Switzerland has taken a major step on the path to equality after its parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of a law to pass same-sex marriage.
The council of states – the upper house of Switzerland’s legislature – voted by by 22 votes to 15 to approve landmark legislation to make same-sex marriage a reality. Just seven politicians abstained from the vote.
It’s a huge moment for a country that has lagged behind most of Europe when it comes to LGBT+ rights, and is the culmination of a seven-year campaign.
“We have been waiting for this for seven years,” Olga Baranova of the Marriage For All campaign told Le Temps. “The emotions are very strong.”
The bill first introduced by the Green Party in 2013, and several versions of the text have since been debated. One of the central questions was whether a constitutional change was required to make it happen or whether a change of law would be enough.
Article 14 of Switzerland’s constitution states that “the right to marry and to have a family is guaranteed.” Those in favour of a legal change argued there was no need to change this because it already accommodates marriages of any kind.
The majority council of states agreed and rejected a motion that would have required a nationwide constitutional referendum on marriage equality, which would have delayed the law even further.
The push for equality was helped in part by progressive parties’ electoral gains in October that shifted parliament more to the left.
It’s been a long time coming for the Swiss LGBT+ community, whose conservative country has been slow to enact positive change: the first law banning LGBT+ discrimination only passed as recently as this February.
It’s not the end of the road though, and the next battle will concern LGBT+ couples’ access to sperm donors.
While the vast majority of Swiss people are now in favour of same-sex marriage, the debate around insemination remains controversial and is likely to be the subject of a national referendum.
The Dutch government has apologized to transgender people for previously mandating surgeries, including sterilization, as a prerequisite for legal gender recognition. During a Cabinet meeting this week, government officials also announced plans to compensate people who underwent the operations.
This outcome is good news following years of activism demanding the government acknowledge the harm the country’s sterilization law caused trans people in The Netherlands. In 2013, the Council of Europe called for an end to mandatory sterilization for trans people in member states. A 2014 revision to the Dutch law rolled back the sterilization requirement that had been in place since 1985. This provision had mandated that trans people desiring to change their gender on identification documents had to submit to surgery. The revision allowed for legal gender change through administrative processes.
In 2011, Human Rights Watch documented what it was like for trans people in the Netherlands to live under the mandatory sterilization law. “My wish is to live as a woman, and to be treated and accepted as a woman by others,” said one trans woman. “I am lucky with my body, for me it’s possible to live as a woman without surgery and without hormones. Why then should I subject myself to a surgeon’s scalpel?”
Accessible and transparent legal gender recognition procedures, based on an individual’s self-declaration, are increasingly common around the world. The Netherlands is now taking the next step of apologizing for and compensating those who endured medical harms.
During the cabinet’s formal apology, Ingrid van Engelshoven, the country’s Minister of Education, Culture and Science, said, “the law turned out to be a symbol of social rejection for many, and dreams have been lost as a result of the irreversible sterilization,” and law minister Sander Dekker said “[t]he old law could give transgender people a hard, almost impossible choice.”
The Netherlands’ apology should demonstrate to other countries that acknowledging past harms is part and parcel of providing redress to individuals harmed by coercive and discriminatory laws.
The only NHS gender clinic for under-18s has stopped referring transgender youth for puberty blockers following a High Court ruling.
The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, which runs youth gender clinic GIDS, has confirmed that no new referrals will be made to endocrinology services until there is more “clarity” on the situation following the judgment on Tuesday (December 1).
A spokesperson confirmed that no current GIDS patients who take puberty blockers have been contacted yet, due to the a stay on implementation for the time being.
“The court has ruled that there will be a stay on implementation of its judgment until the later of 22 December or the determination of any appeal,” they said.
“This will give us a chance to work through the specific implications of the judgment for different patient groups with our partners, University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust.
“We will not be making new referrals to endocrinology until we have more clarity.”
GIDS has published a Q&A for current patients to help ease the uncertainty around the judgment. For those currently taking puberty blockers or HRT, GIDS says “they will be in touch with you once more detail is known to let you know what will happen with regard to your care”.
The verdict came in a case brought by Keira Bell, 23, and the mother of a trans teen. It argued that under-16s cannot give informed consent to puberty blockers, a reversible, “life-saving” treatment that prevents trans kids from going through the wrong puberty.
Transgender under-16s must now understand the nature and implications of puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and the likelihood of having gender-affirming surgery before they can be deemed to give their informed consent to blockers, the High Court has ruled.
LGBTQ rights groups have weighed in on the political crisis in Cuba sparked by the hunger strike of the San Isidro Movement, a group of dissident activists, and the protest in front of the Culture Ministry on Nov. 27 where hundreds of people demanded the government respect the rights of artists and citizens.
La Plataforma 11M, an independent LGBTI+ collective, in a short statement it published this Saturday backed “the initiative of the group of young intellectuals and artists” to go protest at the Culture Ministry, “under the conviction that dialogue is the way forward to guarantee freedom of speech and artistic creation in Cuba.”
Vice Culture Minister Fernando Rojas received the protesters and met with them until the early hours of Saturday.
The demands the protesters presented to Rojas include the right to freedom of speech and artistic creation, among other points. They asked for an end to harassment and censorship against the independent artistic and intellectual community and that the government respect due process against Denis Solís, a rapper who was sentenced to 8 months in prison for “disrespect.”
His incarceration prompted several San Isidro Movement members to go on a hunger and thirst strike. They demanded the rapper’s release during the several days they spent holed up in the group’s headquarters until the police removed them this past Thursday. The majority of them, including Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, one of its principal leaders, have ended their strike since then.
The “disrespect” for which Solis was prosecuted was recorded live on Facebook and it included various anti-gay insults. He later apologized to the LGBTI+ community for these outbursts in the last video available on his profile.
“We strongly reject any homophobic and misogynist speech,” said La Plataforma 11M’s statement that also noted its members remain opposed to violence.
11M in its statement also said that “freedom of speech, within the system of socialist law, is a basic element for the defense of socialism’s achievements and collective social progress.”
“Q de Cuir”, a digital publication that focuses on LGBTI+ activism, also spoke about the case in an editorial published this Nov. 24. The magazine urges the government to “respond to the San Isidro Movement situation from a position other than intransigence and violence.”
“Q de Cuir”‘s editorial declares it does not share “the political perspective expressed by Denis Solís” and rejected his “homophobic and misogynist speech.”
“They are elements that we cannot ignore and they are not insignificant to us, because LGBTIQ+ people and even women remain inferior and excluded in the idea of a country that Denis raises in his video,” said “Q de Cuir.”
The text, however, defends the right to receive “due process under the law.”
“The dissidence of thought cannot be perceived as a threat to the construction of our social experiment; but rather as a necessary scenario to generate better realities through dialogue, participation, respect of human rights and the protection of marginalized groups in society,” it concluded.
Lidia Romero Moreno, a lesbian activist who is a member of La Plataforma 11M, has a position that is similar to that of “Q de Cuir.”
“I don’t sympathize with the San Isidro Movement, but I do respect what they are doing. Everyone has the right to freely express themselves. The Cuban Constitution guarantees us this right,” Romero told Tremenda Nota.
The activist was among the protesters who protested at the Culture Ministry.
“I am here because I think that everyone has the right to have our representatives and leaders listen to them, regardless of their ideological and political position,” she said.
Yasmín Portales, an LGBTI+ activist who is also a member of La Plataforma 11M and the former coordinator of Proyecto Arcoíris, a one-time group of activists who defined themselves as “anti-capitalist,” told Tremenda Nota that she does not support the San Isidro Movement, although she feels that “the Cuban government has mishandled the situation through its legal framework and even appearances” with regard to its treatment of this group of dissident activists.
“I cannot empathize with people who have not put forth any political proposal aside from confronting Cuban authorities and whose expression reveals gentlemanly homophobia and machismo,” said Portales.
A group of young university students on Sunday organized a rally in support of the government in the face of the ongoing political crisis and in response to the Culture Ministry protest. The gathering took place in Trillo Park in Centro Habana. President Miguel Díaz-Canel arrived during the middle of it.
The event was called a “tángana,” a word frequently used in Cuba decades ago to refer to street protests, especially those that took place against the Machado dictatorship during the Revolution of 1933.
At least one LGBTI+ group, the TransCuba Network, which is affiliated with the National Center for Sexual Education, participated in the “tángana.” Speakers at various points alluded to the rights of the gay, lesbian and transgender community, a tricky issue for the Cuban revolution and a particularly controversial one because of the forced labor camps that operated in Cuba in the mid-1960s.
“There were many (trans) girls there who were supporting the activities that have taken place in recent days because of the amount of provocation,” TransCuba Coordinator Malú Cano told Tremenda Nota.
Raúl Escalona, president of the University Students Federation in the University of Havana’s School of Communications, was one of the organizers of the Trillo Park event. Escalona was also one of the speakers who referred to the LGBTI+ community from the “tángana” podium.
“If we must all be clear about something, from the country’s highest leadership to every last citizen, it is that if the revolutionary radical left does not lead the LGBTI+ movement’s struggle, reaction will hegemonize it.”
Yasmín Portales noted to Tremenda Nota that this idea “is profoundly reductionist and a bit homophobic because it assumes an identity trait defines a person’s ideological position.”
“No human group can be capitalized by this political line or another, because people have the ability to discern and choose the political proposal that suits us best,” said the activist.
South Australia has finally abolished the ‘gay panic’ defence for violent crimes, becoming the last state in Australia to do so.
It is officially called the provocation defence or the ‘homosexual advance defence’. The accused can use it downgrade charges of murder to manslaughter when they claim to have become violent upon finding out a victim’s sexuality or gender identity.
The ‘gay panic’ defence is set to be banned in South Australia (Envato Elements)
South Australia has finally abolished the ‘gay panic’ defence for violent crimes, becoming the last state in Australia to do so.
It is officially called the provocation defence or the ‘homosexual advance defence’. The accused can use it downgrade charges of murder to manslaughter when they claim to have become violent upon finding out a victim’s sexuality or gender identity.
The accused may also claim temporary insanity due to ‘gay panic’ to reduce sentences for other violent crimes.
A petition was signed more than 38,000 times urging the government to repeal the legislation allowing the ‘gay panic’ defence.
Equality Australia & South Australian Rainbow Advocacy Alliance started the petition, aimed at Vickie Chapman, attorney general of South Australia.
Vickie Chapman told the state parliament: “The defence has been criticised for being complex, gender-biased and for encouraging victim-blaming.
“Notwithstanding the offence was rarely successful in this context, its operation is offensive and unacceptable.”
South Australia was the first state in Australia to decriminalise homosexuality in 1975
All other Australian states and territories have reformed their laws to abolish the ‘gay panic’ defence. Victoria passed a bill in 2005, followed by Western Australia in 2008 and Queensland in 2017. However, Queensland’s reform still includes a clause which allows the defence in exceptional circumstances, as determined by a magistrate.
New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory have all reformed their laws to stipulate that non-violent sexual advances of any kind are not a valid defence. This effectively banned the ‘gay panic’ defence.
Four defendants have used this defence in the last ten years. Michael Lindsay famously used the defence in 2011 for the murder of Andrew Negre, who he stabbed and killed in Adelaide. Despite an appeal and a retrial, the court found him guilty of murder in 2016.
Between 1993 and 1995, at least 13 defendants successfully used the ‘gay panic’ defence in New South Wales alone.
Some US states are also moving to outlaw the legal defence, with Colorado becoming the 11th state to do so in July. Previously, there have been attempts to ban the defence in federal law, but all proposed bills thus far have failed.
The Human Rights Law Centre recommended that South Australia abolish the defence in 2018.
The Dutch government on Tuesday issued a formal apology to transgender and intersex citizens who were required to undergo sterilization surgeries to legally change their gender and agreed to compensate some of those who underwent the procedures.
The law, which was in place from 1985 to 2014, mandated that trans and intersex people had to undergo sterilization surgeries to change their official gender registration. The government agreed to pay 5,000 euros to about 2,000 trans people who had the sterilization surgeries.
This comes after years of work by activists who demanded the government acknowledge the harm caused by the law.
The Dutch Cabinet — specifically Education, Culture and Science Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven and Law Minister Sander Dekker — issued the apology.
“The law turned out to be a symbol of social rejection for many, and dreams have been lost as a result of the irreversible sterilization,” van Engelshoven said in the apology.
“Such a violation of physical integrity is no longer imaginable today,” Dekker added in a statement.
Annelies Tukker of the NNID Foundation, a Dutch intersex advocacy group, welcomed the apology.
“Naturally, we are pleased that the Dutch government has recognized the importance of the right to bodily integrity and the harm this law caused,” Tukker told the Washington Blade in an emailed statement. “Transgender and intersex people deserve to be recognized by states for who they are, without the requirement to undergo unnecessary medical interventions. The inclusion of intersex people who were affected by this law is an important step.”
“Most intersex people identify with the gender in which they grew up. However, this is not the case for all, and they have been affected by this law,” added Tukker. “For the future, more legal changes are necessary to protect intersex children. Throughout the world, intersex children are still subjected to unnecessary medical interventions to change their sex characteristics when they are too young to decide for themselves. For the future, it is crucial that their right to bodily integrity and to make their own choices will also be recognized.”
Cianán Russell, senior policy advisor for ILGA Europe, also applauded the apology.
“Another state not only acknowledging that forced sterilization for legal gender recognition is torture, but being responsible for the past,” they said on Wednesday in a series of tweets. “All trans people deserve access to justice which must always mean #LGR based on self-determination AND reparations for those who were not trusted by governments in the past to know who we are. This is the future.”
A far right anti-LGBTQ “pro-family” lawmaker responsible for drafting Hungary’s pro-Christian constitution that bans same-sex marriage was arrested fleeing an all-gay sex party in Belgium that violated Brussels’ coronavirus lockdown.
Hungarian politician József Szájer, 59, resigned as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Sunday, after his arrest Friday, The Daily Beast reports. According to reports he was carrying a backpack with narcotics – ecstasy – which he denies.
Officers burst into the ground floor of a bar on Rue des Pierres in the Belgian capital on Friday night to discover alcohol, drugs and what has been described as “a party of legs in the air,” Belgian newspaper La Dernière Heure (DH) reported, with a source claiming: “We interrupted a gang bang!”
Reports say about 20 people or more were involved at the event, held above the gay bar and near a police station. Neighbors had called to complain about the noise.
Hungary protects the institution of marriage between man and woman, a matrimonial relationship voluntarily established, as well as the family as the basis for the survival of the nation,” reads the 2011 constitution he co-wrote. It is subtitled, “God Bless Hungarians.”
Szájer has been an elected official for three decades, since 1990. He also once served as party leader of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s far right populist Christian nationalism Fidesz party.
Germany’s government has approved legislation that will offer €3,000 in compensation for gay military personnel who have experienced discrimination.
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Germany’s defence minister, said: “I know that we can’t make up for the personal injustice they suffered but, with the lifting of verdicts and the payment of lump-sum compensation, we want to send a signal of redress.”
The new legislation aims to “restore the dignity of these people who wanted nothing other than to serve Germany”, according to Kramp-Karrenbauer.
The legislation still requires paliamentary approval, but Kramp-Karrenbauer is optimistic about getting the support of lawmakers. She hopes to “rehabilitate and compensate those affected next year”.
The ministry previously commissioned a study and found “systemic discrimination” in the military from 1955 to 2000. This included both West Germany’s military, the Bundeswehr, and the military of reunited Germany from 1990.
The study found that homosexuality was “viewed as a security risk in the Bundeswehr until the turn of the millennium and made a career as an officer or non-commissioned officer impossible”.
The new legislation will also cover victims of discrimination in East Germany’s National People’s Army. Kramp-Karrenbauer said this was “an important signal” because 2020 marks 30 years since the reunification of Germany.
The government will offer €3,000 in compensation to personnel who received military court verdicts for consensual gay sex. Soldiers who were dismissed, denied for promotions or put under investigation will also be eligible for compensation.
In September, Kramp-Karrenbauer apologised to those who suffered discrimination.
The defence minister said: “I very much regret the practice of discrimination against homosexuals in the Bundeswehr, which stood for the policy of that time. I apologize to those who suffered because of it.”
This comes after the UK Ministry of Defence apologised for similar policies in January. However, the UK has not yet introduced an official compensation scheme for those dismissed from the military on grounds of their sexual orientation.
More than 150 people have sought compensation in the UK, though its thought the true number affected is likely to run into the thousands.
Rudolf Scharping, previously Germany’s defence minister, ended official discrimination in 2000 after an officer took a legal case to Germany’s highest court having been removed from his position. Scharping stated: “Homosexuality does not constitute grounds for restrictions in terms of assignment or status.”
A constitutional amendment before the Hungarian Parliament would effectively ban LGBTQ people from adopting, drawing the ire of human rights activists.
Draft language submitted to parliament this month by Justice Minister Judit Varga states that children must be raised “in accordance with the values based on our homeland’s constitutional identity and Christian culture.”
“The basis for family relations is marriage,” it reads in part. “The mother is a woman, the father is a man.”
Under the amendment, only opposite-sex married couples would be eligible to adopt children, with exceptions made on a case-by-case basis by Minister of Family Affairs Katalin Novák. The bill effectively bans gay couples, single people and unmarried straight couples from adopting.
It also asserts that the government “protects children’s right to the gender identity they were born with.”
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Brussels on July 17, 2020.John Thys / Pool via Reuters, file
LGBTQ advocates view the proposals, which are expected to pass next month, as yet another assault by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s right-wing party, Fidesz, which has been in power since 2010 and maintains a two-thirds majority in Parliament.
A new constitution enacted in 2012 defines marriage exclusively as the union of a man and a woman and asserts that the traditional family is “the basis of the survival of the nation.”
Gay people “can do what they want, but they cannot get their marriages recognized by the state,” Orbán said in 2016 interview. “An apple cannot ask to be called a pear.”
In 2019, the speaker of the Hungarian National Assembly, László Kövér, compared same-sex couples wanting to adopt or marry to pedophiles. “Morally, there is no difference,” said Kövér, a founding member of Fidesz and a close ally of Orbán.
Senior party officials even called for a boycott of Coca-Cola when it launched an LGBTQ-inclusive ad campaign that summer. In May, the government reversed regulations allowing transgender and intersex citizens to change the gender listed on legal documents. The new regulations redefined the word “nem” — which in Hungarian can mean either “sex” or “gender” — to refer specifically to a person’s biological sex at birth “based on primary sex characteristics and chromosomes.”
The law puts trans and intersex people “at risk of harassment, discrimination, and even violence in daily situations when they need to use identity documents,” according to Human Rights Watch.
Another new proposal would abolish the Equal Treatment Authority, an autonomous agency tasked with investigating discrimination based on sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion and other factors.
Some responsibilities would be taken over by the commissioner for fundamental rights, Ákos Kozma, an Orbán loyalist who’s been largely silent on LGBTQ issues. ILGA-Europe, a leading European rights group, said the sole purpose of transferring control to Kozma is to “reduce the efficacy” of anti-discrimination policies.
These measures come as Hungary, like the rest of the world, is battling a deadly pandemic. Tamás Dombos, a board member for the Hatter Society, Hungary’s oldest and largest gay rights group, said the timing is strategic.
“Now the debate focuses on this issue rather than how bad the government is handling the pandemic or the changes they want to make to the electoral process,” Dombos told NBC News. “They create this noise so the opposition can’t focus on one issue.”
The ban on legal recognition of transgender people was passed just as the pandemic’s first wave hit Hungary. To date, the country of 9.8 million has reported 157,000 cases of Covid-19 and 3,380 deaths.
“The government has used the Covid-19 pandemic as a pretext to grab unlimited power and is using Parliament to rubber-stamp problematic nonpublic-health-related bills,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement Thursday.
The new amendments were presented on Nov. 10, the same day Parliament voted to extend a coronavirus-related state of emergency that Orbán had declared a week earlier.
Not only do they further stigmatize transgender people and same-sex couples raising children, Dombos said, they also make outreach to LGBTQ youth nearly impossible.
But the attacks on the LGBTQ community aren’t limited to the corridors of the Hungarian Parliament. “A Fairy Tale for Everyone,” a Hungarian children’s book with well-known tales incorporating gay people and other marginalized groups, was met with a barrage of homophobic vitriol when it was published in September. A leading Fidesz politician tore apart a copy page by page at a news conference, and a petition demanding it be removed from stores garnered more than 85,000 signatures.
“Hungarians are patient and tolerant” of homosexuality, he said. “We also tolerate provocation well, but there is a red line that cannot be crossed.”
The book’s authors, Dorottya Redai and Boldizsár Nagy, said they were disturbed by Orbán’s rhetoric. “When a prime minister says something like this … others will think they can also,” they told Time magazine.
Dombos said while he hasn’t seen physical violence, people on the street are getting more vocal. “Now you get called names. They shout, ‘Hey f—-t!’ That never happened before,” he said. “They feel encouraged now.”
Last month, Redai told Time that a large poster declaring, “Homosexual propaganda publication, which is dangerous for children, is sold here,” was draped outside a bookstore selling “A Fairy Tale for Everyone.”
Even a cosmopolitan city like Budapest, one of the first in Eastern Europe to hold a Pride march, hasn’t been immune. In August, a rainbow flag displayed outside City Hall was ripped down and thrown in the garbage.
Előd Novák, party leader of the extremist group Mi Hazánk, took credit for the vandalism, declaring that the “anti-family symbol has no place on the street.”
Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony had been the first to fly the symbol of the LGBTQ community on city property.
Days earlier, nationalist football fans calling themselves Aryan Greens reportedly set fire to a Pride flag outside another municipal building and replaced it with a banner for their favorite team.
The increasing homophobia has had a chilling effect on Hungary’s LGBTQ community.
“The general strategy for people is to stay in the closet,” Dombos said. “More than half aren’t out to their family, and only about 20 percent are out at work.” It has also pushed some to leave the country.
“The reasons why people emigrate are complex, but many LGBTQ people say dealing with discrimination and homophobic language day after day was an important factor,” Dombos said. “It’s quite easy to leave within the E.U. — you can go to Germany or other European countries where the jobs are better and there’s more acceptance.”
For those who stay and fight, countering a party with two-thirds majority is difficult under normal circumstances. During the pandemic, activists can’t have demonstrations, meet with politicians or even even hold in-person gatherings.
“We try to gather online, but it’s just not the same,” Dombos said.
Just days after Hungary announced the latest proposed amendments, the European Union’s executive commission announced its first formal strategy to protect the rights of LGBTQ citizens.
“We will defend the rights of LGBT people against those who have more and more appetite to attack them from an ideological point of view,” E.U. Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said Nov. 13 at a news conference. “This belongs to the authoritarian playbook, and it does not have a place in the E.U.”
The strategy proposes adding anti-gay hate crimes to the list of offenses for which the E.U. could set minimum penalties, including terrorism, drug trafficking and money laundering. It would also protect the legal status of same-sex married couples in all member states and tie funding to compliance with E.U. anti-discrimination laws.
Hungary’s Justice Minister Judit Varga attends an EU General Affairs Council in Brussels on Jan. 28, 2020.Francois Lenoir / Reuters file
Varga, the justice minister, condemned the strategy on Twitter, saying Hungary would “not accept any financial threats for protecting the traditional role of family and marriage.”
In any event, the guidelines aren’t binding on member countries. When dozens of Polish cities declared themselves “LGBT-free zones,”the commission could only deny small amounts of funding to a half-dozen towns.
Orbán has forged ideological ties with Poland in rejecting what he sees as an E.U. agenda. At a World War I memorial ceremony in August, Orbán called on central Europe to unite around its Christian roots.
“Western Europe has given up on a Christian Europe,” he warned, “and instead experiments with a godless cosmos, rainbow families, migration and open societies.”
So far, Hungary’s response to European Union pressure over human rights has been to veto E.U. legislation. Last week, Hungary and Poland united to veto the E.U.’s trillion-euro budget and coronavirus recovery package, because access is linked to countries’ adherence to the rule of law and European values.
Orbán previously vetoed ratification of an E.U. treaty on violence against women and an agreement to prevent discrimination against LGBTQ people.
The prime minister, according to Dombos, enjoys the political theatrics and “likes the idea that he’s shaping the E.U.”
Fidesz actually began as a progressive, youth-oriented party in the late 1980s, Dombos added, but then the political landscape changed and the party filled the vacuum in the right-wing space.
“More and more they became extreme, with statements not just about LGBT people, but about homeless people, Roma, Jews, migrants and asylum-seekers,” Dombos said. “Their strategy is to come up with an enemy, create a campaign around it and pass a law, and then tell us how they’ve rescued us from disaster.”
William Alejandro Martínez, a trans man from Honduras, stood up for his rights when military police officers stopped him in Comayagüela in May 2019 and asked to see his identity card. They questioned him about his gender identity, physically assaulted him, and threatened to arrest him. “Don’t touch me, I’m a human rights defender,” Martínez insisted. That’s when an officer pointed a rifle at him, saying “I don’t give a damn what you are.” “My life passed before my eyes,” Martínez remembered.
Ten years before Martínez stared into the barrel of a gun, Vicky Hernández, a trans woman, sex worker, and activist, was killed on the streets of San Pedro Sula. Last week, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights heard a case arguing that the Honduran government is responsible for Hernández’s loss of life.
The petitioners acting for the deceased, Cattrachas Lesbian Network and RFK Human Rights, argue the government bore direct responsibility for Hernández’s death, and that in failing to conduct an effective investigation into her killing, including whether it was motivated by anti-LGBT prejudice, Honduras violated her right to life under the American Convention on Human Rights.
The case reached the Inter-American Court because Honduras failed to comply with recommendations the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued in 2018. These included establishing a rights-respecting process to secure legal recognition for trans people’s gender identity, mapping violence against LGBT people and introducing a comprehensive policy to address its structural causes, and training security forces on anti-LGBT violence.
Human Rights Watch made similar recommendations in a report published today, part of our work on anti-LGBT violence and discrimination in Central America’s Northern Triangle. The report found that the Honduran government has failed to effectively address violence and entrenched discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, leading many to seek asylum in the US. In some cases, security officers themselves are perpetrators of violence.
After William Martínez survived a second assault by military police in June 2019, he fled the country. Exile should not be the only way to escape violence. Honduras should take urgent steps to protect LGBT people from violence and discrimination.
