Iraq is not alone in its inhumane treatment of LGBT people, many of our “allies” also torture and murder LGBT people, such as Saudi-Arabia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen where the death sentence is handed out for being homosexual to transgender. While in many other countries the police look the other way when it LGBT people are murdered as in many of the African, Middle Eastern and Micro-Indonesia counties. However, we do not need to look to the other side of the world to find bigotry and hatred against LGBT people, we only have to look down in the Caribbean. There were three murders of trans-women in Puerto Rico within the last year, and they all have been brutal murders where the bodies were mutilated.
US and UK failing to take Iraq's gay pogrom seriously
Both countries deny any Iraqi state involvement in anti-gay militias, but LGBT supporters suggest otherwise
Paul Canning
The Guardian
Wednesday 23 June 201
Last week, 12 Iraqi police officers burst into a house in Karbala, beat up and blindfolded the six occupants and bundled them off in three vans, taking the computers they found with them. The house was then burned down by unknown people.
The house was a new "emergency shelter" run by the Iraqi LGBT organisation.
Two days later, one of the men turned up in hospital with a throat wound saying he'd been tortured. Iraqi LGBT has ordered those in its other two safe houses to move immediately.
The group says the police action is consistent with other state attacks on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Iraq. It has information that the other five – two gay men, one lesbian and two transgender people – have been transported 100 miles north to the interior ministry in Baghdad, where they'll be interrogated (ie tortured) to find out more about the group. Then, going on past experience, they'll probably be handed to militias loyal to Shi'a clerics Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani and Muqtada al-Sadr (both of whom have called for homosexuals to be put to death) and their mutilated bodies will turn up later.
But it is also clear from past experience that there is unlikely to be a sustained international outcry from gay people, governments or others about this latest incident.
[…]
Ali Hili, Iraq's LGBT leader, said "people in the west have been too quiet for too long about the violence against LGBT people in Iraq. The militia and the powers that be know they can get away with it while that silence continues."
Meanwhile, here in the United States we have a hard time keeping LGBT prisoners safe in jail. It is one thing to be convicted and serve your time, but it is another to be in fear of your life while in jail.
'I Was Scared to Sleep': LGBT Youth Face Violence Behind BarsIt is time that we pull our heads out of the sand and demand that action be taken to stop the violence against LGBT. It is especial important to stop the violence in correctional facilities and it can be stopped by holding prison officials accountable.
The Nation
By Daniel Redman
June 21, 2010
Over the phone, Krystal has a calm and lilting Southern accent. She identifies as a woman now, but when she entered Louisiana's juvenile justice system at 12 years of age, she presented herself as a boy and used male pronouns. Today, she's 18 and was just recently released from the system. Being closeted about her gender identity was never an option for her. "It's very obvious with me because of how I walk, talk, the way I do things," she says. And while her sentencing judge had told her that she wouldn't be in prison for long, it was five years before a sympathetic counselor made a formal request for her release. In her letter to the judge, the counselor mentioned in passing that Krystal had confided in her that she was probably transgender, and that she was in a romantic relationship with another boy at the facility. On the voicemail he left in response to the counselor's report, the judge openly laughed and called the recommendation a joke. He said that based on those facts, he would absolutely deny the request for a release hearing. "Many judges in rural Louisiana still conflate sex offenses with sexual orientation and gender identity," says Wesley Ware of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana. It was months before Krystal was finally set free.
[…]
Once adjudicated and sent to secure care, LGBT youth often face abusive peers. "I was scared to sleep at night because I didn't know if I was going to wake up in the morning," writes one incarcerated youth at Louisiana's Swanson Center for Youth. One 15-year-old who was shuttled back and forth from group homes and secure facilities in Shreveport, New Orleans and Baton Rouge reports that staff did nothing when he reported a rape because he "reported it too late," that he was "whipped with a clothes hanger" for rule violations and that the abuse from staff and other youth was so bad that he tried to kill himself. Two of Krystal's gay friends were raped in prison by other youths. One of them was assaulted so viciously that the injuries required internal stitches. Staff put Krystal's other friend in isolation to protect him from further assault.
[…]
Besides using isolation to purportedly protect queer youth, guards also use lockdown as punishment. "We had one kid who wouldn't go to school because he was afraid" of the other youth in the facility, says Wesley Ware. And because he was on the mental health unit, a certain amount of social interaction was required as part of his rehabilitation program. For refusing to leave his cell, he was put on lockdown for noncompliance, and his chances for release diminished yet again.
[…]
More blatant and brutal antigay conversion efforts have taken place across the country. In an East Coast state that's the subject of an ongoing investigation, prison authorities permit religious volunteers to enter a youth facility to lead explicitly antigay Bible classes. Lesbian youths who refuse to attend the programs have had their sentences extended from nine to upwards of thirteen months. In Mississippi, a judge—with parental approval—sent a lesbian youth to a private hospital for two weeks to cure her homosexuality. In Pennsylvania, a counselor handed out antigay religious tracts to youth in her facility. In Georgia, when a child who had never committed a sexual offense came out as transgender, she was sent to a facility for youth likely to commit sexual offenses against children. Every major mental health, pediatrics or child welfare organization strongly condemns these practices.
In Rhode Island, Governor Carcieri vetoed a bill that would have added gender identity and expression to the hate crime law.
Carcieri’s veto of ‘gender’ bill criticizedSometimes, I feel like Don Quixote fighting windmills.
The Providence Journal
By Karen Lee Ziner
July 10, 2010
PROVIDENCE –– Leaders of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender organizations and their supporters criticized Governor Carcieri on Friday for vetoing a bill last month that would have added “gender identity and gender-related expression” to Rhode Island’s Hate Crimes Monitoring Act.
The bill would support additional police training and data collection about such crimes. It passed by majority in the House and Senate.
Carcieri said he vetoed the bill, as he did in 2008, because he found the terms gender identity or expression “confusing.” He signed the veto on June 22, a little more than a week after the General Assembly wrapped its tumultuous 2010 legislative session.
[…]
Ellingsen [director of LifeLines, a transgender organization] added, “We’re not talking about cases where someone has a problem with the victim’s gender identity or expression. We’re not talking about cases where someone doesn’t approve or agree with the way someone else is living their life. We’re talking about cases where someone beats them up, or rapes them, or shoots them, or stabs them because of it. This would keep track of how often crimes like this happen.”
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