Spain: 'Imagine Madrid without gays' metro advert sparks row

Madrid locals have been criticizing a poster in the city's metro which asks the public to imagine the city without gay people. The poster, which features shots of the empty streets of the Spanish capital, features the slogan: "Imagine Madrid without gays". 

Rather than the "imagine Madrid without gays" (wouldn’t it be great) as many people have inferred the poster is actually trying to say imagine how terrible Madrid would be without its gay population. The message appears to be a little too subtle, however, and the public have reacted strongly.

"I understand the main goal of the add is to attract attention but this has been done in such an ambiguous way that any homophobic person would feel good about it - 'Let the gays go far away this would be a calmer and nicer city without them," Rion Blake, who tweeted about the advert said.  Read more via the Local

Xulhaz Mannan: A friend, an ally, a fellow Rainbow conspirator

I had been trying to avoid it for hours last night but couldn’t escape it any longer, as it was all over social media. “Xulhaz Mannan, 35, the editor at Bangladesh’s first LGBT magazine Roopbaan, along with Tonoy Mojumdar, a fellow activist, was hacked to death.” Many news reports read like this and all I was left wondering was how to process that piece of information. I had come to believe that in this digital age, only things related to the internet could be hacked; not people. I went back to the countless Facebook conversations where I and Xulhaz had talked about our mutual struggles, discussing the intersections within our work while envisioning a trans-national South Asian Queer solidarity. 

Read more via Galaxy

Bangladesh: 'Anyone could become a target’: wave of Islamist killings

There is an eerie feeling out on the streets of Bangladesh. To some of the city’s academics, activists and gay community, Dhaka now feels more dangerous than a war zone, after a spate of machete attacks by Islamist groups, including the murder last week of the founder of Bangladesh’s first magazine for the gay community.

At least 16 people have died in such attacks in the past three years, among them six secular bloggers, two university professors, an Italian priest, two other foreigners working in the development sector, and a prominent gay activist.

“I am more worried now here than I ever was in Afghanistan, where the threats were more of an existential nature,” says a gay American who has spent time in the war-torn country and now lives in Bangladesh. He asked not to be named.

Among his friends to have died were Xulhaz Mannan, a prominent activist – founder of Roopbaan, the country’s only magazine for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community – and Mannan’s friend, Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy. Six to seven assailants pretending to be from a courier company forced their way into Mannan’s apartment and hacked the two men to death last week.

Homosexuality is illegal in Bangladesh and many members of the gay community were already living in fear of being identified. Now they also have to fear for their lives – and the murders have in effect outed many young people by forcing them to change their daily routine.  Read more via the Guardian

Uganda: Anti-LGBT persecution increased law

A new report from the Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) indicates persecution based on sexual orientation and gender identity increased after the country’s president signed an anti-gay law in 2014.

The report documents 264 “verified cases of human rights abuses against LGBTI Ugandans” between May 2014 and Dec. 31, 2015. Forty-eight of the 264 cases of anti-LGBT persecution involved violence, which included “torture by the state.”

President Yoweri Museveni in February 2014 signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act under which those convicted of repeated same-sex sexual acts faced life in prison.

“When the president signed the law the citizens felt they were more empowered and they had a right to actually take action against the LGBTI people,” SMUG Research and Documentation Officer Richard Lusimbo said.   Read more via Washington Blade

US: After North Carolina’s law, trans suicide hotline calls double

Anti-transgender bathroom laws like North Carolina’s HB2 are not just inconvenient for transgender people. They may also be life-threatening.

Greta Gustava Martela, co-founder of Trans Lifeline, a crisis hotline for transgender people, said that their call volume has “nearly doubled” since North Carolina restricted the use of public bathrooms based on birth certificate gender markers.

The spike in calls to the Trans Lifeline is sadly unsurprising. Dr. Seelman cautions that we cannot yet “interpret causality” from the data but believes that it should still act as a warning to lawmakers who seek to restrict bathroom use for transgender people.

“We know that stigma and lifetime discrimination influence suicide rates, whether we’re talking about transgender people or another marginalized group,” she told The Daily Beast. “Policies like HB 2 are not solving a problem—they are actually making things worse.” Read more via The Daily Beast

Australia: Transgender woman raped ‘over 2000 times’ in men’s prison

Mary was still as the car pulled closer towards the threatening prison gates and a place that was soon to become her hell on earth. As she stepped into the reception area of the jail, she felt all eyes fall upon her as she continued to walk closer to her cell.

See Mary, not her real name, wasn’t just any “normal” prisoner — she was a transgender woman who was about to be locked behind bars with men. Mary was sickened by what happened to her in that Queensland prison, Boggo Road, as it was known in the 90s.

She has lived in fear for decades, with regular flashbacks to the disturbing things she lived through while in jail.  Read more via news.com.au