Saint Kitts and Nevis’ colonial-era law banning same-sex relations has been struck down in a “historic moment” for the Caribbean country.
On Monday (29 August), the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court struck down sections 56 and 57 of the Offences Against The Person Act which banned the “abominable crime” of “buggery”.
The law carried a maximum penalty of 10 years with hard labour.
While no evidence showed the longstanding provisions had been enforced in recent years, it seemingly justified the discrimination and violence LGBTQ+ Kittitians and Nevisians face due to societal stigma and shame.
Judge Trevor Ward overturned the parts of the act that criminalised “unnatural offences” and compared them to “bestiality”, which he said was unconstitutional.
He wrote in his judgment: “The absolute nature of the prohibition created by sections 56 and 57 are not reasonably justified in a democratic society in circumstances where they proscribe sexual acts between consenting adults in private, which involve no element of public conduct or harm to, or sexual acts, with minors.”
“To the extent that it criminalises the private lives of gay persons in this year, the law is excessive and arbitrary,” he continued, adding that the sections “fail to meet the constitutional qualification of being … in the interest of public morality.”
Ward added: “Section 56 of the act shall be read as if the words ‘This section shall not apply to consensual sexual acts between adults in private’ were added at the end of the section.”
The court’s verdict immediately went into effect.
“This is a transformative journey and a step to full recognition of LGBTQ persons across the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States,” Kenita Placide, executive director of the Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality (ECADE), said.
“An affirmative decision means a yes to privacy and a yes to freedom of expression.”
Jamal Jeffers, a gay man, brought the constitutional challenge in January 2021 arguing that sections 56 and 57 breached constitutional rights to freedom of expression and privacy, and should be made null and void.
Joined by advocacy group St Kitts and Nevis Alliance for Equality, the claimants sought orders for same-sex acts to not be an offence if committed privately between “persons 16 years of age or more”, their motion read.
Saint Kitts and Nevis were among the first islands in the Caribbean to be colonised by the British, bringing with them centuries-old laws that outlawed homosexuality.
Section 56 read: “Any person who is convicted of the abominable crime of buggery, committed either with mankind or with any animal, shall be liable to be imprisoned for a term not exceeding ten years, with or without hard labour.”
Former British colonies Barbados, Dominica, Guyana, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines all have similar buggery laws in the books.
“We are witnessing a historic moment in the Caribbean in which antiquated, colonial-era laws are being challenged and struck down,” said Maria Sjödin, executive director of global LGBTQ+ rights group OutRight Action International.
“We are awed by the strategic persistence of activists in the region who are leading the charge to ensure that human rights are advanced and that discriminatory, outdated law like this is overturned. Hopefully, the remaining countries in the region and beyond will follow.”
Enormous progress has been achieved in the last 50 years for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people in the United States but unfortunately “equality is not yet within reach and in many cases not within sight” for LGBTQ communities, the independent U.N. expert on sexual orientation and gender identity said Tuesday.
Victor Madrigal-Borloz told a U.N. press conference after a 10-day visit to the United States that he applauds President Joe Biden for “very powerful” executive actions during his first days in office seeking to eradicate discrimination and violence against the LGBTQ community. But he said he is “extremely concerned” about a concerted series of actions at the state and local level based “on prejudice and stigma, to attack and to rollback the rights of LGBT persons.”
Madrigal-Borloz said that in access to health, employment, education and housing, the LGBTQ community suffers.
Among young adults aged 18 to 25, for example, LGBTQ people have a 2.2 times greater risk of homelessness, 23% of LGBTQ adults of color have no health coverage, and in a recent study 43% of lesbian, gay and bisexual participants reported having suffered at least one act of discrimination or harassment, he said.
Madrigal-Borloz, a Costa Rican lawyer and human rights advocate, also expressed serious concern at the disproportionate impact of violence against the LGBTQ community.
He cited the National Crime Victimization Survey that found that 20.3% of hate crimes were related to sexual orientation or gender identity bias, significantly disproportionate to the LGBTQ population in the U.S., which he said is usually estimated at between 5% and 8%. He also cited a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study that found that bisexual women encountered intimate partner violence at higher rates than other populations, with 46% reporting having been raped and 74.9% reporting being victims of sexual violence other than rape, which he called “extremely worrying.”
Madrigal-Borloz, who was appointed by the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council, wrapped up visits to Washington, Birmingham, Alabama, Miami and San Diego at the invitation of the U.S. government. He said he met with over 70 federal, state and local representatives, more than 100 civil society representatives, and people with “lived experience” in the LGBTQ community.
He stressed that his comments Tuesday reflected his preliminary observations, and his final report with recommendations will be presented to the Human Rights Council in June 2023.
“The conclusion of my visit in this preliminary moment is that there are significant efforts being deployed by the current administration to dismantle systems of social exclusion,” Madrigal-Borloz said. But there is also “a significant risk that LGBT persons will be caught in what I have described as a riptide created by all of these actions at local level.”
He said NGOs and human rights defenders have found at least 280 current legislative attempts at the local level that would lead to a regression of LGBTQ rights, “and which also create a terribly polarizing narrative that exacerbates already high and worrisome risks of violence and discrimination.”
As examples, Madrigal-Borloz cited legislation in Alabama making it a felony to provide gender-affirming medical treatment to transgender youth and legislation in Florida nicknamed “don’t say gay” by opponents that bans teachers from talking about sexual orientation or gender identity through the third grade. He also cited limits on comprehensive sexual and gender education, and on participation in sports for transgender people.
He stressed that typically there is no evidence “that any of these measures need to be considered reasonably under a democratic society.”
Madrigal-Borloz, who is also a researcher at Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program, said the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe vs. Wade and a woman’s right to abortion is also “a devastating action” for lesbian, bisexual and transgender women. That’s “because it is members of these communities that actually suffer also disproportionately from unwanted teen pregnancies,” he said.
“They also require statistically more abortions,” he said, “and LGBT persons in general actually benefit enormously from the services concerning sexual and reproductive health provided by abortion providers in different states, and the closure of these centers will affect disproportionately these persons.”
Madrigal-Borloz said suggestions that following the Roe vs. Wade ruling, other precedents could be overturned could have a huge impact on the LGBTQ community, especially if gay marriage was outlawed and homosexuality became a criminal act, as it currently is in more than 65 countries.
He also pointed to early statistics showing that 98% of monkeypox cases are in men who have sex with men, which he said “concerns me greatly because it creates a risk of furthering, and retrenchment of, stigma and discrimination against this population.”
The murder of a prominent transgender activist in Argentina has sparked outrage across the country.
Clarín, an Argentine newspaper, reports Alejandra Ironici was found dead in her home in Santa Fe, a city in Santa Fe province that is roughly 285 miles northwest of Buenos Aires, the country’s capital, on Sunday.
Ironici’s 22-year-old nephew found her body at around 11 p.m. local time (10 p.m. ET).
Reports indicate Ironici’s body showed signs that she had been beaten and burned. A 32-year-old man with whom Ironici had been in a relationship has been charged aggravated feminicide and transfemicide.
Ironici, 45, in 2012 became the first trans person in Argentina to legally change their gender on their national ID document without a court order. She was also the first trans woman to undergo sex reassignment surgery at a public hospital in the country.
Ironici was the first openly trans person elected to Santa Fe’s city government.
Activists who participated in a march in Santa Fe on Monday demanded justice for Ironici.
Esteban Paulón, an LGBTQ and intersex activist in Argentina who lives in Santa Fe province, on Tuesday told the Washington Blade that he knew Ironici for more than 20 years.
Paulón said Ironici “more than anything was a militant, was a committed person who gave everything she had and more to the community.”
“She was one of the biggest motivators behind many of the advances that we have achieved in the province,” Paulón told the Blade.
“Alejandra Ironici’s femicide is evidence that machismo, patriarchy and violence is taking lives with impunity,” added Paulón.
ATTTA (Asociación de Travestis, Transsexuales y Transgéneros de Argentina) in a statement noted Pancha Quebracha, a well-known drag queen in Mar del Plata, a city in Buenos Aires province, was found dead inside her home on Sunday. ATTTA pointed out violence and discrimination based on gender identity remains commonplace in Argentina, even though the country remains at the forefront of the global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement.
“The life expectancy for trans women in Argentina is 41 years,” said ATTTA. “Our community faces violent situations that often times end in transfemicides because of machismo and patriarchal impunity.”
ATTTA in its statement also calls upon Argentina’s government to strengthen existing laws that are designed to protect LGBTQ and intersex people and to implement “an agenda of public policies where nobody is left behind.”
EuroPride has defiantly vowed to host the event in Belgrade even after Serbia’s president claimed it has been cancelled.
For Serbia’s LGBTQ+ community, hosting EuroPride in the capital city in September was intended as a way to celebrate diversity and push for more rights in the deeply conservative country.
But Serbia’s strongman president, Aleksandar Vučić, claimed EuroPride won’t be happening amid growing tension with Kosovo, he said at a press conference in Belgrade on Saturday (27 August).
The leader of the nationalist Serbian Progressive Party told reporters: “The Pride parade that was scheduled for the month of September will be postponed or cancelled, or whatever that miracle is called, it doesn’t matter.
“We can’t at this moment when we have both the open Balkans and the crisis in Kosovo and Metohija that will not end at least until 31 October, we have no progress, we have nowhere to move. We have to deal with energy, and drought, we have many crises.”
He said prime minister Ana Brnabić on behalf of the government “will explain everything in accordance with the law”, according to television network Nova S.
But EuroPride won’t be shut down anytime soon, European Pride Organisers Association (EPOA) president Kristine Garina said.
“President Vučić cannot cancel someone else’s event. EuroPride is not cancelled, and will not be cancelled,” the Latvian activist said.
“EuroPride in Belgrade will not be cancelled and will bring together thousands of LGBTI+ people from across Europe with LGBTI+ people from Serbia and the wider western Balkans.”
Garina pointed to a letter to the EPOA in 2019 from Brnabić in which she backed Belgrade Pride’s bid to host EuroPride.
“The government I lead is committed to ensuring the full respect of human rights and of all citizens and we hereby promise to help the Belgrade Pride organising team in ensuring a safe and successful organisation of EuropPride in Belgrade in 2022,” she wrote at the time.
To ban a Pride event, Garina said, would violate Serbia’s commitment to the European Convention of Human Rights.
“Aside from the illegality of such a ban, it must be noted that those opposing EuroPride in Belgrade are using tired old tropes, inaccuracies and downright lies to discredit what is, in fact, a celebration of human rights and equality,” she continued.
“They say that we are against family values when all of us comes from a family and many of us have families of our own. They say that we are child abusers when we all stand firm against all child abuse.”
EuroPride, a nearly month-long festival, has been held almost every year since 1992 when London, England, first hosted the event.
Belgrade Pride won the right to host EuroPride in a landslide vote by the EPOA, the European counterpart of the InterPride association, in 2019.
British-Serbian activist Nik Jovčić-Sas sees tensions are higher than ever before as Vučić drags the country further and further right.
“Vučić is simply pandering to the far-right, who are violently opposed to EuroPride. It’s hard to know if this is serious or just political manoeuvring – the president cannot ban a public gathering, only the police have that power and they have yet to do so,” Jovčić-Sas told PinkNews.
Since Vučić won the presidency in 2017, the quality of Serbian democracy has fallen from “free” to only “partly free”, according to Freedom House, an independent rights research group.
If the president does find a way to make LGBTQ+ Serb’s dreams of hosting the event come crashing down, Jovčić-Sas expects the backlash to be swift.
“We will not allow compromise on our fundamental human rights,” he said.
A transgender advocate and Harvard graduate student died in police custody this month while on his honeymoon in the Indonesian tourist island of Bali.
Rodrigo Ventosilla, a 32-year-old transmasculine person from Peru, and his husband, Sebastián Marallano, were detained Aug. 7 by customs police at the Bali airport for illegal possession of marijuana, Peru’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
Two days after the arrest, Ventosilla was taken to the hospital, where he died on Aug. 11 due to “failure of bodily functions,” according to police spokesperson Stefanus Satake Bayu Setianto, who added that Ventosilla became sick after taking medication that had not been confiscated by authorities.
The families of Ventosilla and Marallano, who has since returned to Peru, have accused authorities in Bali of “police violence … racial discrimination and transphobia,” according to their statement on Instagram. They are also alleging that Ventosilla was not provided access to lawyers, his family or his partner while in police custody.
“It should be noted that at all times the Indonesian police blocked access to both the lawyers hired by the family, and Harvard students who attended their aid. The family was NEVER able to communicate or know Rodrigo’s health/diagnosis,” the family wrote in a statement.
However, in a statement Wednesday, Peru’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said they have not found evidence of “racial discrimination and transphobia.” Ventosilla’s family is calling for a more thorough investigation.
Kyle Knight, a senior researcher on health and LGBTQ rights at Human Rights Watch, an international nongovernmental organization, said it’s disturbing that authorities prevented “lawyers and activists and his partner from trying to get access to him. That’s indicative of something very suspicious.”
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Knight added: “It’s pretty clear from the reports that we read, things went as badly as they could have.”
Ventosilla’s death follows a growing effort to roll back LGBTQ rights in Indonesia, Knight added.
“Since 2016, there has been a government-driven effort to slander, stigmatize and render insecure LGBT people across the country,” he said, citing Human Rights Watch reports from 2018 and 2016.
Bali is a known safe haven for queer and trans Indonesians, he said. However, he added, that changed last year when LGBTQ travelers began promoting the island as a queer-friendly tourist destination and provided advice on how to avoid Covid-19 restrictions.
It comes at no surprise, he said, that authorities escalated the arrest in this location.
“Rodrigo’s case falls into a couple of different overlapping patterns, including Indonesia’s drug laws are very, very strict and very intense,” he said, adding that “the police love nabbing foreigners, particularly in tourist hotspots like Bali.”
Prior to his death, Ventosilla was pursuing a master’s degree in public administration at Harvard’s Kennedy School. In a statement Wednesday, the school said Ventosilla’s family had raised “very serious questions that deserve clear and accurate answers.” The trans advocacy organization that Ventosilla founded, Diversidades Trans Masculinas, is also calling for justice.
“We call on all human rights organizations, feminists, transfeminists, unions, grassroots organizations and citizens in general to fight for the justice that Rodrigo deserves,” the organization wrote in a statement on Facebook. “His death should not go unpunished. When a trans person dies, they never die!”
Two Russian men were arrested after being reported by a neighbour for allegedly having gay sex.
The neighbour made a police report claiming that her young children had seen the two men, Timur, 21, and Daniil, 22, through a window pouring water over each other and “doing something resembling sex”, as reported by Baza.
The two men were detained and prosecuted under the Violent Acts of Sexual Character act. If found guilty they could face anything from 12 to 20 years in prison, as a child under 14 witnessed the alleged sexual act.
However, the mother has since tried to retract her statement.
Timur and Daniil told police that the children misunderstood what they had seen. They explained that they had undressed because they were fixing a burst pipe in the bedroom.
The two men affirmed their heterosexuality and one mentioned they had a girlfriend. According to Baza, when the mother confronted the men they were “very adequate and nice” and now she wants to “make amends”.
She now wants to retract her statement to the police as she “did not expect things to spiral out of control in this way”.
But it may be too late as Timur and Daniil have been sent to a pre-trial detention facility for two months.
Russia is notorious for its hardline, anti-LGBTQ+ laws.
In 2013 Russian president Vladimir Putin signed into effect his notorious ‘gay propaganda’ law banning any “promotion” of “non-traditional sexual relationships” among minors.
The hateful measure has been used to clamp down on LGBTQ+ advocates, prevent kids from accessing inclusive literature and stop minors from watching LGBTQ-themed content on streaming platforms. In July, plans were announced to extend the law to adults.
LGBTQ+ Russians face violence and persecution, with reports of Russia sending gay men who have escaped “gay purges” in Chechnya back to Chechen police.
Vietnam’s Health Ministry officially confirmed on August 3, 2022, that same-sex attraction and being transgender are not mental health conditions, Human Rights Watch said today. The decision brings Vietnam’s health policy in line with global health and human rights standards.
Vietnam’s new directive states that “the American Psychiatric Association and the World Health Organization (WHO) have confirmed that homosexuality is entirely not an illness, therefore homosexuality cannot be ‘cured’ nor need[s] to be ‘cured’ and cannot be converted in any way.”
“The Vietnamese Health Ministry’s recognition that sexual orientation and gender identity are not illnesses will bring relief to LGBT people and their families across Vietnam,” said Kyle Knight, senior health and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “LGBT people in Vietnam deserve access to health information and services without discrimination, and the Health Ministry’s new directive is a major step in the right direction.”
Vietnam has made some progress on LGBT rights in recent years, Human Rights Watch said. In 2013, the government removed same-sex unions from the list of forbidden relationships, but the update did not allow for legal recognition of same-sex relationships. In 2015, the National Assembly updated the civil code to make it no longer illegal for transgender people to change their first name and legal gender, but the revisions did not create a legal gender recognition procedure.
In 2016, Vietnam, while a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council, voted in favor of a resolution on the need for protection against violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The delegation made a statement of their support before the vote, saying “the reason for Vietnam’s yes vote lay in changes both in domestic as well as international policy with respect to LGBT rights.”
However, as Human Rights Watch documented in a 2020 report, factual misunderstandings and negative stereotypes help fuel human rights abuses against LGBT people in Vietnam. The belief that same-sex attraction is a diagnosable, mental health condition is pervasive in Vietnam. This false belief is rooted in the failure of the government and medical professional associations to effectively communicate that same-sex attraction is a natural variation of human experience.
Researchers have written that Vietnam never officially adopted the initial position of the WHO, which introduced a diagnosis for homosexuality in 1969. Since the homosexuality diagnosis appears to have never officially been on the books in Vietnam, therefore the government never officially removed the diagnosis, as many countries around the world did when the WHO declassified it in 1990. The government’s treatment of homosexuality as deviant behavior, combined with prominent medical figures promoting this view, fueled the widespread belief that same-sex attraction was pathological.
Pervasive myths about homosexuality have an impact on children and youth. “There’s a lot of pressure on kids to be straight,” a school counselor in Hanoi told Human Rights Watch. “It’s constantly referenced that being attracted to someone of the same sex is something that can and should be changed and fixed.”
The anthropologist Natalie Newton wrote in a 2015 article that, “Vietnamese newspaper advice columns have also featured the opinions of medical doctors and psychologists who have written about homosexuality as a disease of the body, a genetic disorder, hormonal imbalance, or mental illness.”
International health bodies and a growing number of national health authorities and health professional associations around the world have issued policies to affirm that sexual orientation and gender identity are not illnesses, as well as LGBT nondiscrimination policies. These include Thailand’s Public Health Ministry, which stated in 2002 that “persons loving the same sex are not considered mentally abnormal or in any way ill.” National health professional associations in Hong Kong, the Philippines, and India have affirmed that position and supported nondiscriminatory health rights for LGBT people.
The Health Ministry issued the following instructions for all medical centers across Vietnam:
Enhance information propagation and dissemination so that the medical doctors, staff, and patients at medical examination and treatment centers have a correct understanding about homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgender people.
While administering medical examination or treatment for LGBT patients, health workers need to ensure gender equality and respect to avoid discrimination and prejudices against these groups.
Don’t consider homosexuality, bisexuality, and being transgender an illness.
Don’t interfere nor force treatment upon these groups of patients, if any, it must be in the form of psychological assistance and performed only by those who understand sexual identity.
Enhance internal review and inspection efforts for medical examination and treatment centers and practitioners to ensure compliance with the professional codes in medical services according to the law.
The directive follows a civil society-run petition that garnered more than 76,000 signatures and a letterfrom the WHO’s Vietnam office confirming that the “WHO firmly holds the view that any effort to convert the sexual orientation of a non-heterosexual person lacks medical justification and is morally unacceptable.”
“Vietnam now joins the growing number of governments around the world affirming that same-sex attraction and gender identity are both natural variations of human experience,” Knight said. “Vietnam’s Health Ministry has boosted fundamental rights with this directive, and LGBT people now have increasingly firm grounding for expressing themselves without fear of negative reactions.”
Singapore has no plans to lift its ban on same-sex marriage or end its tradition of censoring LGBTQ+ content despite confirming it will decriminalise gay sex.
The country’s LGBTQ+ community rejoiced on Sunday (31 August) after prime minister Lee Hsien announced the government would repeal Section 377A, which criminalises consensual sex between men.
But at the same time, they were reminded the fight for equality is far from over.
More than 20 LGBTQ+ groups called the repeal a “hard-won victory” and a “triumph of love over fear”, but stated that it was “the first step on a long road towards full equality for LGBTQ+ people.
During his speech, prime minister Hsein said that the government would iron-clad the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
This followed suggestions from religious groups that decriminalising same-sex relations could cause so-called “reverse-discrimination” for those who do not support same-sex marriage.
Hsein’s comments came as a disappointment to the coalition of LGBTQ+ groups, who said the decision will “undermine the secular character of our constitution, codify further discrimination into supreme law and tie the hands of future parliaments”.
After his speech, the Ministry of Communication and Information (MCI) released a statement confirming its hardline approach to LGBTQ+ media would also remain in situ.
LGBTQ+ media will continue to be regulated according to in a statement after the speech as reported by CNA.
It said the repeal of Section 377A did not mean that “we are changing the tone of society”, and that content that “depicts alternative sexualities” and “non-explicit depictions of sexual activity between persons of the same gender” would still be restricted for anyone under 21.
A spokesperson from Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) said the decision was to “protect younger audiences” but let older people “make informed choices”.
It added that it would continue to “take reference from prevailing norms”.
Singapore has been locked in debate for decades on whether Section 377A should be repealed. In 2007, Hsein said it was not being “proactively enforced”.
In his address on Sunday, the prime minister referred to his statement at the time.
“It would have been too divisive to force the issue then,” he said. “Now, 15 years later, attitudes have shifted appreciably. While we remain a broadly conservative society, gay people are now better accepted in Singapore, especially among younger Singaporeans.”
“Private sexual behaviour between consenting adults does not raise any law and order issue,” he added. “There’s no justification to prosecute people for it, nor to make it a crime… The government will repeal Section 377A and decriminalise sex between men.”
Influence of British colonial rule
Singapore inherited Section 377A while under British colonial rule, opting to keep it after gaining its independence in 1965.
Since then, the law has been used to oppress Singapore’s LGBTQ+ community and police any kind of behaviour that isn’t seen as heteronormative.
Téa Braun, chief executive of the Human Dignity Trust, said in a statement: “Section 377A is both archaic and discriminatory. Because of this announcement, gay men can look forward to no longer being presumed criminals, and Singapore has decisively moved past persecuting people on the basis of their sexual orientation.
“This decision is incredibly significant not only for Singapore but for its wider signalling effect across Asia and the world, where millions of people are still criminalised based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
A journalist for the Manchester Evening News and his companion were verbally and physically harassed last week in the city’s iconic Gay Village.
“He started to get right up in my face, pushing me, shoving me, grabbing me and kicking me in the legs quite hard, then he went to go towards my friend. He said, ‘You are in my space, you are trying to touch me, you queer.’”
Daniel McLaughlin, 28, a podcast producer at Manchester’s largest news daily, was waiting for a taxi with his nonbinary friend in the early hours of Friday morning after a night out in the city’s popular gayborhood centered around Canal Street. McLaughlin, who identifies as bisexual, was wearing a rainbow badge.
McLaughlin told the Evening News he noticed a man who appeared to be in his early 20s heading towards them from nearby Sackville Gardens.
The man was “muttering to himself,” McLaughlin said, then directed “absolute hatred” towards them. “He was calling us nonces, fa***ts, perverts, every homophobic slur under the sun. He fixated on calling us names.”
“I started saying, ‘We’re not nonces, we’re puffs, there’s a difference,’ to which he became more aggrieved, shouting the same slurs. He was clearly inebriated, clearly angry about something.”
McLaughlin recounted that as a taxi pulled up, the “aggressive drunk” pushed him onto the moving vehicle, then continued to hurl abuse and followed McLaughlin as he tried to get into the taxi on the other side.
As the man was shouting “Get in the f**king car right now!” McLaughlin and his friend managed to get inside and pull the door shut. The driver sped away quickly from the ugly scene.
Daniel said the “old slurs” hurled at the pair were “nothing original,” but the young man’s age and level of aggression had shocked him.
“It didn’t particularly hurt,” McLaughlin said. “He was drunk, they were not focused attacks. But the thing I found the worst was the absolute hatred in his eyes, just the aggression and hatred towards us.”
“We hadn’t done anything. We had stood outside. But there was absolute hatred towards us, and the fact this guy was our age, to come up with this vitriol.”
“My theory was, he had all this pent up aggression. I think he went to the Gay Village looking for a fight. He went there with the purpose of starting trouble. The words he was using were recycled, words he had clearly heard elsewhere. Just archaic, older insults.”
“He wasn’t making arguments, he was just using the words, he wasn’t stringing a full sentence together.”
McLaughlin says he didn’t report the incident to police, believing there was “very little they could have done.” While he didn’t suffer any major injuries from the attack, McLaughlin said it did raise concerns about the safety of the LGBTQ community away from the Village itself.
“It’s something that’s not untypical, and that’s the frightening thing really. I moved to Manchester in 2012 for university and one of the big reasons was the Gay Village — I wasn’t quite out the closet at the time, but — having this place where I could be myself.”
“That’s why so many gay people move to Manchester, but in recent years it’s not felt like a sanctuary. It’s not necessarily aggressive, but I feel that the queer community is being pushed out.”
“The village itself I think would be safe, but because we had just left the Gay Village at Sackville Gardens, just a bit further away, that’s where the protection ends. I do feel trepidation when I exit the Village.”
An American soldier who texted him on Aug. 26, 2021, 11 days after the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, told him to go to Kabul International Airport. Khan, along with a group of other LGBTQ and intersex Afghans and members of the country’s special forces, were able to pass through Taliban checkpoints after a mullah with whom they were traveling said they were going to their cousin’s house for a child’s funeral. The group of LGBTQ and intersex Afghans were able to enter the airport, but Khan and several soldiers who were members of the country’s special forces were outside the perimeter when a suicide bomber killed more than 180 people at a gate the U.S. Marines controlled. They returned after the attack, but were then forced to leave.
Khan was still in Kabul on Aug. 30, 2021, when the last American forces withdrew from the country.
Kabul Luftbrücke, a German group, on March 18, 2022, evacuated Khan from Kabul to Pakistan. Khan arrived in Germany less than a month later and now lives in Korbach, a city in the country’s Hesse state.
Khan’s partner and many other LGBTQ and intersex Afghans he knows remain in Afghanistan.
“I’m still hoping that an angel will come and will save their lives before the Taliban finds them,” Khan told the Washington Blade on Monday.
Khan is among the LGBTQ and intersex Afghans who have been able to leave Afghanistan since the Taliban regained control of the country.
Dane Bland, the director of development and communications for Rainbow Railroad, on Monday told the Blade the Toronto-based organization has been able to evacuate 247 LGBTQ and intersex Afghans to the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Ireland.
A group of 29 LGBTQ and intersex Afghans who Rainbow Railroad helped evacuate from Afghanistan with the help of the British government and two LGBTQ and intersex rights groups in the country — Stonewall and Micro Rainbow — arrived in the U.K. on Oct. 29, 2021. A second group of LGBTQ and intersex Afghans reached the country a few days later.
Taylor Hirschberg, a researcher at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health who is also the Hearst Foundation scholar, said he has helped upwards of 70 LGBTQ and intersex Afghans and their families leave the country.
“I know that there are some people who are still fighting to get people out, but now it has come down to a trickle,” Hirschberg told the Blade on Monday.
A Taliban judge in July 2021 said the group would once again execute gay people if it were to return to power in the country.
A report that OutRight Action International and Human Rights Watch released earlier this year notes a Taliban official said his group “will not respect the rights of LGBT people” in Afghanistan. The report also documents human rights abuses against LGBTQ and intersex Afghans, including an incident in which the Taliban beat a transgender woman and “shaved her eyebrows with a razor” before they “dumped her on the street in men’s clothes and without a cellphone.”
OutRight Action International on Monday told the Blade that it has had “at least one confirmed report of the killing of an LGBTQ activist, police searching for another and several more reports of extrajudicial killing and other forms of persecution that are difficult to confirm given the danger to political witnesses.”
“The U.S. and other governments that profess support for human rights need to do more to ensure the Afghan regime respects fundamental rights of all Afghans and help those in danger to reach safety,” said OutRight Action International.
Bland said Rainbow Railroad “absolutely” feels “governments, including the governments of the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, should be doing more to help LGBTQI+ Afghans fleeing the current crisis.”
Immigration Equality Legal Director Bridget Crawford on Monday noted her organization’s LGBTQ and intersex Afghan clients who “survived unspeakable trauma, both as a consequence of sharia law and existing brutal homophobic practices” are “now safely resettled in Canada.” Crawford nevertheless added that Immigration Equality recognizes that “many more queer people are still at grave risk in Afghanistan.”
“The Biden administration must prioritize these LGBTQ Afghans as refugees in the United States,” said Crawford. “President Biden himself has expressed that the U.S. has the good will and capacity to take in vulnerable refugees, but he must back up those words with action.”
State Department spokesperson Ned Price on Monday told reporters during a briefing that nearly 90,000 Afghans have been “evacuated or otherwise transported to the” U.S. since Aug. 15, 2021. Price also noted the U.S. has “facilitated the departure of some” 13,000 Afghans from Afghanistan since the last American troops withdrew from the country.
“There are a number of priorities, a number of enduring commitments we have to the people of Afghanistan,” said Price. “At the top of that list is to use every tool that we have appropriate to see to it that the Taliban lives up to the commitments that it has made publicly, that it has made privately, but most importantly, the commitments that the Taliban has made to its own people, to all of the Afghan people. And when we say all of the Afghan people, we mean all. We mean Afghanistan’s women, its girls, its religious minorities, its ethnic minorities. The Taliban has made these commitments; the Taliban, of course, has not lived up to these commitments.”
Price, who is openly gay, did not specifically refer to LGBTQ and intersex Afghans during Monday’s briefing.
Hirschberg said Canada, France, Germany and the U.K. have “come to bat” and “are really supporting getting LGBTQI Afghans out, along with others.” He told the Blade the U.S. has not done enough.
“We’re not seeing quite the eagerness from the United States, unfortunately,” said Hirschberg.
The Blade has reached out to the White House for comment on the first anniversary of the Taliban regaining control of Afghanistan and efforts to help LGBTQ and intersex Afghans leave the country.
Ukraine overshadows plight of LGBTQ and intersex Afghans
Russia on Feb. 24 invaded Ukraine.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees notes more than 6 million Ukrainians have registered as refugees in Europe.
The European Union allows Ukrainians to travel to member states without a visa.
Germany currently provides those who have registered for residency a “basic income” that helps them pay for housing and other basic needs. Ukrainian refugees can also receive access to German language classes, job training programs and childcare.
Dr. Ahmad Qais Munhazim, an assistant professor of global studies at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia who is originally from Afghanistan, has helped three groups of Afghans leave the country since the Taliban regained control of it.
Munhazim on Monday noted to the Blade his family has lived in a Toronto hotel room for three months. Munhazim also pointed out the treatment that Ukrainian refugees once they reach the EU, the U.K., Canada or the U.S.
“Countries of course would claim they were not prepared, but we can see that it was a very racialized response,” said Munhazim. “The way they responded to Ukraine, they weren’t prepared for that either, but we know that these borders immediately started opening up, assistance was offered in a very, very humanitarian way to Ukrainians just because they had blond hair and blue eyes, which was not offered to Afghans or Syrians earlier when they were fleeing Syria.”
Maydaa told the Blade that countries had “this huge concern about LGBT people coming from Afghanistan.”
“It was related to, I believe, terrorism and all this prejudgment of Afghan people,” said Maydaa. “I also think this is playing a huge role when it comes to resettlement and international action.”
Maydaa, like Munhazim, also noted the different reception that Ukrainian refugees have received once they reached the EU or the U.K.
“They, especially in Europe and the U.K., feel they have more responsibility towards Ukraine,” said Maydaa. “[There was] all this racism on the news. ‘They look like us. They are blonde, green eyes, white skin, Christians.’”