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13 Apr 2017 - NPWJ News Digest on LGBTI rights
Articles
More than 100 gay men 'sent to prison camps' in Chechnya
By The Independent, 12 Apr 2017
Gay men are being held in “camps” in the Chechen Republic where they are subjected to torture and beatings, human rights campaigners have claimed. The claims follow reports last week that 100 gay men had been rounded up and imprisoned in Chechnya, with at least three people allegedly murdered. The allegations were made by a Russian newspaper and human rights campaigners. “In Chechnya, the command was given for a ‘prophylactic sweep’ and it went as far as real murders,” independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta claimed. At the time, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s spokesperson denied the claims on the grounds that no one in Chechnya is homosexual. “You cannot arrest or repress people who just don’t exist in the republic,” spokesman Alvi Karimov told Interfax.“If such people existed in Chechnya, law enforcement would not have to worry about them since their own relatives would have sent them to where they could never return.” It is thought that the men are allegedly being held in “camps” in the town of Argun, according to reports. Speaking to the MailOnline, Svetlana Zakharova from the Russian LGBT network, said: “Gay people have been detained and rounded up and we are working to evacuate people from the camps and some have now left the region.
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Every Republican in the Texas Senate Voted to Attack Marriage Equality
By The Advocate, 12 Apr 2017
Same-sex couples in Texas may soon have trouble tying the knot — and not due to cold feet. A new bill, which won preliminary approval Tuesday in the Texas Senate, would allow county clerks and judges to deny these couples marriage licenses — if these public officials claim that issuing the licenses goes against their religious beliefs. The Senate voted 21-10 in support of the bill, with unaminous Republican support and only one Democrat in favor — a striking partisan divide. If approved in a vote Wednesday, it will go to the House of Representatives. "If we don't do this, we are discriminating against people of faith," said Sen. Brian Birdwell, the legislation's sponsor. However, critics say that this support of "religious freedom" is really a "license to discriminate" against LGBT people. "This bill opens the door to taxpayer-funded discrimination against virtually anyone who doesn't meet a public official's personal moral standards," said Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network. The bill has a far greater chance of becoming law than recently proposed antigay legislation in North Carolina, which aims to have same-sex marriage declared "null and void" in the state. That bill, which made headlines in the wake of House Bill 2's repeal, is sponsored by four of the House’s most conservative Republican members in a state led by a Democratic governor. Texas, however, has a Republican governor, Greg Abbott, who would likely sign his state's antigay bill into law. Last year Abbott lobbied to deny partner benefits to married same-sex couples.
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The Silent Epidemic: Helping GBT Men Speak Out About Domestic Violence
By The Huffington Post, 10 Apr 2017
As a professional editor who has spent a lifetime as a passionate reader, I know that we yearn to see our stories reflected in the books we read. We turn to literature to find out how others love and overcome loss – we hunger to read narratives that illuminate what we face and feel in our own lives. When I experience painful events in my own life, I often look to books for comfort. If, as Louise DeSalvo says, “writing is a way of healing,” then perhaps this is even more true for reading. For those gay, bi, and trans men who experience same-sex domestic violence, there are not many places to see their experiences mirrored back to them, especially when it comes to breaking free of the abuse and building a new life. It’s not that the numbers are too small in the LGBTQ community to warrant such a literature; in fact, the statistics are staggering: according to the Centers for Disease Control, 26% of gay men and 37% of bi men are victims of domestic violence. Though there are hundreds of shelters for battered women throughout the country, there are almost no safe houses that a gay, bi, or trans man can go to if he’s feeling threatened and wants to escape his partner. One gay friend has told me, “I didn’t know where to go to escape.”
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2 men in Indonesia’s Aceh province face caning for gay sex
By The Washington Post, 08 Apr 2017
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Two men in Indonesia’s conservative Aceh province each face up to 100 strokes of the cane after neighbors reported them to Islamic religious police for having gay sex. Marzuki, the Shariah police’s chief investigator, said Saturday that if found guilty, the men will be the first to be caned for gay sex under a new code implemented two years ago. Residents in a neighborhood of the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, reported the men, aged 23 and 20, to police on March 29, said Marzuki, who goes by a single name. He said the men had “confessed” to being a gay couple and that this was supported by video footage taken by a resident that has been circulating online. It shows one of the men naked and visibly distressed as he apparently calls for help on his cellphone. The second man is repeatedly pushed by another man who is preventing the couple from leaving the room. Aceh is the only province in Muslim-majority Indonesia to practice Shariah law, which was a concession made by the national government in 2006 to end a yearslong war with separatists.
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