Two gay men are being held on terror charges in Chechnya, having escaped torture in the homophobic republic before being returned by Russian police.
Salek Magamadov and Ismail Isayev, who is just 17 years old, fled to Russia in June 2020 with the help of the Russian LGBT Network.
They were relocated by the group to Nizhny Novogorod, a city around 400 kilometres east of Moscow, having been tortured by the Chechen special police for running an opposition Telegram channel.SPONSORED CONTENTPandemic or Not, Don’t Skip These 3 Health ChecksBy Sutter Health
The men were left “in mortal danger”, after their lawyer followed them to Chechnya and found they were being “pressured” to refuse legal representation.
Now, the Russian LGBT Network has been informed that the men are being held on the terrorism charge of aiding an illegal armed group.
The network said in a statement: “The investigation, however, did not provide objective evidence of the guilt of Ismail Isaev and Salekh Magamadov.”
On 8 February, the European Court of Human Rights “ordered Russia to explain the reasons for the detention of Magamadov and Isaev, to admit independent lawyers, medical workers, and their next of kin to them”.
But despite the order, legal representatives were not able to see their clients.
Sayputy Isaev, the 17-year-old’s father, said he was beaten and “blackmailed with the life of his son” if he did not sign a statement on the minor’s behalf to refuse a lawyer.
Magamadov and Isayev’s case is currently being considered, and they could face up to 15 years in prison in Chechnya. The men themselves said that “they had to sign statements and testimonies under threats and pressure”.
They are currently being held in SIZO no. 2, a pre-trial detention centre in Grozny, Chechnya.
You may have heard of Abby and Brittany Hensel before, either on Oprah, in Time…
In 2017, reports began to emerge of a “gay purge” in Chechnya, involving mass detention, abductions, torture and abuse of human rights against the LGBT+ community. Reports of such atrocities have continued in the years since.
The leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadryov, has denied the reports as well the existence of any LGBT+ people in the region. He was hit with sanctions by the US government in July 2020 over the atrocities.
The UK government also ordered strict sanctions to be placed upon three top Chechen officials charged with torturing LGBT+ people in the region’s “gay purge” in December 2020.
Since the events of January 6th, I have been struggling with how to respond. What should engaged citizens and residents do when democracy is under attack, particularly amid a global pandemic? Perhaps I have been struggling since quarantine began in March and April of 2020. Maybe I have been struggling since the election in November of 2016. Perhaps even longer. It is hard to pinpoint when the struggle began. Maybe you, too, have been feeling similarly? Through these struggles, I have been reading, particularly poetry. Recent books remind of one powerful aspect of poetry by queer and lesbian women: the call to community. These are some reflections.
I.
Ellen Bass’s newest poetry collection, Indigo, arrived nearly a year ago. I have been savoring it. Bass’s work continues to deepen in its power. She expresses complex experiences in the world with beauty and joy. In Indigo, ample poems are quintessentially Bass; her poems demonstrate the power of lesbian sexuality and exuberantly celebrate life in the body, richly observed, deeply felt, joyful even—or especially—as the body ages.
Bass’s poems accumulate power because she is as willing to explore emotions with more negative valences with the same wonder and appreciation as positive. Poems in Indigo explore failure, loss, and despair with vivid clarity. For example, Bass describes her “first / entrance into the land of failure” as a “country / I would visit so often / it would begin to feel like home.” In a litany of regrets in the poem, “Pearls,” Bass beings “I’m sorry I didn’t buy my father the cashmere sweater with suede trim the summer / I went to Europe. And I’m sorry I didn’t stay longer with my mother when he died.” Each regret invites readers to understand how the speaker has disappointed people, causes, the beloved one; each regret a reminder of the vital web of shared life, finally concluding, “Forgive me, the sun will burn out. / I can’t hear your heart beating in the silence between us.” One remedy: listen more closely, more intensely, to the sound of a beating heart. Bass calls readers to the intimate and vital pulse of life. I understand it as a call to community.
The gesture is not only in Indigo; it marks Bass’s entire career. It can be easy to forget the scope of Ellen Bass’s work and linger only on the four collections of published poetry: Mules of Love, The Human Line, Like a Beggar, and now Indigo. There is so much pleasure to experience in these books, but they are only a part of her public poetic work. In 1973, with Florence Howe, the founder and publisher of The Feminist Press, Bass edited No More Masks an anthology of poetry by women; it galvanized poetry as an art form of the women’s liberation movement. In the 1980s, with Laura Davis, Bass published The Courage to Heal, another transformative book about recovery from sexual abuse. It is not too bold to assert that the #MeToo movement could not exist without Ellen Bass and Laura Davis’s work—along with the work of many thousands of feminists naming sexual violence. In The Courage to Heal, Bass and Davis named the problem and, just as importantly, provided a path for recovery. I posit that The Courage to Heal—the book itself and public engagements with it—is a poem. It is a language that transforms readers’ understanding and lives in the world. Considering these two books, The Courage to Heal and No More Masks, in combination with her own poems, Bass is one of the most influential public poets today. The break-through of inaugural poet Amanda Gorman reminds us of the power of poetry in public life. Public poets occupy spaces such as inaugural poets or city and state poet laureateships; some public poets like Mary Oliver and Rupi Kaur are best-seller authors. All of these public roles are vital. Ellen Bass is another type of public poet: a poet who is a transformative thinker and writer in the world, a poet who brings new formations into being, a poet who convenes and conjures vibrant communities.
II.
Bass’s work extends five decades, fifty years of community-making. Kelly Rose Pflug-Back’s work is just beginning. Her impressive debut collection, The Hammer of Witches, uses magic and mythology as central metaphors to conjure the communal. Pflug-Back draws on an eclectic array of mythology—in one poem alone alluding to the Vedas and the Edda—as well as the practice of witchcraft to highlight the magical and mysterious of contemporary life.
“We were witches once, you and I,” Pflug-Back asserts in the opening poem, “Malleus Maleficarum.” This artful poem blends the history of woman/witch hating with contemporary lesbian life, confiding “your love is a heathen ritual” then concluding, “the two of us lost together / still / / in this forest / of tall buildings.” Rich history combined with current imaginative practices is a defining characteristic of this collection.
In “After the Fall,” Pflug-Back writes,
every vast and ancient magic that this world of men has killed and pined for
alive somewhere just out of site
The conclusion is an ars poetica:
Outside the realm of clumsy words there are no such things as endings only new things made from the old.
Like many religions, witchcraft is communal, practiced in covens. Part of its spiritual and material work is providing human explanations for the inexplicable, magical as well as painful. Pflug-Back’s poems evoke magic as in “Grimoire” or the delightful “Hepatomancy,” a practice of divination from entrails. They also recognize communal gatherings as a vital part of magic. In “Hepatomancy,” Pflug-Back writes,
I am sewn together from the flesh of many and we ache.
Human life is both constituted by others and sharing in the pain of others. Elsewhere, Pflug-Back mines magic in human relationships. “For Dave” begins:
The day after you died my son asked me to draw a picture of you holding a blue balloon.
This lamentation concludes,
And now here I am wishing I could have found and afternoon somehow
to take that trip across town
and show up at your door
with a big blue balloon while you were still alive.
Perhaps unknown to the Pflug-Back, “For Dave” echoes Maureen Seaton’s stunning poem “White Balloon” demonstrating a generational shift but the endurance of lesbian lyrical poetry. United by the image of a balloon, white for Seaton, blue for Pflug-Back, these poems also document the material changes of queer lives. Seaton’s poem emerges from a communal memorial for people who died from AIDS; Pflug-Back’s is a domestic scene with a child. Both poems call readers into a community for mourning. Seaton laments “the ease with which we love”; Pflug-Back wishes for more time with beloved friends. Both poems call us to community.
III.
torrin a. greathouse’s new collection Wound from the Mouth of a Wound, selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil for the Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry, is in a dynamic conversation with Pflug-Back’s collection. greathouse’s opening poem, “Medusa with the Head of Perseus” introduces many of the themes of this collection: disability, body dysmorphia, rape. It also artfully demonstrates greathouse’s proficiency with language and her energetic ability to transform images in service to her story.
Many will read Wound from the Mouth of a Wound with admiration for the way that it brings language and visibility to trans experiences and the realities of living with disabilities. greathouse and this collection join vibrant conversations in contemporary poetry communities on trans identities and living with disabilities. I appreciate both of these elements and particularly the way greathouse calls readers into a community that values trans people and people with disabilities.
“Weeds” demonstrates greathouse’s extraordinary poetic power. With short lines and stanzas between four and six lines, greathouse establishes the “shower stall” as the “body’s confessional” where she admits, “I love / most what can be / removed from me.” She builds an extended metaphor between unwanted parts of the body and weeds with a moving meditation on weed removal as “women’s work.” She writes, “Nothing’s more / femme than empty / / field, a place to bury / seed.” The poem concludes with the voice of the weeds:
We were your first teachers. Even in the harshest season, we survive. We bloom forever where we are told we don’t belong.
This poem reworks communal formations in meaningful ways, echoing feminist insights from the 1970s with contemporary trans sensibilities, making vibrant connections between human bodies and nature, and calling readers into the collective first-person plural with weeds. We were your first teachers. We survive. We bloom. This vision of community is one that leaves me awed.
IV.
Theorem, Elizabeth Bradfield’s newest collaboration, is a departure from her earlier work. Created with artist Antonia Contro, Theoremcounterpoints the words of Bradfield with the art of Contro. While Bradfield’s previous books establish her as a naturalist concerned with human-created conditions on the natural world, Theorem looks to mathematics, particularly geometry, as a tool to refract her childhood experiences. Bradfield writes:
There were five of us. And a dog. Only one dog at a time.
No one else.
The results are fractal The trajectories radiate.
The combination of Bradfield’s words with Contro’s art demonstrates the energy of collaborative enterprises; each element opens meanings for the other. In the afterword, they describe their collaboration as “words and image influencing, pushing, urging, questioning each other. Artist and writer finding new ways to articulate what is embedded in what they create.” In addition to inspiring more collaborations between artists, Theorem is a physical manifestation of community, a community of a singular poet and artist, but, by extension, in an invitation into communities of poets and artists.
V.
Amid this reading of new work by lesbian and queer women poets, I returned to the work of Chrystos and spent weeks marveling at the corpus of her work. If I had more time and could really stretch out to tell you everything, I would write a detailed, sustained meditation on the poetry of Chrystos. Maybe it will come. Right now, I want to note that echoes of Chrystos’s work are in all of these collections. Chrystos’s work is filled with gorgeous, vexing, challenging, inspiring images of bodies and nature. She breaks conventions of contemporary poetry just because she can, because she has so much control over language, images, and the line, that she wants to flaunt her power. It is heady. It is exciting. It is worth your consideration as a reader, as a human, longing, hungering for some meaning, for connections in our troubled world. Chrystos knows about community and connection, and she wants them. She wants us to have them.
VI.
Funeral Diva, the new collection by Pamela Sneed, joins this gathering of new poetry that powerfully calls readers into community. While Sneed fashions herself as a diva in the title, in fact, these poems demonstrate rich community engagements that belie the temperament diva implies. The work in this collection—a hybrid of poetry and prose—calls a range of people, living and dead, into a community invoking a history of queer Black writers and insisting on a powerful present and future for Black queer writing.
Like the hybrid work that characterized lesbian-feminist writing in the 1980s and 1990s, Funeral Diva is a mix of poetry and essay braided together to illuminate how the two genres intersect, co-exist, merge, hybridize. Reading Funeral Diva amid COVID-19 as it harkens back to another, different epidemic, AIDS, is a powerful reminder of the responses of queer communities during the 1980s and 1990s. Sneed writes,
when I saw the poster silence equals death in the windows of the Leslie Lohman Museum That pink triangle on black paper from blocks away It called to me like a beacon Amidst societal madness/personal struggles and the Trump presidency to never give up It reminded me too of a generation of gay and lesbian warriors who are no longer here with us felled to AIDS and cancer But on their deathbeds used the mantra to inspire Silence=Death I think about when Black gay and Latinx poets Essex Hemphill Donald Woods Don Reid Roy Gonsalves Rory Buchanan David Frechette Craig Harris Alan Williams and Assotto Saint and so many more were still here How their black hair began to sprout twists and knots go wild and kinky to signify early Black gay consciousness I think about when I first met Donald Woods outside of a bookstore in the West Village called A Different Light and we fell in love We were all so young Black awkward and gangly but fierce and determined.
Funeral Diva fueled my desire to return not only to the poems of Chrystos, but also the poems of Dorothy Allison, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and many other writers that I read thirty, thirty-five years ago when I was coming out. Sneed is an inheritor to the vibrant poetic traditions of lesbian-feminism and the Black gay and lesbian renaissance of the 1980s. Funeral Diva is her love letter to the people and work who created her. Sneed, like the other poets here, calls us into community with all of its challenges, its foibles its uncertainties. As she tells us in her conclusion to Funeral Diva,
And then I understand what it all means If we can survive have equipment means money support conditions There are also other possibilities We can heal.
Indigo
by Ellen Bass
Copper Canyon Press
Paperback, 9781556595752, 64 pp.
April 2020
The Hammer of Witches
by Kelly Rose Pflug-Back
Caitlin Press
Paperback, 9781773860299, 72 pp.
March 2021
Wound From the Mouth of a Wound
by torrin a. greathouse
Milkweed Editions
Paperback, 9781571315274, 88 pp.
December 2020
Theorem
by Elizabeth Bradfield
Potry Northwest Editions
Paperback, 9781949166026, 96 pp.
November 2020
Fire Power
by Chrystos
Press Gang Publishers
Paperback, 9780889740471, 131 pp.
October 1995
Funeral Diva
by Pamela Sneed
City Lights Books
Paperback, 9780872868113, 160 pp.
October 2020
It did not take long after Joseph Biden won the 2020 U.S. presidential election for him to tweet that America is back. Yet soon after this proclamation, rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol in efforts to prevent him from assuming office. This natural culmination of Donald Trump and his administration’s rhetoric and politicking has left Americans stunned and U.S. allies abroad perplexed. Questions regarding whether the United States would, could, or should regain credibility and moral leadership on the global stage are left unanswered.
As Americans watch the Biden administration attempt to foster unity at home and define a new vision for America’s role abroad, foreign leaders are looking for real evidence of and commitment to what shared values endure. The United States coming out again with strong renewed leadership on LGBTIQ rights globally would send a powerful moral message to the world, bringing old allies closer together and helping restore American credibility abroad.
Prior to Trump’s election in 2016, the United States was a celebrated vanguard for promoting the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex individuals around the world. Early in his administration, President Barack Obama directed all U.S. diplomacy efforts and foreign assistance to promote and protect the human rights of LGBTIQ persons. This — echoed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her Human Rights Day 2011 speech that “gay rights are human rights” — was a watershed moment for U.S. foreign policy.
But past this political pageantry, the United States also took specific action. The Obama administration created the position of the Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBTI Persons, who used behind-the-scenes diplomacy to engage world leaders and recruited like-minded partner governments to establish the Global Equality Fund, which provides financial support to LGBTI grassroots initiatives around the world.
While Obama’s record on human rights was not perfect, his administration’s work on global LGBTIQ issues acted as a model for moral leadership and a case study for how to partner with allies to defend and promote human rights abroad. Given his engagement in multilateral venues and his delicate messaging on these issues with foreign leaders, it is unsurprising that polls show that Europeans had high confidence that Obama would do the right thing in world affairs.
Then came Donald Trump. In his inaugural address as president, Trump promised that the United States would lead by example rather than “imposing our way of life” on others. Yet few knew what an America First foreign policy meant. With time, that became clear: a radical departure from global norms and multilateralism, leaving human rights, both at home and abroad, behind; eschewing U.S. traditional allies, to boot, while doing so. Trump’s affinity for autocrats and his disrespect for democracy itself were indications that he would actually take America to the brink.
The Biden administration inherited a fractured global order plagued by a myriad of the world’s most urgent challenges, not least among them the COVID-19 pandemic recovery and combating climate change. This is to say nothing of America’s need to first turn inward and address its domestic social and political struggles before it can stand tall on human rights abroad. But these deep existential crises do not obviate the need to protect human rights abroad, nor is the solution as easy as picking up where the Obama administration left off.
With less influence and credibility, traditional American foreign policy priorities, like training foreign security forces or promoting democracy, will ring hollow in the ears of U.S. allies. To do this work effectively abroad, the United States will need to rely on old friends, and those friends will need a reliable partner that they can trust. Reestablishing those ties should begin with an unequivocal reinstatement of U.S. values, including once again recognizing the dignity of LGBTIQ people.
Biden recently campaigned for the U.S. presidency on the promise that he would prioritize his administration’s support for LGBTIQ human rights, and Biden has started to deliver. With less than 12 hours in office, he signed an executive order to prevent and combat discrimination against LGBTIQ Americans, and his nominee for secretary of State unequivocally stated support for protecting LGBTIQ people worldwide in front of Congress.
While these are important first steps in restoring U.S. credibility abroad, the Biden administration should build back bolder in promoting LGBTIQ human rights.
In its international efforts, beyond immediately filling the vacancy of the LGBTIQ special envoy position, a top priority of the Biden administration should be to reopen U.S. doors to vulnerable LGBTIQ refugees and asylum seekers. Given Biden’s efforts to build an administration that looks like America, those selected to serve as U.S. ambassadors should truly reflect the diversity of America — the first out lesbian and trans ambassadors should be appointed. Further, another profound action would be to swiftly adjust U.S. passports to allow for a nonbinary identification.
The administration should also develop a genuinely inclusive humanitarian relief and development strategy. U.S. foreign assistance should be paired with American values of equality with clear requirements of nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity and the paltry amount of such foreign assistance should immediately be tripled in the President’s first budget. Given his administration’s focus on pandemic recovery, Biden’s COVID-19 efforts abroad should pay particular attention to the social and economic vulnerabilities that the novel coronavirus poses to LGBTIQ communities around the world.
Lastly, the United States should take leadership once again in multilateral spaces — such as the United Nations Core Group and the Equal Rights Coalition — along with other government champions of LGBTIQ rights to seriously move forward global norms of equality.
A Biden administration will find like-minded governments and civil society activists eager to work with them in these areas. Since Obama and Biden left the White House in 2017, social acceptance of homosexuality has significantly increased in the U.S.-ally geographic strongholds of Western Europe, Latin America, and the Indo-Pacific. And each year, due to the tenacious work of activists, several nations take progressive action by decriminalizing homosexuality or enacting marriage equality.
In the weeks following the 2020 election, global LGBTIQ activists began celebrating the Biden-Harris win. These elated congratulatory messages came in via emails, calls, and texts from all parts of the world. Ranging from “We’re dancing in the streets of Nigeria like we’re Americans” to “A Biden win is a win for all of us,” the messages were deeply moving. In a collective sigh of relief, one activist texted, “We are all sleeping easier tonight.” Whether from Russia, Uganda, Jamaica, or Lebanon, the expectation that the U.S. government will once again be visibly and solidly on the side of LGBTIQ equality was immediately palpable.
The shock of the Trump-incited insurrection contrasted starkly with the beautiful inauguration of Biden as the 46th president of the United States last week. These images leave Americans and the world deeply aware of the fragility and imperfection of the U.S. democracy and with many questions about moving forward to make a more perfect union.
But the arc of the moral universe is clearly bending — albeit slowly — toward greater acceptance and fairness for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender and intersex people around the world. And the world has been waiting and is ready for renewed U.S. leadership on global LGBTIQ rights.
Julie Dorf is a senior advisor with the Council for Global Equality. Dominic Bocci is a deputy director at the Council on Foreign Relations.
A Tunisian court sentenced a prominent LGBT rights activist on March 4, 2021, to six months in prison and a fine for shouting outside a police station after officers refused to register her harassment complaint, Human Rights Watch said today. The activist, Rania Amdouni, 26, is in a women’s prison in Manouba, west of Tunis, where her lawyer said she has faced harassment by prison guards due to her gender expression.
Police arrested Amdouni on February 27 at 8 p.m. after she left the 7 eme police station in downtown Tunis in a distraught state, said her lawyer Hamadi Hanchiri. At the station, Hanchiri said, police officers had refused to register Amdouni’s complaint relating to repeated harassment she said police officers subjected her to on the street and online. Police officers in the station then proceeded to harass her based on her presumed sexual orientation and gender expression. Amdouni began shouting on the street outside the station and cursing the Tunisian police system, Hanchiri reported.
“The police response to Amdouni’s complaint keeps her from getting protection and undermines public confidence in law enforcement and the Tunisian justice system,” said Rasha Younes, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “By arresting and sentencing Amdouni, Tunisian authorities are sending an appalling message to victims of discrimination that they have nowhere to turn and that any objection could land them in prison themselves.”
Based on her behavior outside the station, Hanchiri said, on March 1 the prosecutor of the Tunis First Instance Tribunal charged Amdouni with “insulting a public officer during the performance of his duty,” punishable by up to one year in prison under article 125 of the penal code, “causing embarrassment and disruption,” and “apparent drunkenness.” On March 4, the Cantonal Court in Montfleury, southwest of Tunis, found Amdouni guilty on all charges and sentenced her to six months in prison and a fine of 18 Tunisian dinars ($6.50). The lawyer submitted an appeal on March 5.
Hanchiri, who took on Amdouni’s defense on behalf of Damj Association, a Tunis-based LGBT rights group, said that her case file presented in court included no evidence of her targeting a police officer at the station or on the street, or any indication that she had been drunk. The case file says that Amdouni was in a “disorderly state” and had “offended police honor” by shouting and cursing outside the station, as a basis for her conviction, Hanchiri said.
Amdouni was leaving a restaurant in downtown Tunis on February 27 when a police officer in the street began verbally harassing her and ridiculing her based on her gender expression, which prompted her to go to the nearest police station and file a complaint. “Amdouni has been facing consistent harassment by police in the street and online for months, which caused her to suffer severe mental health consequences and break down,” Hanchiri said.
Mohammed Amin Hdeiji, a lawyer who accompanied Amdouni to the 7 eme police station on February 27, told Human Rights Watch that police officers in the station ridiculed Amdouni’s appearance and harassed her based on her presumed sexual orientation. “Eight police officers surrounded her and repeatedly insulted her, and one told her, ‘You are a homosexual, you will not win against us, and we will not allow you to defame police officers,’” Hdeiji said.
Hanchiri spoke to Amdouni, who told him that at the Manouba women’s prison where she is detained, women prison guards have repeatedly entered her cell at night while she was sleeping, insulted her using derogatory language relating to her sexual orientation and gender expression, and threatened her for attempting to complain about the police, he said.
Human Rights Watch has documented violations by Tunisian security forces against activists at protests, including targeting LGBT activists with arbitrary arrests, physical assault, threats to rape and kill them, and refusing them access to legal counsel. Amdouni’s case was among those Human Rights Watch documented, which included police singling her out at protests due to her gender expression and LGBT rights activism.
In an interview in February before her arrest, Amdouni told Human Rights Watch that since January she has been subjected to online harassment, bullying, and threats of violence, including death and rape. Human Rights Watch reviewed many of the Facebook posts, including by individuals who identified themselves as police officers, harassing Amdouni based on her gender expression and presumed sexual orientation. A member of parliament, Seif Eddine Makhlouf, ridiculed her on his personal Facebook page based on her gender expression. Amdouni has since deleted her social media accounts.
On January 11, the police searched for Amdouni near her residence, and asked neighbors if she was there, which prompted her to leave her neighborhood and hide out, she said: “I don’t feel safe, even in my apartment. Police came looking for me in my neighborhood. My life is threatened, and my mental health is deteriorating. People are staring at me in the street and harassing me online.”
The right to privacy and nondiscrimination are reflected in Tunisia’s 2014 constitution under article 24 and article 21, respectively. However, the absence of accountability and reliable complaint systems, as well as the lack of nondiscrimination legislation based sexual orientation and gender identity under domestic law, limit LGBT people’s access to redress, creating an environment in which police may abuse them with impunity, Human Rights Watch said.
The UN Human Rights Committee, in its general comment on article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Tunisia has ratified, stated that, “The mere fact that forms of expression are considered to be insulting to a public figure is not sufficient to justify the imposition of penalties […]. Moreover, all public figures […] are legitimately subject to criticism and political opposition.”
Tunisia’s parliament should reform article 125 of the penal code because of the various ways that it can be interpreted by authorities to limit free expression, Human Rights Watch said.
The Yogyakarta Principles, on the application of international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity, instruct states to “[…] prevent and provide protection from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, perpetrated for reasons relating to the sexual orientation or gender identity of the victim, as well as the incitement of such acts.”
Tunisian authorities should ensure that complaints, including Amdouni’s, are handled confidentially and swiftly, following a clear procedure, and that people can submit complaints without fear of reprisals, Human Rights Watch said. The authorities should also ensure that no victim of discrimination is denied assistance, arrested, or harassed based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
“The Tunisian government claims it is committed to protecting individual freedoms, but prosecuting individuals who report violations of their rights shows that this rhetoric does not match reality,” Younes said. “Tunisian authorities should investigate allegations of police harassment against Amdouni and stop using the judicial system to persecute her.”
Lately, there has been a wave of online commentators who mock nonbinary people. Bloggers, TikTokers, and other posters make fun of an entire population of well-meaning people who lie somewhere “in the middle” of the gender spectrum.
On TikTok, @feelinmiz2.0 does a mocking dance in a fake doctor’s suit, stating “Notice how the Pr0n0uns in your bio do not alter your genitals.” In July 2020, Elon Musk tweeted “pronouns suck.” In September 2020, Canadian commentator Debra Soh wrote an article titled “How the Nonbinary Trend Hurts Those with Real Gender Dysphoria.”
Defamation of nonbinary people is everywhere in the media.
Nonbinary people, born either biologically male or female, don’t feel like they are female, but they also don’t feel male. Some nonbinary people feel more “masculine” than others, while other nonbinary people feel more “feminine.” Other nonbinary people feel like there is no spectrum at all, and that there are infinite genders, just as there are infinite ways to be a person.
Nonbinary people generally face many more obstacles than individuals who choose to fall on the binary, as either male or female. For instance, they can be in a constant battle against society to “pass” — or appear as either gender. Choosing clothes and a style of presentation that is androgynous or mixed, they can be misgendered all the time. Nonbinary people can also struggle with what gender marker to use on passports or driver’s licenses.
Additionally, individuals who do not pass as either male or female have a harder time finding employment. Research from the U.S. Census Bureau found that the unemployment rate among transgender workers is two to three times higher than the U.S workforce.
Now that “nonbinary” has come into the public consciousness, and entered the public discourse, many cisgender people feel threatened, or scared, of nonbinary. Even in my personal life, I run into close friends who laugh at the first mention of nonbinary. It seems to be a typical reaction: chuckle at how silly the idea feels. Sometimes, these people are progressives, and they have liberal views. But they still don’t understand nonbinary.
The general public seems to understand binary transgender people a lot better — people who fall as either male (transman) or female (transwoman). This is because our way of presenting falls in line with theirs.
The moment our way of presenting falls out of line, and the moment we question the cisgender world view, the public starts to laugh.
There is some pretty simple logic behind accepting nonbinary people as valid:
• If you were color blind, and could only see black and white, you would not state that people who saw colors did not exist.
• If you were a straight man, and only liked women, you would not question that gay men existed.
• If you were dyslexic, and had a difficult time reading words, you would not question that other people had an easier time reading words.
• If you grew up cisgender, and there were people — thousands of them — who said they did not feel like either gender, why would you decide to suddenly mock them? What bearing does it have on your life?
• If you have laughed at nonbinary people, do us a favor and be quiet. I have three words for you: Leave. Them. Alone.
Laugh at other things, like how there was a fly on Mike Pence’s head during a national debate, or how chihuahuas are hilarious creatures when they’re angry. Just don’t laugh at us.
CLARIFICATION: An earlier version of this piece included a reference to an article titled “Why I Will Not Be Using Your Preferred Pronouns” in The North Coast Journal. That piece was satirical. The Blade regrets the confusion.
Isaac Amend (he/him/his) is a transgender man and young professional in the D.C. area. He was featured on National Geographic’s ‘Gender Revolution’ documentary in 2017 as a student at Yale University. Isaac is also on the board of the LGBT Democrats of Virginia, @isaacamend.
For 30 days, beginning January 17, European Union commissioners received daily Twitter notifications linking to personal stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Poles who have been harmed by the so-called “LGBT Ideology Free Zones” or anti-LGBT “Family Charters” in nearly 100 Polish regions, towns, and cities.
The tweets were part of a campaign led by two Polish LGBT groups, Campaign Against Homophobia (Kampania Przeciw Homofobii, KPH) and The Equality Foundation (Fundacja Równości, FR), calling on EU Commissioners to initiate an infringement procedure – a legal action that can lead to referral to the European Court of Justice – against Poland. The “LGBT-free zones” and other discriminatory measures, activists asserted in a legal complaint submitted to the European Commission in September, breach Poland’s legal obligations under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and a European Council directive for equal treatment in employment and occupation.
The “Infringement Now” campaign is the latest salvo in an ongoing political tug-o-war between a far-right nationalist government, which welcomes the economic benefits of EU membership but shows utter contempt to the obligations associated with it, and advocates for EU institutions to play their role as guardian of the rights protected by EU treaties. Together with the fate of the country’s judiciary and the ongoing pressure on its media and civil society, the rights of LGBT people and of women and girlsare among the battlegrounds for Poland’s future.
Last August the EU Commission cancelled grants for six Polish towns that had declared themselves “LGBT-ideology free zones.” While that measure was more symbolic than material, it was a boiling point in a dispute that had been simmering for years.
LGBT rights have symbolic currency on both sides. For the Warsaw mayor and 2020 presidential candidate Rafał Trzaskowski of the centrist Civic Platform Party, being an outspoken LGBT ally speaks to his vision of an inclusive society and pro-EU Poland. In 2019 Trzaskowski signed an LGBT+ declaration for Warsaw, a 10-point plan for overcoming discrimination and promoting equality.
In the wake of the controversy sparked by his pro-LGBT stance, the ruling Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) intensified its anti-LGBT rhetoric, ensuring that LGBT rights became a key battleground in the 2019 parliamentary elections. And in the run up to the 2020 presidential election, the PiS candidate and president Andrezj Duda signed the so-called “Family Charter.” which opposes same-sex marriage and adoption rights as well as comprehensive sexuality education in schools.
Why do questions around gender and sexuality stoke such intense passions? This scenario is neither new nor unique. Minorities have invariably been scapegoated in situations of conflict. Rights around individual autonomy, in this case, the rights of LGBT people, together with reproductive rights, protections against domestic violence, and sex education have become emblematic of broader social values, Poland’s relationship with the EU and the strength of human rights writ large.
This has been accompanied by other attacks on rights. In July 2020, Poland’s justice minister announced that he would pursue withdrawing the country from the Istanbul Convention that seeks to combat violence against women, including domestic violence. In January, amid widespread protest, a Constitutional Tribunal ruling that virtually bans legal abortion went into effect after the government bypassed Parliament to put the issue before the politically influenced court. A bill that would potentially criminalize anyone providing sex education, is pending.
With PiS returned to power and proceeding apace with its anti-LGBT agenda, LGBT advocates and their supporters are doing their best to use the limited options for redress in Poland. The Polish Ombudsman has challenged the adoption of anti-LGBT declarations before local administrative courts, and succeeded in four cases, although public prosecutors have appealed these decisions. LGBT advocates have appealed to human rights norms that transcend national boundaries, such as the appeal to the European Commission to censure Poland for breaching its human rights obligations. As Bartosz Staszewski, of the Lublin Pride Association said: “We cannot count on our government, we cannot count on our president, the only thing we can count on is the European Union.”
Membership of the EU comes with obligations, such as adherence to the EU’s founding values including respect for human rights and the core principles of non-discrimination and tolerance. In December 2017, in response to problematic judicial reforms, the European Commission triggered Article 7 of the EU Treaty against Poland, which can lead to suspension of a member state’s rights if it is found to persistently breach those values.
Given Poland’s sustained attack on the human rights of LGBT people, as well as women and others, the European Commission can and should do more. Initiating an infringement procedure would send a strong message that these kinds of policies have no place in the EU, could press the Polish government to change route, and would offer a chance to the EU Court of Justice to reaffirm states’ obligations to protect, not neglect, their LGBT citizens.
In Poland human rights and tenets of democracy are under threat, including the independence of the judiciary and free press. In this assault, LGBT rights are seen as a soft target. In standing up for the rights of LGBT people in Poland, the EU would be moving not only to protect the rights of a vulnerable minority, but human rights writ large.
LGBT+ trailblazer Colin Robinson has tragically died at age 59 of colon cancer.
The author and activist, from Trinidad and Tobago, died at his sister’s house in Washington, DC on 4 March.
Robinson was an LGBT+ activist for more than 40 years, fighting for pride and equality all over the Caribbean.
He founded CAISO in 2009, a Trinidadian LGBT+ advocacy organisation. In the 1990s he co-founded the Audre Lorde Project and Caribbean Pride while he was studying in New York City. Between 1998 and 2003 he was on the international board of directors of OutRight Action.
One of his most important fights was for the decriminalisation of consensual same-sex sexual relations in Trinidad and Tobago. A ban on gay sex was overturned in 2018.
As a poet, Robinson published a collection called You Have You Father Hard Head. His work appeared in journals and anthologies such as Calabash, Caribbean Erotic: Poetry, Prose, and Essays, The Caribbean Writer, Corpus: an HIV Prevention Publication and Moko.
Caribbean organisations came forward to mourn Robinson’s death, among them CAISO.
It tweeted: “We share in this enormous loss with the many communities, organisations and people who Colin collaborated with over his four decades of activism, community building and fierce commitment to human rights.”
Caribbean Vulnerable Communities, a group that fights HIV/AIDS discrimination, said Robinson’s “contribution to advancing the cause of LGBT+ people across the region in his over four decades of activism, community building and standing up for human rights is one we applaud and celebrate in his memory”.
“Organisations across the Caribbean, and indeed the world, can attest to Colin’s creatively imaginative ways of fighting for justice, always ensuring that these efforts were grounded in the collective voice, lived experiences and will of the LGBT+ community across the region,” it added.
Jessica Stern, executive director of OutRight Action International paid tribute to Robinson.
“Colin’s work for the LGBTIQ community in Trinidad was herculean, long-lasting, and transformative, he was also very clever and funny, so you wanted to know what he was thinking and would say next,” Stern said. “Though Colin’s life was too short, his impact was great and his legacy will endure,”
When Israel Folau’s homophobia sent ripples through the world of rugby, he had no way of knowing his bigotry would inspire a bigger story.
Folau’s claims that “hell awaits” gay people saw him sacked by Rugby Australia in disgrace. Undeterred by the backlash, he simply doubled down on his beliefs by claiming the devil is to blame for trans kids and bushfires are “God’s judgment” for same-sex marriage.×ADVERTISING
“My first thought was, f**k you,” he said. “My second was, ‘What if there’s a gay kid that looks up to him? What if they see this? What if this gives more fodder to the bullies?’”
On the heels of this came his third thought: “I have to tell the Steelers’ story.”
Two years later Eammon’s done just that with a new documentary about the King’s Cross Steelers – the world’s first gay rugby club.
Debuting at the Glasgow Film Festival this week, Steelers follows the iconic London club as it challenges conventional perceptions around sexuality, gender and masculinity in sport, just by existing.
When the Steelers first formed in 1995 there was nothing else like them on the rugby landscape. It was the peak of the AIDS crisis and few straight teams would even agree to meet them on the pitch. Some ignored the invitation, believing it was an April Fool’s joke.
You may have heard of Abby and Brittany Hensel before, either on Oprah, in Time…
“When I was growing up, sport in general was always this hyper-masculine environment,” he said. “For whatever reason, the kids at school worked out that I was gay before I even knew it. That meant I was the butt of the jokes in every sports class or rugby match.
“They played up to all the stereotypes, that gay people have limp wrists and can’t throw a ball, so I was never really given the opportunity to succeed or to practice or to belong in a sporting environment.”
The bullying grew so bad that by the time he reached his senior year he was skipping every sports class. “By the end I absolutely hated it, passionately hated it you could say. And that was a real shame,” he said.
Those scars will never go away, but Eammon found something of an antidote with the Steelers, a team that gave him a space to fail and learn and improve, and gradually fall in love with sports again.
His experience is echoed by so many of his teammates, who speak candidly about their struggles with mental health and the salvation they’ve found with the club. For some – Eammon included – the Steelers has quite literally been a lifesaver.
“I got to the point where I wrote a goodbye note. That’s how low my depression had got,” he revealed. “And that was all a result of people’s words. They do have impact.”
Nearly three decades after it began the Steelers is a thriving, joyful celebration of masculinity in all its forms. And it’s no longer alone: there are now 80 gay and inclusive rugby clubs around the world, not to mention a bona fide gay rugby league.
But Israel Folau’s comments serve as an inescapable reminder of the homophobia that remains.
This painful truth underscores the whole documentary, which nonetheless manages to be a heartwarming success story, one Eammon hopes will serve as a vital counterpoint to the bigotry.
“Sportsmen and sportswomen, they’re like the modern day gladiators: they are role models in our society,” he said. “What they say and do matters because people do look up to them.
“I think the fact that that there aren’t many openly gay players in any league of professional sport for men just shows that we still do have a long way to go. And I hope that my film is one step towards where we need to be as a society.”
With The Sense of Brown, José Esteban Muñoz left a love-letter to brownness that acts as a dream for its desire. Extending to the minerals of the soil, to the animals, and to the people who bare its shade, it is an ode to a brown of rapturous multiplicity. A testament to those things that thrive under duress and thirst for excessive contact, the book fosters a Marxist militancy that he translates into Latina/o radical study. It acknowledges the incommensurability of brown itself, as a plural, dynamic site, wielding many names, and provokes a range of feelings. The text tells the story of an “identity-in-difference”, a phrase borrowed from Norma Alarcón, that sketches the details of an iridescent brown and cracks open standard definitions of brownness to include a myriad of “ethnic” backdrops.
The book begins with the notion of the brown commons, which is wild insofar as it describes a boundlessness that is not situated in individual identity, but something more expansive. Illustrative of an interconnectedness with all beings who suffer the strange fate of coming into the world as “brown”, it tells the story of a sacred solidarity between them. The theory practices a politics that is rooted in a Platonic proto-communism that tends towards alternative notions of kinship, imagined through a thriving undercommons. The work engages in a materialism that is influenced by the politics of race, resources, and the commonalities between them. The dominance of the template of the normative Human fades away, and the brown thing comes forth out of the shadows as something emotive, raw, and finally, at last, written.
Muñoz’s readings span a homosexual/social continuum that ties ethnicity to emotion, as it is an affectivity brought on by a shared sense of alterity. Queerness is felt as being in excess, a belonging and a failure to belong, which carves a space for those who are both brown and out at the same time. Consisting of equal parts ecstasy and melancholia, the brown outlaw is spoken and lived through artists like Nao Bustamante, Wu Tsang, Isaac Julien, Carmelita Tropicana, Tania Bruguera, Ana Mendieta, and José Feliciano, just to name a few. He colors them into the world of theory, and grants access to signatures and structures of feeling specific to being minoritarian within a complex web of interdependency.
The chapter “Chico, What Does It Feel Like to Be a Problem?” stands out as an urgent message for our current political landscape. It works to coalition build between the “black radical tradition” and brown liberation movements. With grace, Muñoz acknowledges these movements are not the same but have a shared sense of political aspiration. Invoking Brown Power’s modeling after Black Power, he braids the two together through shared dissident sentiments. These notions are essential for today’s movement concerning Black lives, as they model a continued practice of these groups supporting each other. Thinking through W.E.B. Du Bois, with agility and tact he addresses the communality of racial recognition and belonging in difference. For Du Bois, this feeling like a problem is in itself a mode of belonging, and for Muñoz, this feeling procures an opening, another way of relating in the alt-space of minoritarian becoming, with a built-in quasi-militant utopianism that lives and breathes otherwise.
This book enters the contemporary discourse of latinidad not without its complications. As of late, the area of study has never been more divided–between dark and light, brown and white, with a sharp focus on colorism and individual identity, which is a line of thinking that seems to move in opposition to what Muñoz seeks to drive forward with this book. As someone who is not the whitest brown person and not the brownest either, questions about these divisions continue to ruin my sleep. Not to invalidate contemporary discussions around the topic, I find Muñoz’s approach to be the more generative discourse regarding collective movement-building for achieving equity across race relations. Utilizing the work of theoreticians like Vijay Prashad and Wilfred Bion, Muñoz engages a global brownness that encompasses latinidad, but also reaches beyond it. I will admit, some of the language does have a dated tinge to it but keep in mind this posthumously published text has been in the works for the past decade and without his contemporary editorial eye for revision. There are so many questions I wish I could ask Muñoz, like about language choice when using the terms “African American” and “black” interchangeably throughout the text, especially when theories around these terms have been differentiated to mean different things and have also fused with latinidad by way of Afro-Latin scholarship. There is also the tense difference between the terms “Latina/o”, and the more recent (and also contentious) “Latinx” which he doesn’t employ in the text. Perhaps we can attribute this to the failure of the written to keep up with the spoken? Predictive of this problem, Muñoz addresses the issue of the unsatisfactory group identificatory term, saying that these terms themselves contribute to feeling brown, which he marks as inseparable from naming it. Given his mentioning of this, the text performs a discomfort with its own language, disidentifying with itself, as it strives to make known these difficulties and how they manifest in brown performance, how the words we have are still not enough. Despite the text’s time being somewhat out of joint, this book and Muñoz’s thoughts remain an arsenal full for any minoritarian subject who desires to understand and even love themselves, and their sense of being, more–a radical proposition.
The Sense of Brown
by José Esteban Muñoz
Duke University Press
Paperback, 978147801103, 185 pp.
October 2020
We write to you ahead of the United Nations Human Rights Committee’s upcoming review of the Republic of Malawi to highlight key areas of concern in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity that Human Rights Watch hopes will inform this aspect of the Committee’s consideration of the government of Malawi’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
This submission covers the lack of progress made on key concerns related to sexual orientation highlighted by the Committee during its last review of Malawi in 2014, including criminalisation of consensual adult same-sex sexual conduct, violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons, stigma and discrimination in access to health care services and responsibilities of the Malawi Human Rights Commission.
In 2018, Human Rights Watch documented the impact of Malawi’s Penal Code criminalising consensual same-sex relations and found that the punitive legal environment combined with social stigma allows police abuse to go unchecked and prevents many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people from reporting violence or accessing health care services.
Chapter XV of Malawi’s Penal Code, on “Offences Against Morality,” contains several provisions that criminalize adult consensual same-sex conduct. Section 153 provides that any person found guilty of committing an “unnatural offence /offence against the order of nature” is liable to 14 years in prison, with or without corporal punishment. Section 154 punishes attempted unnatural offences with seven years’ imprisonment, and section 156 punishes “gross indecency” between males with five years in prison, with or without corporal punishment. While these laws date back to British colonialism, former president Bingu wa Mutharika’s government enacted a new anti-homosexuality law in January 2011, amending the Penal Code to extend the crime of “gross indecency” to women. Section 137A provides that any female person who, whether in public or private, commits “any act of gross indecency with another female” shall be guilty of an offence and liable to a prison term of five years.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people face routine violence and discrimination in almost all aspects of their daily lives. Police often physically assault, arbitrarily arrest and detain them, sometimes without due process or a legal basis, at other times as punishment for simply exercising basic rights, including seeking treatment in health institutions. Several transgender individuals interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that the combination of criminalization of adult consensual same-sex conduct and social stigma has had an insidious effect on their individual self-expression, forcing them to adopt self-censoring behaviour because any suspicion of non-conformity may lead to violence or arrest.
The challenges facing LGBT people in Malawi have been further exacerbated by the lack of clarity and divergent opinions regarding the legality of a moratorium on arrests and prosecutions for consensual same-sex conduct acts, issued in 2012 by justice minister, Samuel Tembenu. In December 2015, the minister reaffirmed the moratorium but in 2016, Christian religious leaders were successful in getting the Mzuzu High Court to issue an order suspending the moratorium pending judicial review by the Constitutional Court.
This uncertainty encourages private individuals to attack LGBT people with impunity, while health providers frequently discriminate against them on the grounds of sexual orientation. Many interviewees, particularly gay men and transgender women, told Human Rights Watch that the lack of certainty about the moratorium on arrests and prosecutions, combined with routine discrimination and stigma in health care settings, creates barriers to seeking HIV services and treatment.
A constitutional review of section 153(a) of the Penal Code (referenced above), initiated in September 2013 before the High Court in Lilongwe, is still delayed on procedural grounds over seven years later, but remains a potential a path to decriminalizing consensual same-sex conduct in the country. And in 2017, thanks to pressure from some of the nation’s human rights groups, the Malawi’s Human Rights Commission relented from saying it would conduct a public inquiry “to inform the national position on the controversial issue of LGBTI,” to instead conducting a study on the rights of LGBT and intersex people in Malawi. The status of that study is unknown to Human Rights Watch.
Criminalization of adult consensual same sex conduct means that in practice police violate the rights of LGBT people with impunity, with transgender people—who draw the attention of police officers because of their gender non-conformity – apparently bearing the brunt of the violations. Criminalization also contributes to a climate of impunity for crimes committed against LGBT people by members of the public. In one of the cases documented by Human Rights Watch, police refused to open a case when a transgender man reported a burglary at a police station, instead, they threatened to arrest him on homosexuality charges. He was detained for several hours and only released after paying a bribe. Many other LGBT people told Human Rights Watch that they were afraid to report crimes to the police.
Malawi’s anti-homosexuality laws contravene several regional and international human rights treaties. The laws violate the right to non-discrimination, the right to equality before the law and equal protection of the law, and the right to privacy and contribute to violations of the right to liberty and security of the person, the right to the highest attainable standard of health, and the right to freedom of association. More detailed information can be found on Human Rights Watch’s LGBT page:
Criminalisation of adult consensual same sex conduct (ICCPR articles 2, 9, 17, 26)
Human Rights Watch urges the Committee to question the government of Malawi about decriminalisation of adult consensual same sex conduct:
What steps has the government of Malawi taken to clarify the legal standing of the moratorium of arrests for consensual same-sex conduct?
What steps has the government of Malawi taken to repeal sections 153, 156, 157 and 137A of the Penal Code that criminalize adult consensual same sex conduct?
What steps has the government of Malawi taken to repeal section 132 of the Penal Code and replace it with a gender-neutral definition of sexual assault including rape?
Has the government introduced a mechanism to monitor cases of violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex person, prosecute perpetrators and compensate victims?
What concrete measures has the government of Malawi taken to address unfair discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity?
Arbitrary arrest of LGBT people and equal protection of the law (ICCPR articles 9, 26)
Human Rights Watch urges the Committee to question the government of Malawi about protection of and prohibition of violence perpetrated against LGBTI individuals:
Has the government of Malawi issued clear directives to all police officers instructing them to respect the moratorium on arrests for consensual same-sex conduct pending repeal of the relevant provisions of the Penal Code and end arbitrary arrests and detention of LGBT individuals?
What steps has the government taken to establish human rights desks at police stations to provide a safe environment for LGBT persons to report police abuses and for complaints to be processed and investigated without delay?
Stigma and Discrimination in Access to Health Care Services (ICCPR article 17)
Human Rights Watch urges the Committee to question the government of Malawi about non-discriminatory access to health care services for LGBT persons:
Has the government of Malawi put in place measures to ensure the effective implementation of and compliance with national legislation that makes it unlawful to discriminate against anyone , including LGBT people, based on their HIV status?
Has the government of Malawi established sensitization programs on sexual orientation and gender identity for health care providers at all government hospitals and a complaints mechanism for individuals subjected to discrimination while seeking HIV services and treatment?
Roles and Responsibilities of the Malawi Human Rights Commission (ICCPR article 2)
Human Rights Watch urges the Committee to question the government of Malawi about the independence and responsibilities of the Human Rights Commission:
Does the Human Rights Commission monitor, investigate and publicly report on incidents of violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity?
What concrete steps has the Human Rights Commission taken to effectively implement the actions adopted at the March 2017 workshop hosted by the Network of African Human Rights Institutions? These actions include supporting strategic litigation efforts to uphold the rights of LGBT persons and conducting staff training on sexual orientation and gender identity issues.
What is the status of the Malawi’s Human Rights Commission’s study on the rights of LGBT and intersex people in Malawi that it committed to in 2017?
Administration of Justice (ICCPR article 14)
Human Rights Watch urges the Committee to question the government of Malawi about addressing the backlog of cases:
In order to finally resolve the question of legality of the moratorium on arrests and prosecutions for consensual homosexual acts and the constitutional validity of section 153 of the Penal Code, has the Supreme Court taken the necessary steps to expedite cases No. 22 of 2011, No. 411 of 2011 and No. 622 of 2011?