Kuwait: 41 men arrested in 'gay raid' of massage parlor

41 allegedly ‘gay men and trans women’ have been arrested for prostituting themselves in a massage parlor in Kuwait.

Police sent an undercover officer to the parlor in the capital of Kuwait City to pay for a ‘massage’, a cost of 10 dinars ($33, €30) and then negotiated for the sexual services.

Homosexuality is effectively illegal in Kuwait. Breaking the law of ‘debauchery’, which is most often used to target the LGBTI community, is punished by prison time of up to six years. In 2015, police launched a crackdown on what they branded as ‘cross-dressers’. Prostitution is also illegal, but is very common.   Read more via Gay Star News 

Nigeria: Hunting down gays

President Muhammadu Buhari has stood firm in support of anti-gay laws, despite pressure for its repeal, particularly from the United States. Under his administration, gay people will be arrested and prosecuted based on the law.

Incidents like the arrest of Lawal and Tahir and their guests in a supposed marriage ceremony are rare, but not unprecedented, particularly in northern Nigeria. Similar arrests have taken place in Bauchi and Kano, where witnesses say suspects were often tortured in detention and forced to give names of other gay people they know to the police.

In recent times, a number of human-rights activists have accused the police of arresting and detaining perceived homosexuals without cause, except for the purpose of extorting money from detainees to allow them to get out of jail.

Not long after the anti-gay law was passed, the UN agency fighting AIDS and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria expressed “deep concern that access to HIV services for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people will be severely affected” in the country, which has an estimated 3.4 million people living with the HIV virus. About half of that number are women, but unprotected intercourse among men puts them at especially high risk. 

 Read more via Daily Beast
 

US: Economic impact of HB2 mushrooms

The recent passage of anti-LGBT legislation in North Carolina and Mississippi has triggered protests and growing corporate backlash, with some companies refusing to expand in the states and high-profile performers canceling events.

The economic impact of the state’s controversial House Bill 2 continued to mushroom Tuesday, as Deutsche Bank announced it was freezing plans to create 250 jobs in Cary and a top Wake County economic development official said that five companies since early last week have canceled or postponed efforts to bring jobs to the county.  Read more via WRAL

Morocco: Homosexual couple in Morocco tortured... then imprisoned for defending themselves

A video showing a homosexual couple being tortured has provoked widespread condemnation throughout Morocco, where attacks against homosexuals are on the rise. But perhaps the most shocking part is the way in which the authorities reacted.

A Moroccan court on Monday released two men convicted of homosexuality, which normally carries a jail sentence in the kingdom, in a case that stirred emotions throughout the country. The court also jailed two men convicted of attacking the couple, while outside two topless Femen activists from France were detained and deported after protesting for Rabat to decriminalise homosexuality. Residents of the town of Beni Mellal in central Morocco, meanwhile, gathered to demand the release of the jailed attackers.

A first victim was sentenced to four months in jail for "acts against nature", but an appeal hearing decided Monday to release him on time served. The other victim was handed a four-month suspended sentence for "sexual deviancy".

For the attack on the couple, one defendant was handed a six-month prison sentence and another received four months for forced entry, resorting to violence and carrying weapons. Two others were acquitted and a fifth was to be tried later in a minors' court. Rights organisations have demanded that Morocco decriminalise homosexuality, which is punishable by up to three years in jail.  Read more via Morocco News

Dominican Republic: Gay Pride and Prejudice

Shortly after taking up his post as American ambassador to the Dominican Republic in November 2013, Wally Brewster got a bit of unsolicited advice from the Vatican’s envoy to the Caribbean nation.

“If you keep your private life behind the walls of your embassy, you’ll be O.K. here,” Nuncio Jude Thaddeus Okolo told Mr. Brewster. He meant that Mr. Brewster, to be an effective diplomat, would be wise to keep his husband, Bob Satawake, out of sight in a country where prejudice against gay people remains widespread.

The advice went unheeded. Mr. Brewster and Mr. Satawake, who have been together for nearly 28 years, have been out and proud in Santo Domingo, sparking a spirited debate that has galvanized the nation’s fledgling gay rights movement and outraged local leaders of the Catholic Church.

The attacks against Mr. Brewster, a Chicago businessman who raised money for President Obama’s re-election campaign, began just days after the White House nominated him for the post. Read more via New York Times

Honduras: Massive rise in homophobic killings since Zelaya toppled

A new report from Index on Censorship exposes how many LGBT activists in Honduras risk torture, prison and assassination. The research from Index on Censorship, published by SAGE, carried out by journalist Duncan Tucker and utilising data collected by on-the-ground NGOs, delves into some shocking statistics:

Of the 235 murders of LGBT people since 1994, only 48 cases (20%) have gone to court.
"I've been imprisoned on many occasions. I've suffered torture and sexual violence because of my activism, and I've survived many assassination attempts," Honduran gay rights activist Donny Reyes said in an interview with Index on Censorship. Read more via Phys

New ISIS Video Shows ‘Gay’ Man Thrown to Death & Destruction of Churches

In a new video purportedly released by the Islamic State titled “The Voice of Virtue in Deterring Hell,” ISIS religious police are shown implementing sharia law with stonings, executions, and beheadings in ISIS-occupied lands. The video was released on April 6, 2016 on ISIS terrorist channels. An alternative translation of the title is “The Voice of Virtue in Deterring the Underworld.”

The video is ontage of ISIS religious police carrying out sharia law, with both the destruction of Christian structures, along with “haram” things like cigarettes and alcohol, and also doling out punishments. Punishments in the video include hand amputations for thieves, the murder of accused homosexuals with stonings, and a variety of beheadings. Read more via Heavy

UK: Did police homophobia allow a serial killer to target gay men for over a year?

The deaths of gay men in 2015 went unconnected despite similarities between the cases and a history of serial killers targeting gay men. A 2007 review into the Metropolitan Police's investigation of 10 killings and attacks on LGBT people concluded that the police's work on such cases was influenced by institutional homophobia. The review, published by the independent police advisors LGBT Advisory Group, condemned the 1993 Gay Slayer police investigation as a "serious failure of policing." It said: "The initial investigations seemed to us to be more focused on determining promiscuity and risk taking," adding that more should have been done to warn the community.

In fact, one of the world's foremost experts on serial killers, the British criminologist David Wilson, says that the gay community receives "at best, a patchy service from the police." In his 2007 book Serial Killers: Hunting Britons and Their Victims 1960-2006, Wilson concluded that "homophobia has created the circumstances in which gay men have become one of the prime targets of serial killers in this country."

While somewhere between one and ten percent of the UK population is LGBT, since Nilsen's conviction in 1983, gay men have accounted for all or most of the victims of five out of the 14 serial killers since active in the UK. Read more via VICE

South Africa: Ekurhuleni lesbian teen murdered on her birthday

Lucia Naido, a young lesbian woman, was stabbed to death on the night of her birthday in Katlehong on Johannesburg’s East Rand.

The teen was murdered in a suspected hate crime meters from her home on March 19. She was found dying by her horrified mother, who ran outside when she heard her daughter’s desperate screams.

Her mother Xoliswa is now concerned for her own safety and fears being targeted by the two suspects (who likely live in the same community) because she is a witness. She also has little confidence that the police will find the men.

“I don’t think the police are going to do something. It is better for us to find the two men before they find us. I am scared to go outside and I can’t go to the shops. It’s not safe anymore in my own community,” she said. Read more via Mamba Online

Brazil: How to fight transphobic violence

Imagine if one transgender person was murdered every 21 hours in the United States. In Brazil, we don't have to imagine this horrific, overwhelming epidemic of fatal violence against transgender individuals. One transgender person truly is killed every 21 hours, according to a statement from Transgender Europe’s Trans Murder Monitoring Project emailed to my colleague Eduarda Alice Santos. She is a correspondent for Planet Transgender, an English-language hub for international transgender concerns, who also provided the image above from a "die-in" protest in Rio de Janeiro this year.

Brazil has the world’s highest rate of fatal violence against transgender people. In fact, the South American nation's trans murder rate is 16.4 times higher than anywhere else on the planet. If the world overall experienced Brazil’s transgender murder rate, there would be 1,260 homicides in approximately 70 days worldwide. In a year, we would lose an estimated 6,588 transgender people to homicide. Read more via the Advocate