China: Transgender people forced to hide behind their secrets

At home her son still calls her daddy, at work she dresses in a masculine style, but this Chinese person has a “little secret” — she was born male, but is not any more. She had long identified as a woman, and suffered from depression after starting a family, opting in the end to have a surgical sex change.

“I had wanted to kill myself, but then I decided I should do something — if I die, I’d rather die on the operating table,” she added. Chinese society remains deeply traditional in many respects so in public she still has to hide her new identity and does not want her name or occupation revealed, for fear of any negative consequences. Now she tries to help others in her position, running an online network from her home to connect transgender individuals with each other and professionals such as doctors, psychiatrists and lawyers — who can help with divorces.

Sexually ambiguous characters have a long history in Chinese art and literature, but being transgender is still classified as a mental illness in the country —homosexuality was removed from the category in 2001 —although sex reassignment surgery is legal.

Transgender issues were given unusual prominence in China last year when the country’s most famous sexologist, Li Yinhe, announced she had been living for 17 years with a partner who was born female but identifies as a man, referring to him as her “husband” and stressing she sees herself as heterosexual. Read more via Japan Times 

Nigeria: Gay people face beatings, harsh prison sentences, even death

Nigeria made same-sex marriage and gay rights activism illegal last January. Since then, gay Nigerians say abuse and extortion have become commonplace by state-sponsored vigilantes, police and public mobs. As part of a week-long series "Nigeria: Pain and Promise," special correspondent Nick Schifrin reports on the threats and violence that LGBT citizens face in that country. Watch the report 

Iraq: 2 blindfolded men thrown off a roof in Fallujah for being gay

The Islamic State (Isis) terrorists have released a new photo report from the Iraqi city of Fallujah, showing the execution of two men, "punished" for being homosexuals. The photo report released on social media on Monday by Isis supporters shows two blindfolded men being thrown off a roof in Fallujah on charges of "sodomy."

The images shows an Isis Sharia judge reading out their crimes before a crowd of onlookers while the two gay men stand on the roof of a high-rise. After the reading out of the verdict, the Isis fighters throw down the two men, one by one as the crowd looks on in horror. Read more via International Business Times (disturbing images) 

A Dutch ISIS Fighter Takes Questions on Tumblr

Usually, by the time the public learns the names and biographies of Islamic State militants, or radicals from other groups who attack civilians, they are already dead, and so unable to speak for themselves, except occasionally in the ritualized form of martyrdom videos or manifestoes posted online. This week, however, a Dutch citizen who says he is fighting on behalf of the Islamic State in Syria, and who documents his life in the self-proclaimed caliphate on Tumblr, has been taking questions from readers.

Israfil Yilmaz, who is of Turkish descent and who abandoned a career in the Royal Netherlands Army in 2013 to join Islamist rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, has turned to Tumblr since his accounts on Instagram, Ask.fm and Twitter were suspended.

The exchanges reveal that the former soldier is well aware of his notoriety back home in the Netherlands. Asked his age recently, he referred his questioner to the Dutch government’s list of banned terrorists, to which his full name and details of his birth — Salih Yahya Gazali Yilmaz, born on Sept. 29, 1987, in Brunei — had been added just the week before. 

Read more via New York Times
 

Armenia: Support and protect human rights defenders

Armenian NGO PINK is being threatened and intimidated for its work on LGBT issues by sections of the public and by some political figures in Armenia. The Armenian authorities must stop this intimidation and hold those responsible to account. Human Rights House Network calls on the authorities to end their silence and inaction, and meet their obligations to protect, empower, and support human rights defenders.

In a joint letter to the Armenian President, Serzh Sargsyan, 37 NGOs from nine Human Rights Houses have detailed instances of threats and intimidation against PINK, and raised concerns about the silence and inaction by the authorities. Armenia must counter the immediate and specific threats to PINK, and work to end the wider, long-term threat to all human rights defenders in Armenia, and prevent a climate of impunity created by silence and inaction against those who threaten and intimidate human rights defenders. 

HRHN wrote a letter of concern to the Armenian authorities in September 2013, condemning ongoing smear campaigns against organisations working on gender issues, and urging the authorities to protect human rights defenders.  Read more via Human Rights House 

US: LGBT activists rally outside Dallas police HQ after another attack

Dozens of LGBT activists gathered outside Dallas Police headquarters last night to protest what they see as slow police response to the wave of crime in the Oak Lawn neighborhood, which has a prominent gay entertainment district. The protest follows another violent attack last week; the 12th in less than three months. 

Protesters carried signs that read “We Shall Rise Up” and “Justice Will Prevail.” Some waved gay pride flags, while others joined hands in silent grief for the dozen gay men who’ve been assaulted in Oak Lawn since September.

The latest victim, Geoffrey Hubbard, was beaten and robbed after leaving work. He rolled underneath a car for safety, until an off-duty officer found him. The next day, Dallas police stepped up patrols in the neighborhood. Though protesters, like Daniel Scott Cates, said the response came too late.

“It has taken two and half months of terror; it has taken blood literally running in the streets for DPD to make a visible, swift action as they did this last weekend. It’s absolutely unacceptable,” he said. Read more via KERA news 

US: The cruel HIV stalking of Charlie Sheen takes us back to the ignorant 1980s

Charlie Sheen has officially come out as HIV positive. He was forced to do so in the wake of shrill tabloid reporting that harkened back to the worst HIV-related ignorance and bullying of the 1980s.

It feels like the 1980s, because of the nature of the speculation, which is purely prurient about Sheen basically being a man-slut, and how many people he has infected with HIV—and how knowingly has he done so, without disclosing his status to them. Suddenly, in my mind, Sheen seems like the kind of hunted man Rock Hudson became, as cameras followed him being shuttled on and off planes as he became sicker and sicker. The media likes nothing more than an ailing star—even better if HIV and AIDS means the story gets front-loaded with all kinds of judgment about their “lifestyle,” sexual and otherwise.

This obviously takes it as a given that Sheen’s right to privacy has been thoroughly trampled, and that this is somehow acceptable: He has been smoked out of the closet. The Enquirer, seeing their scoop slip through their fingers, has a feverish front page, the result of much investigation, which promises to expose the “Ex-Lovers’ Horror—Did He Infect Them?” Plus: “He’s Slept With Thousands of Women—And Men!”

The headline is a throwback too—to conflating HIV, a virus, and AIDS, the disease that it can lead to, although much less frequently today than it did back then because of advances in HIV drug treatment, which Sheen himself has reportedly started. Read more via The Daily Beast 

Kenya: Gay Ugandans regret fleeing

Hundreds of people in Uganda's LGBT community have fled the country to escape homophobia and persecution. But many are now stuck in Kenya where the situation is not much better. Even the UNHCR - the very group tasked with protected LGBT people - has admitted its own staff are hostile. The deputy head of protection for UNHCR told me that staff have said that as Christians they could not work with, or talk to, a gay man.

Some of the Ugandans I spoke to also told me this discrimination from UNHCR staff has led to delays in determining their refugee status, making them live with uncertainty about their future.

"In Uganda we were unsafe and here it's the same," said Blessed, not his real name.
He was a church pastor in Uganda and fled to Kakuma 18 months ago after his name was published in a local newspaper, which said he was gay. He received death threats and had to leave his family behind. "I don't know if I will ever see them again," he said.
"First I have to survive being here and then maybe one day I can entertain that thought."

The Ugandans have to sleep in shifts - taking it in turns to guard their compounds at night, after an attempt this year to burn it down. And that is not the only threat they have received. A few weeks back, hate leaflets were circulated around the camp asking people not to mix with the LGBT community there.   Read more via the BBC 

Iran: This gay man sold a kidney to escape to Turkey

There was only one way Danial could think of to get out of Iran: He would have to sell his kidney. Danial risked his life to get to Turkey, trusting that the refugee system would look after him when he got there. Instead, it was just the beginning of his problems. 

His situation felt hopeless. His mother had confronted him about being gay one December morning in 2013. By noon he had fled the family home, taking nothing but the clothes on his back and 50,000 rials — about $2 — in his pocket. 

“I had no way forward, no way backwards — I just wanted to escape from that place,” Danial said. For most Iranians, getting to Turkey would be as simple as buying a plane ticket, which can cost less than $200; a few hundred LGBT Iranians make this trip every year because it’s an easy jumping-off point to a new life in the West. Iranian passport holders don’t need a visa to enter Turkey, and the United Nations fast-tracks LGBT refugees for resettlement because it considers them especially vulnerable.

But Danial couldn’t get an Iranian passport. He was the son of an Afghan. 

Read more via Buzzfeed
 

Activist outed as a 'top gay' by a Kenyan tabloid answers your questions

Lawyer Eric Gitari shares his experiences of being harassed, publicly shamed and fighting for LGBT rights. In May a leading Kenyan tabloid, Citizen, ran a picture of Eric Gitari and nine of his compatriots on their front page. The news splash? They were were being outed as “top gays”.

Life in Kenya is not easy for the LGBT community, who have to contend with daily stigma, the threat of mob violence and lengthy prison sentences. Gitari, who is a lawyer and human rights activist, is undeterred by this and recently secured a major legal victory for the community.

After a long fight, Kenya’s high court ruled that his organisation, the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, could be formally registered in Kenya. This paved the way for similar organisations also supporting the community to follow suit.

Shortly afterwards, Citizen ran their front page. The next battle on Gitari’s hands is a lawsuit he has filed against the state over forced HIV testing and anal examinations, which the government says can determine men’s sexuality. Read more via the Guardian

Ukraine: Stop harassing us over oppressed minorities --- we're too busy fighting Russia

Though it's not commonly known, Ukraine's LGBT community played a significant role in the Maidan revolution which toppled the unpopular government of Viktor Yanukovych some two years ago. Careful not to upset or alienate conservative nationalist elements at the Maidan, LGBT protesters made a tactical decision not to promote their cause openly. According to EU Observer, the LGBT community refrained from brandishing its own slogans and banners lest it provoke homophobic violence. The Observer remarks that "during the revolution, the LGBT community behaved courageously, but also pragmatically: it didn't champion the rights of the gay minority in order not to split Maidan into liberal and illiberal factions."

In the wake of Maidan, however, many within the LGBT community feel betrayed by the very revolution which they helped to spearhead. In Ukraine, all the current talk is about repelling Vladimir Putin and Russian-backed separatists, rather than adhering to liberal-minded values. It's a rather ironic coda to the Maidan, which was initially driven forward by pro-Western and progressive aspirations. Judging from recent events, however, it would appear that Maidan's liberal credo was rather superficial and merely skin deep.

Recently, many conservative Ukrainians seem to be falling back on a common refrain: don't resort to criticism of our country's internal politics, for such "divisive" tactics will only serve to embolden Vladimir Putin. Though these claims rely on a dubious and false equivalency, such arguments seem to be gaining some traction, as my own experience may attest. What is more, political elites have desperately sought to outmaneuver the LGBT community by playing the nationalist card. Read more via Huffington Post

Zambia: Trans woman convicted, faces 15 years to life

A trans woman in Mongu, western Zambia, was found guilty last week of permitting a man to have carnal knowledge of her “against the order of nature.” In Zambia, that is a crime punishable by a prison sentence of 15 years to life under Section 155 (c) of the Zambian Penal Code. 

Hatch Bril, 27, pleaded innocent to the sodomy charge, which was filed after taxi driver Abraham Chilemu, 19, complained to police about Bril, saying that she had deceived him into sex. Bril said that Chilemu had forced her to have sex with him, but the magistrate rejected that account. 

Bril’s clothing was entered into evidence — bracelets, makeup, a bra, leggings, and hair extensions. On the basis of those and photos of Bril taken by Chilemu, the magistrate concluded that Chilemu was deceived by Bril into believing that Bril  was a woman. Bril was forced to undergo an anal examination — a procedure that LGBTI activists categorize as a form of torture and criticize as an unreliable indicator of whether anal intercourse took place.

Chilemu apparently was a willing participant in the encounter, but does not face criminal charges. Read more via 76crimes