Discrimination towards the LGBT community in Armenia continues to be widespread, as the state fails to undertake any actions to reduce the negative attitude towards the LGBT community and to protect their human rights. Rather than promote equality, the leading political party representatives and media affiliated with authorities continue to spread hate speech towards LGBT people, strengthening the environment of impunity in the county.
The absence of anti-discrimination legislation and accountability mechanisms for discrimination cases greatly contributes to the violation of human rights of LGBT people; with this, the lack of implementation for the existing legislation also increases the vulnerability of LGBT people. This report summarizes cases of human rights violations during 2014, records of interviews with LGBT people and data obtained from court cases, internet sources and studies of other reports. Read More
UN Human Rights Office urges Kyrgyz Parliament to reject amendments to laws which institutionalize discrimination against LGBT community
Kyrgyzstan: Lawmakers overwhelmingly support “Gay Propaganda” ban
Lithuania: Weeding out new army recruits by asking if they like flowers
Lithuania has come up with a unique way of ensuring their army doesn't have any gays in it, and that is by asking new recruits whether they like picking flowers. Having reintroduced compulsory military draft earlier this year, randomly selected candidates will now have to report to a military recruitment office in order to be screened for suitability.
The screening, which includes a psychological test, asks 'Does the candidate like picking flowers or has the candidate ever considered a career in the floral industry?' Another question asks if a male candidate has ever desired to be a woman.
Kęstutis Ramanauskas, a psychiatrist at a military recruitment office in Klaipėda, western Lithuania, said: 'After reviewing initial data supplied by the [psychological] test, I try to analyse the person more thoroughly. I use it as a criteria to screen them out. Though it is claimed that [homosexuality] is not a disease, but it is.' Read More
US: The Family Research Council’s anti-trans guide is an embarrassing failure of logic
Conservative Christian think tank and political lobbying organization, the Family Research Council has long traded in dubious claims and hateful rhetoric. New document, “Understanding and Responding to the Transgender Movement,” is no exception: Authors, Dale O’Leary and Peter Sprigg, fall back on the usual appeals to discredited pseudoscience and decades-old scholarship. But they also embrace a far more surprising referent, the language of the feminist and queer activists they’ve spent decades fighting, even as they back away from their own conceptual and intellectual vocabularies.
While the FRC pitches itself as a defender of a “Christian worldview,” O’Leary and Sprigg claim to be protecting a far more nebulous concept. “In recent decades,” they write in their introduction, “there has been an assault on the sexes.” Read More
Israel: Homophobic op-ed by Islamic leader raises Arab Israeli ire
A homophobic article by an Israeli Islamic leader has sparked a flurry of condemnations by Arab civil society, shining a light on a usually suppressed debate on gay rights. Commenting on the same-sex wedding of Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, Sheikh Kamal Khatib, deputy head of the Islamic Movement in Israel, launched a scathing attack on homosexuality in an op-ed titled “You make me sick,” published on Yaffa48.com.
“Western societies have reached the lowest of lows,” wrote Khatib, and that society was succumbing "to moral degradation." "It is noteworthy,” he continued, “that suspicious local organizations, tabloids and biased writers have been advocating this perversion. To all those, I say not ‘may you be well and have boys’ but rather ‘may you be miserable and suffer plagues and AIDS, you perverts!'”
Khatib’s comments quickly drew fire from Israeli Arabs on social media.
Al-Qaws, a Palestinian NGO supporting sexual and gender diversity in Palestinian society, argued in a rare statement that Khatib’s concern over homosexuality may indicate a paradigm shift in Arab treatment of the subject: “We wonder,” the organization wrote, “Is this a miserable attempt to exploit the issue of gays for political purposes, or did the Sheikh see change taking place before his eyes and get nervous?” Read More
US: History of the US government’s cruel, malicious campaign against gay Americans
In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the dismissal of every single gay person working for the federal government. For the next several decades, the FBI’s sex deviate program investigated all employees suspected of being gay, collecting evidence on their sex lives and turning it over to the Civil Service Commission—which promptly fired them. Gay men were routinely entrapped by police officers, and politicians used knowledge of their enemies’ sexuality for blackmail.
This horrible history has largely been swept under the rug. But Michael Isikoff’s new documentary Uniquely Nasty unearths some of the government’s worst abuses against gay people, including blackmail that led to a senator’s suicide. Read More
Zimbabwe: Transgender woman speaks on her fight against abuse
In Zimbabwe the idea of having a family member who transits from being a man to a woman (transgender) is unheard of and considered a taboo. Robert Tapfumaneyi spoke to Tatenda Karigambe who has since gone to have a sex change operation at a cost of about $80,000 to hear of some horrible moments, humiliation and discomfort she has suffered, the deep violation of her rights and how she has overcome them:
People have a lot of perceptions. When I read local newspapers I hear someone saying the transgender disease has hit our country; it's because people don't know and they don't understand it, it's like seeing a tree in a desert, it becomes very strange.
But we need to educate people so that they understand because daily our rights are being violated...Some accuse us of being swayed by Western influence; that is very wrong, transgender is also here in Zimbabwe. Make yourself known, make your voice loud, be proud, stay strong; that will bring out what I personally call gender identity revolution where we say the whole family of Zimbabwe be it black or white, be it heterosexual, be it transgender, we just speak in one voice of love and understanding. Read the full interview
Cameroon: LGBTI rights leader faces police shakedown
The president of the LGBTI rights group Humanity First Cameroon returned from a trip yesterday to find a police sergeant waiting for him with death threats and a demand for money in exchange for his freedom.
Returning shortly after midnight at the end of a trip to Europe, Jules Eloundou was accused of homosexuality. The friends who came to pick him up were detained and assaulted. The police demanded bribes, hurled abuse, and beat the three men before eventually releasing them. Read More
UK: Hate crime is everyday reality for rural LGBT people, study says
LGBT people in Britain’s rural towns and villages are being bullied relentlessly because of their sexuality, leaving some too scared to leave the house, according to an expert in hate crime.
Stevie-Jade Hardy, a lecturer at the University of Leicester’s Centre for Hate Studies and the author of a report on hate crime, said harassment and verbal abuse was an everyday reality for many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Hardy pointed to national figures that suggest eight in 10 LGBT people have been verbally abused or harassed and one in 10 has been physically assaulted. She said LGBT people felt they were more likely to be the victim of hate crime if they were “noticeably different”, potentially making those in villages particularly vulnerable.
“Within rural locations those differences are maybe magnified, and so young people will often target someone who they see as being different in that context. People are actually scared to go out into their garden to enjoy the sun; some people had taken some practical steps like having CCTV put into their house. Read More
Syria: ISIS executes four men suspected of being gay as the US legalises same-sex marriage
A shocking video uploaded on Friday by anti-violence campaigners, showed the execution of four men. They were thrown off the roof of a building, during which screams were heard by the crowd of hundreds gathered to watch. Pictures and videos of the victims, who were suspected by ISIS of homosexuality, were uploaded by @Raqqa_Sl, which campaigns against violence in Syria. Some tweets even used the #LoveWins hashtag synonymous with the SCOTUS ruling, to tweet messages about the victims.
At time of publication the YouTube video of the execution had been removed. The group known as Islamic State has reportedly been employing “honeytraps” to coerce men into homosexuality before executing them. Read More
Turkey: Police fire pepper spray at gay pride parade
Although the gay pride parade has happened in peace for at least 13 years in Istanbul, this year the parade was interrupted by police who fired pepper spray and rubber pellets at thousands when they arrived to march. Parade organizers noted, "The use of Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting, as an excuse to curtail the freedoms of assembly, demonstration, and speech is a clear violation of rule of law. In taking this illegal decision, the Governor’s Office has thus broken the law." And further stated that police were not wearing helmets with their registration numbers, making identifying those responsible for the assault impossible.
"This is happening after the elections because they realize the power of the LGBTI movement," said transgender activist Ruzgar Buski. "Erdogan's government has lost their power and they know the LGBTI community stands with minorities." Read More
Read the Istanbul LGBTI Pride Week Committee full statement here.