Emma Powys Maurice

The number of homophobic hate crime reports in the UK has tripled and the number of transphobic hate crime reports has quadrupled over the last six years, shocking new figures reveal. Data obtained by Vice World News shows there were 6,363 reports of hate crimes based on sexual orientation in 2014-15, the year same-sex weddings became legal in the UK, compared to 19,679 in 2020-21 – a total increase of 210 per cent. For reports of transphobic hate crimes, there were 598 in 2014-15 and 2,588 in 2020-21, representing a rise of 332 per cent. Only ten out of the 45 UK […]

The High Court of Namibia has granted citizenship to the son of a gay couple after a long, arduous fight. Namibian Phillip Luhl and his Mexican husband, Guillermo Delgado, fought for years to have their son Yona Luhl-Delgado recognised as a legal Namibian citizen. Yona was born via surrogacy in South Africa in 2019 but Namibian authorities initially refused to accept the birth certificate, insisting on a DNA test to prove a biological link to his father. On Wednesday (13 October) High Court judge Thomas Masuku finally ruled that a paternity test is not needed to prove that Yona is their son, […]

South Africa’s LGBT+ community are demanding justice for a lesbian whose alleged murderer gloated about removing a “curse” from her family. Sisanda Gumede, 28, was stabbed in the Umbumbulu area, south of Durban, on Sunday evening (26 September). She was rushed to a hospital but tragically died en route. Police spokesperson colonel Thembeka Mbele said the killer’s motivation is still unknown. According to Nonhlanhla Khoza, a politician serving in the Department of Social Development, the suspect is thought to be one of the young lesbian woman’s own relatives. “Although the information regarding the incident violently is still sketchy, it appears […]

The UK has been singled out for its “baseless and concerning” anti-trans rhetoric in a damning report on rising hate against LGBT+ people in Europe. The extensive report was published by the Council of Europe, the continent’s leading human rights organisation, on Tuesday (21 September). It describes “a marked increase” in anti-LGBT+ hate speech and hate crime and condemns “with particular force the extensive and often virulent attacks” on LGBT+ rights in the UK, which is named alongside Hungary, Poland, Turkey and the Russian Federation. The council notes that these attacks “deliberately mis-characterise the fight for the equality of LGBTI people as […]

The Ugandan government has made the absurd, offensive claim that some LGBT+ asylum seekers fleeing the country are merely faking their sexuality to live in Western nations. Homosexuality is illegal and punishable by life imprisonment in Uganda, which has some of the strictest anti-LGBT+ laws in the world. Most queer Ugandans survive by staying under the radar, and many who manage to escape fear death if they return. Yet foreign minister general Jeje Odongo cast doubt on the legitimacy of queer asylum claims by pointing out that many male gay asylum seekers have wives and children. “These Ugandans who went out on […]

A Moscow man was abducted and taken to Chechnya where he was interrogated for information on LGBT+ activists, the Russian LGBT Network reports. On Wednesday (25 August), the group said that a Dagestan native named Ibragim Selimkhanov was approached by four Chechen-speaking men near a subway station in the city’s Novogireyevo District on 15 May. The men, who were wearing civilian clothes, forced him into a car and took his passport, phone and apartment keys. He was driven to the airport and ordered onto a plane which took him to the Chechen capital of Grozny. On arrival he was handed […]