2011 round-up: Part five: Backlash and repression

Image via Wikipedia

By Paul Canning

I'm rounding up the year in a series of posts - in which no doubt I've missed something, so please let me know what I've missed in the comments!

Backlash and repression

A whole new country, South Sudan, was born with a sodomy law and exclusion of LGBT from rights supposed promised to 'all'.

Turkish LGBT groups suffer repeated attempts to legally shut them down and to block their websites.

The increasingly visible LGBT organising in Malaysia suffered a backlash including law change proposals in two states and the banning of events.

An attempt to use gay rights as a 'wedge' issue failed in Zambia as the opposition leader Michael Sata was elected President. Gay rights was also used as a 'wedge' in Zimbabwe, most awfully to divide the Anglican Church leading to Church resources like orphanages closing and children going hungry.

Malawi criminalised lesbians. This was an issue, but a minor issue, in a subsequent aid reduction by the country's biggest donor, the UK. It was mainly the Malawian government's other walk-backs on human rights and a diplomatic spat which caused the UK's change of approach on aid, but it was played up by them as a 'wedge issue' against the opposition with protests against the state of the economy and human rights abuses called 'gay rallies' in state media.

The so-called 'Kill gays' bill failed to pass at the end of Uganda's parliament in May, probably more by luck than design. It has been reintroduced into the current parliament. The bill provoked the biggest international petition drive for LGBT rights ever, well over two million supported different efforts. Activists pleaded for such support to be offered in the context of the general human rights problems in the country, but most solidarity work continued to single out the gay issue from the bigger crisis. Protests against the bill raised, again, the use of development aid redirection from governments and other government-to-government 'leverage' by Western countries in front of and behind the scenes. The atmosphere generated by the bill led to increased government and societal repression of Ugandan LGBT, highlighted by the murder of leader David Kato in January. Three brave Ugandan activists won international human rights awards, including one described as the most important after the Nobel Peace Prize.

There were a series of arrests of gays in Cameroon, followed by convictions including some based solely on people's appearance, not their acts. There was violent rhetoric, organised hunts for gay people using entrapment and the government ended the year proposing a 'tightening' of the anti-gay law.

Anti-gay rhetoric in Ghana's media and agitation by religious leaders over the past few years produced a proposed witch-hunt by a state leader - and subsequent international attention. In the ensuing fallout, local human rights and civil society groups failed to defend LGBT. The year ended with proposals in parliament for further criminalisation of gay people.

Nigeria reintroduced anti-gay legislation which was then extended in the parliament to attack any pro-LGBT human rights organising, potentially fatally undermining HIV/Aids work amongst other impacts.

There were sporadic reports of death sentences for homosexual offenses in Iran but little follow-up on these reports by either media, human rights or LGBT groups due, in part, to issues with verification and dangers to sources in Iran.

Honduras finally acted on the large number of unsolved murders of LGBT in that country, after US prompting. The rate of murders of LGBT elsewhere in Latin America - particularly in Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela - drew little international attention. As did the failure of the international community to support devastated local LGBT in Haiti following the earthquake, though the UN finally pledged a response.

Anti-gay laws were passed or proposed in Russia and in Ukraine. Pro-gay demonstrations in Russia, and in Belarus, were banned and violently broken up - whilst vicious anti-gay ones permitted. Though Russians finally won a European Court of Human Rights ruling that the ban on Moscow's gay pride march was illegal.

There were reports of arrests of gay men in Tanzania, Kurdish Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi.

The Serbian gay pride march was banned, reportedly for political reasons. The gay pride march in Split, Croatia was attacked, video of which ensured worldwide attention but in the capital, Zagreb, pride went ahead with no problems - and little attention. In Montenegro the government publicly backed LGBT rights.

The fake 'Syrian lesbian blogger' scandal in June created a huge international storm, outraging real activists participating in the revolution there. Local LGBT in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region report mixed feelings about the potential outcomes of the 'Arab Spring' for them - in Syria, gays are reportedly divided on participation in that country's revolt. The devastating impact of the Iraq war on LGBT continued to be felt. A new project documented those who have fled to Jordan, but the year went by with almost no media attention to these 'forgotten people'.

A criminalisation attempt in the DRC (Congo) parliament was started then put on hold.

The UK's foreign aid policy relationship to LGBT human rights became the focus of a major backlash following an anti-aid story in a right-wing British newspaper, particularly in Africa and including from some LGBT activists. In a messy PR foul up, the UK was forced to clarify it wasn't planning to remove aid but redirect it.

The so-called 'curing' of LGBT people continued to spread worldwide from its US origins with a backlash in Ecuador leading to closure of some 'clinics' and the discovery of supposed 'conversion therapy' being payed for by Hong Kong's government. In the US itself 'cure the gay' drew both ridicule and outrage, the latter in particular highlighted by a media expose about the suicide of some gay people forced when they were children to go through it and the discovery that a Republican presidential candidate's camp husband was selling 'conversion' therapy.

Related articles

• The battle of the bins in Bulawayo (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• UN publishes landmark LGBT rights report (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

World's newest country off to bad start on LGBT rights

Image by martha_jean via Flickr

By Paul Canning

South Sudan, the world's newest country, was proclaimed 11 July and its President, Salva Kiir Mayardit has declared that his promise of equality would not be extended to lesbians and gays.

South Sudan was formerly subject to the Sudanese interpretation of Sharia law, under which homosexual activity was illegal, with punishments ranging from lashes to the death penalty. In 2003 the government of what was then called "New Sudan" adopted its own penal code, and in 2008 the autonomous Government of Southern Sudan adopted a replacement penal code. Both codes prohibited sodomy.

In May 2010 Mayardit spoke of a New Sudan where "all citizens" enjoy "equal rights" in a country based on "democracy, equality and justice". But Mayardit said that LGBT recognition was "not in our character."

"It is not even something that anybody can talk about here in southern Sudan in particular. It is not there and if anybody wants to import or to export it to Sudan, I will not get the support and it will always be condemned by everybody."

Mayardit is wrong that "it" is not "there". In an article for the expat Bor Globe Network last October, Majur Deng Nhial wrote:

"There are people out there who congenitally conceal their true sexes for fear of being considered abnormal and not to be regard with extreme hatred and hostility. They also remain impassive not to distort families’ histories that can bring inerasable shame to the kinships. Another reason is that, there are no potential mates interesting in anal intercourse. Presumably, the mentioned suggestions could be why there was silence in their sexual behavior in the Sudan."

Two ancient cultures present in South Sudan, Nubian and Cushite, have had homosexuality as "an intricate part of the society."

Nhial relates the story of a South Sudanese gay man living in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya:

"Kuma (not a real name) was a fashionable gentleman who loved to hangout with girls quite often. His voice box and walking style was of a female, but everybody else was sucking a thumb saying “Oh! he got all of them, all the girls” because he had a physical grace and beauty that attracted girls; that was a moment he wrestled with his true gender identity, but nobody paid attention until his arrival to the United State where he found liberty."

John Mathenge of HOYMAS, a Kenyan support group for MSM and gay men living with HIV, told the Kenyan website Freedom in Speech last month:

"We have cases of Somalis and Sudanese who are MSM or gay in our records. Many flee their countries because of political instability but when you get to learn their story you realize they ran away for a completely different reason. The ones I have met are gay or MSM and many end up engaging in sex work here in Nairobi to earn a living."

Activities addressing HIV/Aids in South Sudan do not include the needs of LGBT or men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM), and a need for research has been identified. A World Bank report from April said:

"Hardly anything is known about two important high-risk populations that probably exist in Southern Sudan – men who have sex with men (MSM) and injection drug users (IDU) – both of these populations (including male sex workers) have been identified in neighbouring countries, and there is no reason to assume that they do not also exist in Southern Sudan. Even if their numbers are small, their behaviours mean that their HIV incidence rates can be very high."

Despite western media reports that the country is mainly Christian, most South Sudanese maintain traditional indigenous (sometimes referred to as Animist) beliefs and the government has supported freedom of religion. But the Christian church is very influential and in 2006 the Archbishop of the Anglican Church of South Sudan, Rt. Rev most Archbishop Abraham Mayom Athiaan told the Sudan Tribune:

"We, the bishops together with our congregation of the Anglican church of the Sudan (ACS) strongly condemn the practice of homosexuality, abortion which is being practiced in Episcopal Church of Sudan (ECS) leaderships."

Related articles

• South Sudan: A Short History (wdfyfe.wordpress.com)

In South Sudan, an invisible LGBT community

Source: Borglobe Network

By Majur Deng Nhial

For the first five years when Sudanese flocked to developed nations, what they told their counterparts in the West either at dinner tables or in class-room presentations was that “We don’t have gays in Africa and particularly in Sudan.” Ouch! It was simply said so because something was covert and abyss according to the Sudanese community standards altogether with its norms.

The people who came from Kenya through immigration status are almost ten years from now. Their lifestyles have drastically changed in people’s thoughts and deportment. This is the latest microevolution in the Sudanese Americans community. A few number of boys wanted to be girls and the reverse is true for girls who have features of being boys.

Some analysts put forth reasons for gender alteration that a decimal of the Sudanese populations suffer attitudes of uncertainty and conflicting emotions toward their genders. There are people out there who congenitally conceal their true sexes for fear of being considered abnormal and not to be regard with extreme hatred and hostility. They also remain impassive not to distort families’ histories that can bring inerasable shame to the kinships. Another reason is that, there are no potential mates interesting in anal intercourse.
Presumably, the mentioned suggestions could be why there was silence in their sexual behavior in the Sudan.

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