to increase substantially.

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In UK, new report says asylum system failing lesbians

Image by Miss Cartier via Flickr

By Paul Canning

A new report by Asylum Aid, 'Unsustainable: the quality of initial decision-making in women’s asylum claims' says that disbelief of their claims is routine and lesbian cases are being routinely dismissed.

UK Border Agency (UKBA) is "particularly ill-equipped" to handle the challenges posed by more complex asylum claims, Asylum Aid say. And women present some of the most complex claims of all.

They can present a range of issues different from those presented by men.  Recent studies show the very high likelihood, for example, that many asylum-seeking women have been raped [PDF]. Women seeking asylum may be trafficking victims; they may be fleeing ‘honour’ crimes and threats from family. They may have been persecuted in response to their own political activity, or that of fathers, uncles, brothers.

Of the women whose cases were examined in 'Unsustainable', 87% were refused asylum, the majority because the UKBA didn’t accept the credibility of their claim. This proportion is far higher than the official statistics that include men and women's asylum claims.

Half of these refusals were then overturned following scrutiny from an immigration judge, and the credibility of the claim was accepted in every one of the successful appeals. The home affairs select committee of MPs last month severely criticised the quality of decision making by UKBA.

In the meantime, as the Home Office fights claims, enormous strain was placed upon the women’s health, the report finds. It points out that the cost of so many unnecessary appeals is huge.

Says Asylum Aid's Debora Singer:

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Why the West must do more for Iranian LGBT

Ayaz Marhoni and Mahmoud Asgari

Source: Gay City News

By Benjamin Weinthal

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s lethal homophobia requires strong medicine. The international campaign to stop the stoning of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a woman who was sentenced to death for alleged adultery, shows that the Islamic Republic of Iran is vulnerable to a human rights pressure-point campaign.

While Ashtiani could still face execution, the global effort to influence a change in the behavior of the pariah regime in Tehran has forced Iran’s rulers to temporarily backpedal from their medieval practices. Replicating that concerted drive could deliver another potent dose of behavioral therapy to force the regime to recoil from its ongoing eradication of the Iranian LGBT community.

The opening salvo in a human rights movement to end violence and bias against LGBT Iranians ought to originate from President Barack Obama, who was initially wishy-washy and aloof about human rights when Iran’s regime viciously cracked down on its civilian population during the fraudulent 2009 election.

This past September, however, the Obama administration, to its credit, imposed precedent-setting human rights sanctions against eight top-level Iranian government officials for committing torture, rape, violent beatings, and unlawful detention of Iranians. The sanctions aim to penalize only a slice of the Iranian military apparatus and regime responsible for crushing the pro-democracy protests against the doctored election results in 2009. But it is a fresh beginning.

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Update on stoning execution case in Iran

Image via Wikipedia 

Source: Gay Middle East

By Paul Canning and Dan Littaeur

Updated

Some facts involved with the case of two men from Piranshahr, in northwest Iran, whose death sentence was reported yesterday (see 'Stoning sentence for two boys for alleged same sex in Iran') have today been disputed.

A number of sources who are investigating the details of the case, and who are in touch with those at the heart of it within Iran, have today spoken with the Iranian Queer Orqanization (IRQO) and Gay Middle East. In addition the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission has announced in a message publish by the Joe.My.God blog that they are also investigating details of the case.

Questions have been raised regarding the exact nature of the charges on which they have been given the death penalty. As reported in an update yesterday on the original report, those questions surround whether or not a rape occurred and whether this involved another person, a 15 or 17 year old minor.

As noted yesterday, the Iranian government, as reported by Human Rights Watch, maintains in response to international pressure regarding reported executions of homosexuals that they mostly involve “individuals [who] have been charged for forcible sodomy or rape”.

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In Iran, another minor sentenced to death for 'sodomy'

Noose image by J. Stephen Conn via Flickr

By Paul Canning

Edited to add: Several hours after the reports of this case first circulated today to media organisations, Iranian Queer Organisation (IRQO) President, Saghi Ghahraman, emailed:

"Today has brought urgent new developments. There is strong possibility of forgiveness in his favour. In light of these delicacies, we must rescind our call to action on his case."

Press information about the case had included a sample letter calling for protests to Iranian authorities.

~~~~

The Iranian Queer Organisation (IRQO) is reporting that a 19-year-old Iranian man is facing imminent execution on charges of attempting to rape another man. The execution is being pursued even though the allegation was withdrawn by the accuser.

Ehsan was 17-years-old when he was arrested in late 2008 in Shiraz, in the province of Fars, after a man pressed charges against him and two other youths, alleging that they attempted to rape him.

Under torture that may have lasted over a month, only Ehsan, who is the youngest of the three accused, confessed to the charges. The Fourth Branch of the Criminal Court of Fars province, in Shiraz, found him guilty of lavat and sentenced him to hang. Ehsan has since withdrawn his 'confession', saying that it was extracted under torture.

Ehsan was detained when he was 17, a adolescent, and kept in a juvenile detention centre up until a month ago. Since his execution order was approved by the Supreme Court (Branch Thirteen) he was transferred to Aadel Abaad Jail in Shiraz, where is awaiting execution, which, IRQO say, could happen any day now.

There is no evidence that the accused youth is gay.

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In Ukraine, returned asylum seekers face abuse

Image via Wikipedia

Source: Vision

Human Rights Watch urged the European Union on Thursday to stop returning migrants and asylum seekers to Ukraine, saying that they faced abuse and torture in the former Soviet republic.

Given its proximity to the EU, Ukraine has become a hub for migrants fleeing violence in countries such as Afghanistan and Somalia and, according to human rights activists, home to the largest Somali community in Eastern Europe.

The readmission agreement between the EU and Ukraine that came into force on January 1, 2010, provides for the return of third-country nationals who enter the EU from Ukraine. Hundreds are returned every year, HRW said in a report.

"Migrants and asylum seekers, including children, risk abusive treatment and arbitrary detention at the hands of Ukrainian border guards and police," it said.

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