15 LGBT+ Syrian refugees are taking legal action against the UK’s Home Office as they claim that they have been abandoned by the refugee resettlement scheme.
The refugees—who live in Turkey—were accepted on the scheme two years ago but have yet to be resettled in the UK. They claim that their lives are in danger in Turkey due to rampant homophobia and transphobia, according to the Guardian.
Other refugees accepted on the scheme waited between three to five months to be relocated to the UK, the newspaper reported.
LGBT+ refugees say homophobia is rampant in Turkey
Refugees who spoke to the publication said that life in Turkey is extremely difficult and that homophobia is rampant. Some live in safe houses and are forced to live “double lives.”
They claim that their lives are in danger from strangers on the street and from their families, many of whom do not accept LGBT+ people.
“Ministers must urgently improve the speed and quality of decisions on asylum claims.”
One of the refugees said he knows somebody who has been waiting two years to be relocated under the refugee resettlement programme. He has been stabbed twice because of his sexual orientation.
They said they feel abandoned by the Home Office in the UK and live in daily fear of homophobic or transphobic attacks.
STR/AFP/Getty
Other refugees are waiting on the Home Office to make decisions on their claims for six months or more
The UK government introduced the Syrian Vulnerable Person Resettlement programme in 2015 with an intention to bring 20,000 Syrians into the UK for protection. The United Nation’s Refugee Agency assesses cases before referring them to the Home Office.
Despite this, many refugees have found themselves in limbo as they wait for the Home Office to meet their obligations and bring them to safety.
The refugees are being represented by Duncan Lewis solicitors. Sheroy Zaq, lead solicitor on the case, told PinkNews: “Our clients have already been accepted onto the resettlement scheme. As such, the Home Office is aware that they are vulnerable refugees, at heightened risk in Turkey.
“They have told us that they simply cannot wear a mask any longer; they want to be themselves, in public and in private. It is sincerely hoped that the UK takes heed of this request and acts with an element of urgency in ensuring that our clients are brought to the UK at the earliest possible opportunity.”
Refugee Action, a UK group that advocates for refugee rights, said in February that there was a record number of people waiting six months or more for the Home Office to make a decision on their applications for refuge.
The group’s chief executive Stephen Hale said: “Ministers must urgently improve the speed and quality of decisions on asylum claims.
“Ministers must also let people work, if no decision has been made on their claim after six months. This simple change would vastly improve the lives of the individuals and families currently forced to live in a constant state of anxiety and frustration.”
A soldier has detailed what happened to him after he was caught up in South Korea’s hunt for gay people in the military.
While same-sex activity is legal in the country, the military bans it under Article 92-6. The law says it is in order ‘to keep the military community sound’. However, South Korea has a mandatory two year draft for all able-bodied male citizens.
Those caught could be placed in prison for six months to two years.
An anonymous soldier told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that he faces legal action even after leaving the military because his relationship with another soldier was caught.
The 27-year-old told the site: ‘I worked very hard as an officer, but none of that mattered when I became a suspect.
‘There were days when I just wanted to die.’
A witch hunt since 2017
Authorities arrested 22 soldiers during a 2017 inquiry into homosexual activity in the army – including this soldier. They found messages on his partner’s phone.
Luckily, they charged him on his last month of service. This meant his case was transferred to a civilian court, where he was acquitted.
This makes him the first soldier charged under the military sodomy law to be found not guilty.
Prosecutors are appealing the decision, leaving him in legal and social limbo before his next hearing. This jeopardize his civilian job and his relationship with his family.
He added: ‘It is as if my entire existence was being denied. I should never have been charged… in the first place.’
A defense ministry official told AFP: ‘The ban needs to remain in place as it is required to maintain a sound and wholesome lifestyle and discipline in the military, which is a communal institution.’
Spain’s health minister has called for gay conversion therapy to be abolished.
It comes after a report in a national Spanish newspaper claimed that a branch of the Catholic Church near the capital, Madrid, offered to “cure” a reporter who was posing as a gay man trying to change his sexuality.
The article en El Diario says the man was advised, in a counselling session provided by the diocese. to stop watching porn and masturbate less.
But Spanish Health Minister, Maria Luisa Carcedo Roces, said such practices are illegal.
“They (the church) are breaking the law,” the minister told a press conference. “therefore, in the first instance, these courses have to be completely abolished.”
She went on to say that it was unfortunate that there are still pockets (of Spain) where people are told what their sexual orientation should be.”
What does the therapy consist of?
Conversion therapy is based on the belief that being gay, bisexual or transgender is a mental illness that can be cured. Methods can include hypnosis and electric shock treatment.
The practice is banned in the Madrid region, even if the recipient gives consent or not. Punishment can include fines of up to 45,000 euros.
In a statement on its website, the diocese of Alcala de Henares claimed the report was “fake news.”
But it also said that while it acknowledged the “respect and love due to all people”, it would offer help to “all those who freely request it.”
The website also recommends books including “How to Prevent Homosexuality: children and gender confusion”.
The health minister said that if the law continued to be broken then Spain’s Department of Justice would have to decide what action to take.
Other places that have banned conversion therapy include Ecuador, Malta and over a dozen US states.
An intersex woman in Russia said her landlord evicted her after police allegedly harassed her.
Olga Moskvitina lives in Makhachkala a city on the western shore of the Caspian Sea.
She said a plain clothed police officer forced his way into her apartment. This happened after her identity documents which showed she had a male name were published on social media.
People on social media left hateful comments including, ‘people like that should be killed’.
According to a report on news site Lenta, the policeman allegedly made Moskvitina strip naked and examined her genitals. He also interrogated her about her genitals and threatened to out her to locals so the could kill her.
Moskvitina tried to explain that she is in fact intersex, but cannot update her identity documents to reflect her intersex status. As a result she is forced to identify as trans.
After the incident at her apartment, Moskvitina’s landlord then evicted citing ‘such affairs’ as a reason.
While it not illegal to be trans in Russia, the LGBTI community faces high levels of discrimination, intimidation and violence. In 2013, Russian president Vladimir Putin introduced the ‘gay propaganda’ law. It prevented the positive portrayal of the LGBTI community in mass media.
GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, today called on the American Museum of Natural History to immediately cancel an upcoming event featuring Brazilian President and notorious anti-LGBTQ activist Jair Bolsonaro that’s to be held on the museum grounds. According to The Gothamist, the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce plans to hold a gala event to name Bolsonaro its “Person of the Year” at the Museum.
“It’s dangerous for a respected attraction like the American Museum of Natural History to provide a national platform for a foreign leader who is known for targeting and attacking marginalized communities, especially LGBTQ people,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, President and CEO of GLAAD. “Parents and current members of the Museum like me should not stand idly by while the Museum grants visibility to someone who supports the assault of young children just for potentially being LGBTQ. The Museum should re-examine serving as the home for Bolsonaro’s honor, and instead, send a message to LGBTQ Brazilians as well as its LGBTQ members by canceling the event.”
Brazilian President has a horrific and barbaric anti-LGBTQ record, and since his election last year, President Bolsonaro – like the Trump Administration – has systematically tried to eraseLGBTQ families from the fabric of Brazil. Just recently, President Bolsonaro even praised the anti-LGBTQ efforts made by President Trump and his administration since taking office in 2017 – a total of 103 attacks on LGBTQ Americans overall.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION: Anti-LGBTQ History of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro
Said he’d prefer his son die in an accident than be gay (Rough translation: “There are certain things that I say are as death. It would bring me disgust, would make me sad, and I even think that he, himself, would abandon me in that case. To me, it is death. And more: I’d rather he died in an accident than show up with some guy. To me, he really would have died.” Original interview, in Portuguese, can be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20110709235317/http://playboy.abril.com.br/entretenimento/entrevista/jair-bolsonaro/
Reiterated his preference for a dead son over a gay son: “I prefer, rather, a son run over by a convoy to a homosexual son. If my son were “gay,” he would be dead to me.”
Supported a father who beat his 8-year-old son to death for showing effeminate traits, suggesting that beating the child would have prevented him from being gay.
Has bragged that “if I see two men kissing on the street, I’m going to hit them.”
Said: “If a gay couple came to live in my building, my property will lose value. If they walk around holding hands, kissing, it will lose value! No one says that out of fear of being pinned as homophobe.”
Claimed LGBT rights activists wants to recruit children for sex: “They want to reach our children in order to turn the children into gay adults to satisfy their sexuality in the future. So these are the fundamentalist homosexual groups that are trying to take over society.”
Referred to a rival political party as “a party of dicks and faggots”.
Implied that President Dilma Rousseff is a lesbian, demanding that she “admit your love with homosexuals”.
Called Eleonora Menicucci, the Minister for Women’s Policy, “a big dyke”.
Said he’d “rather have a son who is an addict than a son who is gay”.
Said he does not have a gay child because his children are well educated.
Insisted gay parents sexually abuse their children: “I make a connection between homosexuality and pedophilia because many of the children who will be adopted by “gay” couples will be abused by these homosexual couples.”
A gay man from Chechnya with HIV who asked the Washington Blade not to reveal his identity was leaving a gay bar in Moscow on May 13, 2018, when a group of six men approached him and attacked him. A video from a nearby surveillance camera that he saved to his cell phone shows one of the men punching him in the face.
“He hit me right in the eye,” the man told the Blade on April 23 during an emotional interview in Dupont Circle. “People were standing right here.”
The man, who spoke to the Blade through a gay Russian friend who acted as an interpreter, said during the interview that doctors at a hospital and at a private eye clinic to where he was brought refused to treat him because of his HIV status. The man told the Blade he eventually “bumped into” an Armenian plastic surgeon who placed a titanium mesh around his injured eye ball a month after the attack.
“He caught up with me in the corridors of the hospital and he said what I see tells me that you absolutely need surgery and I can do it for you,” said the man. “He did it.”
The man had been living in Moscow for more than a year when the men attacked him. He flew to Miami on Nov. 10, 2018, and has been living in New York since last December.
“For the longest time, I didn’t want to move to the U.S. because I thought back in Russia I could lay low and disappear from society’s life and somehow the threat to my persona would evaporate overtime,” said the man. “That is why I moved from Chechnya to Moscow and I started experiencing how difficult it is to live outside of your own society.”
Chechnya ‘not safe for gay people’
Chechnya is a predominantly Muslim, semi-autonomous Russian republic in the North Caucasus.
Novaya Gazeta, an independent Russian newspaper, in 2017 reported Chechen authorities had arrested more than 100 men because of their sexual orientation. The Russian LGBT Network, a Russian advocacy group, in January said at least two people have been killed and upwards of 40 people have been detained in the latest anti-LGBTI crackdown in Chechnya that began shortly after the man with whom the Blade spoke arrived in the U.S.
A report the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a Vienna-based group of which the U.S. is a member, released late last year documents extrajudicial killings and other human rights abuses against LGBTI Chechens. President Trump has not publicly condemned the crackdown, but the State Department in January described the reports over additional arrests and deaths as “deeply disturbing.”
The man with whom the Blade spoke said he “stopped going to Chechnya” two years ago because he had begun to receive death threats.
He said he closed his business in Grozny, the Chechen capital. The man added the rest of his family remains in Chechnya.
“It’s not safe for gay people,” he said. “In Chechen society, the topic of sex in general is a taboo. Therefore gay people in Chechen society are never accepted and completely rejected.”
“There are countries in this world where gay people are persecuted, but in these countries’ case the society admits the fact that they have gay people amongst them,” added the man. “Chechnya is the only place on earth that completely rejects the whole fact of the possible existence of gay people.”
Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, a close Kremlin ally who is among the Chechen officials sanctioned by the U.S., in 2017 said during an interview with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” his republic doesn’t “have any gays.” Russian President Vladimir Putin has either downplayed or dismissed the reports about the anti-LGBTI crackdown in Chechnya.
The Kremlin’s LGBTI rights record, which includes a 2013 law that bans so-called gay propaganda to minors, and Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, continue to spark criticism around the world. The man with whom the Blade spoke said he felt targeted in Moscow because he is gay and Chechen.
“The problem is the threat to life is not just inside Chechnya,” he said. “It travels all over the Russian Federation and beyond into other countries of the world where the Chechen diaspora exists.”
The man with whom the Blade spoke said he was afraid to report any threats he received to the police because it would be “like committing suicide for us.” He also said he was afraid to reach out to LGBTI activists in Moscow and elsewhere, in part, because he was worried other Chechens would learn about him.
“We Chechens are afraid of other Chechens the most,” the man said.
The gay man from Chechnya with HIV with whom the Washington Blade spoke in D.C. on April 23, 2019, currently lives in New York. (Photo by Daniel Schwen; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
The man said a man in New York who is associated with RUSA LGBT, a group of LGBTI Russian speakers and their supporters, began to send “uncontrolled threats” to him after he criticized him for an “offensive and racist” Facebook post that he also described as xenophobic.
He said RUSA LGBT banned him from their event at a gay bar in Manhattan and sent him a cease and desist letter, which he claims is not valid, on April 12 that he showed to the Blade. Yelena Goltzman, founder and co-president of RUSA LGBT, in a lengthy statement denied the man’s allegations.
“The cease and desist letter was, in fact, sent to one of the people in the conflict on the advice of the attorney and the police who were called to the scene after his fourth unprovoked and unwelcomed visit to the workplace of RUSA LGBT’s co-president and as a consequence of his unrelenting harassment on social media,” Goltzman told the Blade on Tuesday.
Goltzman said Facebook “took down his posts about RUSA LGBT and warned him of further consequences.”
“Despite this, he continues to slander and harass RUSA LGBT leaders,” she said. “Unfortunately, we see the information he provided to you may further advance his harassment and slander against our group.”
Goltzman on Wednesday in a follow-up text message to the Blade said the man who the asylum seeker has accused of harassing him “is not a volunteer or a leader of RUSA LGBT and does not represent RUSA LGBT in any way.” The man with whom the Blade spoke on April 23 continues to dispute RUSA LGBT’s claims against him.
In the meantime, his asylum interview took place on Monday in New York. The man told the Blade he hopes “to realize my dream of being free and equal among equals, a worthy citizen and partner” if he were to receive asylum in the U.S.
“I know that in this country I can do this,” he said. “I hope that in the United States law, order and society will not allow any discrimination or threats against me from anyone, regardless of their position in society.”
“I want to start a new life in which there will be no place for xenophobia, transphobia, HIV stigma, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism from anyone,” added the man.
Association Shams, a notable LGBTI rights group in Tunisia, is facing closure after a legal challenge by the government.
Shams have condemned the move, describing it as discriminatory and ‘judicial harassment’ by the government.
The group has been operating in Tunisia since 2013 and is one of the most prolific LGBTI rights organizations in the Arabic world.
Shams say this is the seventh time the government has been tried to shut them down. Though the authorities failed to do so in a 2016 lawsuit, they are currently appealing the decision.
A hearing is set for Friday (3 May), which could determine the future of the group.
The group says that in this occasion is more serious as the authorities are invoking Shira law in their appeal.
Tunisia maintains laws prohibiting male homosexual sex. Despite this, the country also has a thriving LGBTI community.
‘The judicial harassment against our association has no legal basis’
The government claims that Shams’ operations violates the Law on Associations.
They argue that the Shams’ objective to protect sexual minorities goes against ‘Tunisian society’s Islamic values, which reject homosexuality and prohibit such alien behavior’.
The authorities also say that since there is a law banning homosexuality, allowing LGBTI rights group such as Shams to operate freely goes against the law.
Mounir Baatour, the president of Association Shams, hit out at the government’s latest legal challenge.
‘The judicial harassment against our association has no legal basis and reflects the homophobia of the Tunisian state and its will to discriminate and stigmatize the LGBT community, which is already marginalized,’ Baatour told the Guardian.
‘Such harassment makes our work difficult and creates a climate of tension and fear among the team working for our association.’
Reversing Tunisia’s anti-sodomy law
Shams is working to reverse Article 230 of Tunisia’s Penal Code of 1913. People convicted of sodomy face up to three years of imprisonment under the law.
The group registered with the government in 2015, as an organization supporting sexual and gender minorities.
Though the government filed a complaint about the group in 2016. A court ordered Shams to suspend activity for 30 days.
However, the court later lifted the suspension and ruled that Shams was not violating the law.
Though the authorities’ attempts to clamp down on LGBTI activists, Tunisia’s LGBTI scene is thriving.
The country’s four officially recognized LGBTI organizations all emerged following the 2011 revolution.
In January last year, the country’s first LGBTI film festival was hosted in capital city, Tunis. The festival was organized LGBTI rights organization Mawjoudin (We Exist).
However, Shams reports that the number of people arrested under Article 230 increased significantly in 2018.
The groups said that 127 arrests were made last year, compared with 79 in 2017. There have been at least 22 arrests this year.
Men have also reportedly experienced degrading treatment while in custody.
A group of trans women has realized its dream and will open their own hotel in Kerala, India.
The women planned to open the hotel called Hotel Ruchimudra in the state capital of Kochi in south east India.
Aditi Achuth, Saya Mathew, Preethi Alexander, Pranav, Ragaranjini and Meenakshi received US$14,320 in local government funding to set up the hotel.
The six women decided to start their own business to help promote a more positive representation of trans people in Kerala.
‘The major aim of ‘Ruchimudra’ is to change the negative attitude of the society towards transgenders,’ she told Mathrubhumi.
Along with the local government funding, the women also received funding from a charity. But the funding only covered some of the renovation costs of the four storey building. So the women decided to complete a lot of the work themselves in order to save money.
The building will house the hotel along with other support services for trans people. Those services will include counseling, office co-working space, shelter and yoga.
Kerala is one of the most progressive states in India when it comes to trans issues.
Graphic new evidence has emerged of the torture of gay men at the hands of authorities in Chechnya. The new evidence comes from the most recent crackdown of the LGBTI community.
Earlier this year new reports revealed Chechnya had conducted another round up of LGBTI people in its ‘gay purge’. Authorities rounded up about 40 people and detained them at the Grozny Internal Affairs Department in the region’s capital. Two people died as a result of torture.
Chechnya, a Russian federal subject in the Northern Caucasus, began its ‘gay purge’ in 2017. It is a highly conservative majority-Muslim society and homosexuality is generally viewed as severely tainting family honor.
But a new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) revealed the accounts of four men detained. The men were detained between three and 20 days. Police officials kicked them with booted feet, beat them sticks and polypropylene pipes. Three of them were tortured with electric shocks. One was raped with a stick.
First hand accounts
‘They screamed at me. One of them started kicking me, I dropped to the floor, flat on my stomach… Another one then beat me with a stick, from the waist down, he was hitting me very hard for some five minutes,’ said Anzor*, 29.
‘Then they made me kneel on the floor and put metal clips on my thumbs [the wires were hooked to a device delivering electric shocks], he turned the knob [of the device], first slowly and then faster and faster… With every turn, my hands bounced up and excruciating pain went through them…
‘He stopped when I screamed my heart was about to burst. They took the clips off and my hands were heavy and felt dead.’
Anzor described how police beat and humiliated him and Aslanbek in front of the other inmates:
‘They were three or five [police], I don’t quite recall but one of them, Maga, had a stick with a black handle,’ he said.
‘They yelled, “Where are the pansies?” [and] began to humiliate us, verbally, using obscene words, calling us fags, asking which one of us is active, which one passive, whether we derived pleasure [from having sex with a man].
‘And all the inmates were watching… They hit [us] on the head with their sticks… Then, they left but another three officers walked in.
‘They were coming in groups for a long time – smaller groups and bigger groups…[T]hey entertained themselves by mocking us, beating us.’
The other men described being deprived of food and water, with some chained to radiators in blacked-out rooms.
Family honor killings
They all said police interrogated them under torture. Police also demanded they identify other gay men in their social circles, in some cases showing them photographs. Police seized the detainees’ cell phones for the same purpose.
One man said the police handed him over to his family, exposing his sexual orientation and indirectly encouraging his family members to kill him. Some of those interviewed said this happened in at least two other cases. In at least three cases, police demanded large sums of money for the men’s release.
Impunity sanctions torture
‘There wasn’t anything remotely resembling an effective investigation into the anti-gay purge of 2017, when Chechen police rounded up and tortured dozens of men they suspected of being gay,’ said Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
‘Impunity for the 2017 anti-gay purge has sanctioned a new wave of torture and humiliation in Chechnya.’
Three of the men said the police shaved off their beards and hair or forced inmates to shave each other’s heads.
Police officers also humiliated them by probing into the details of their lives, using homophobic slurs, exposing them as gay to other inmates, and forcing them to undress. Police also forced several of the presumed gay inmates to clean the toilet and wash floors and doors along a corridor, making it clear to them and the other inmates that the gay detainees were given ‘women’s work’ as a form of humiliation.
Chechen denials
Chechen authorities have continued to deny reports of the new wave of persecution.
‘This is an absolute lie… There were no detentions on grounds of sexual orientation in the indicated periods in the Chechen Republic,’ said presidential spokesperson, Alvi Karimov, in January.
Human rights groups and LGBTI advocates have called on Russian authorities to speak out or act against the ‘gay purge’. But Russian authorities have not commented on the allegations nor investigated.
In May 2018, Russia’s justice minister, Aleksander Konovalov, told the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC): ‘The investigations that we carried out… did not confirm evidence of rights’ violations, nor were we even able to find representatives of the LGBT community in Chechnya.’
International outcry has continued over Chechnya’s actions. In November 2018, 16 participating states of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) invoked the “Moscow Mechanism”. They also appointed a rapporteur to look into allegations of abuses in Chechnya.
In March, 30 countries supported a joint statement at the UNHRC. The statement expressed deep concern about reports of the persecution and called for a thorough and impartial investigation.
‘Russian authorities should immediately investigate the new wave of torture and humiliation by the Chechen police of men they believe to be gay and, finally, carry out an effective investigation into the purge of 2017,’ Denber said.
‘The investigations should be conducted at the federal level with security guarantees provided to victims and witnesses who come forward, and their families. Otherwise, we can expect further episodes of this depraved abuse.’
Following global condemnation, Brunei has announced it will not enforce the death penalty as a punishment for gay sex.
The small country in Southeast Asia was met with a great deal of criticism after announcing on 3 April that it will uphold Sharia Law. With this, they would be punishing sodomy, adultery, and rape with death, including by stoning. Numerous corporations, governments, rights groups, and high-profile individuals like Richard Branson, Sir Elton John, and George Clooney have come out against Brunei’s new law.
Backtracking
Now, the nation’s Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah has backtracked. He stated that the death penalty would not be enforced in the implementation of the Syariah Penal Code Order (SPCO).
Crimes such as trafficking and premeditated murder are already punished by the death penalty in Brunei. However, the country has not carried out an execution since the 1990s, according to the Independent. Interestingly, a UN report states that the nation hasn’t executed anyone since 1957.
‘I am aware that there are many questions and misperceptions [sic] with regard to the implementation of the SPCO. However, we believe that once these have been cleared, the merit of the law will be evident,’ Sultan Bolkiah said in a statement ahead of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan.
‘As evident for more than two decades, we have practiced a de facto moratorium on the execution of death penalty for cases under the common law. This will also be applied to cases under the SPCO, which provides a wider scope for remission.’
In a unique turn of events, the Sultan’s office released a full English translation of his speech. This is not something the nation of Brunei commonly does.
‘Both the common law and the Syariah [sic] law aim to ensure peace and harmony of the country,’ the Sultan said. ‘They are also crucial in protecting the morality and decency of the country as well as the privacy of individuals.’
Anything else?
The Independent reports that Brunei has signed the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. However, it has not yet been ratified in the nation.
Under internationally-recognized human rights law, all forms of corporal punishment (including stoning, whipping, and amputation) are barred.
