Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, used the visit by the pope to Budapest last month to advance his populist agenda. He said he had been encouraged by his meeting with Frances to advance ‘family values’. Indeed, Orbán claimed to have the pontiff’s imprimatur: ‘Moreover, he said: go ahead, go for it. And go for it we will.’
But what is Orbán ‘going for’, beyond the rhetoric?
With elections looming next year and a poor record in government so far, the increasingly autocratic Orbán has found a new target in attacking LGBT rights, in which ‘family values’ is a proxy for a whole other agenda. It started with refugees and now it is sexual and gender minorities. It is best understood as a cynical move to distract attention from Orbán’s bungling of the state response to the pandemic, as well as corruption scandals involving business oligarchs and dodgy dealings with China.
Under the banner of ‘family values’, in 2020 Hungary banned adoption by same-sex couples, barred transgender people from changing their legal gender and refused to ratify the Istanbul convention, which aims to protect women from violence. This year Hungary passed a law which equates homosexuality with paedophilia and bans ‘promotion and portrayal of homosexuality’ and gender diversity to under-18s, in sexuality education, films or advertisements.
Putin’s playbook
Orbán is taking a leaf out of Vladimir Putin’s playbook. The Russian president has used the spectre of LGBT rights as a wedge to consolidate a conservative support base at home, delineate regional zones of influence and forge global alliances. It started in earnest with the passage in 2013 of the ‘gay propaganda law’, an administrative regulation which forbids the positive portrayal of ‘non-traditional sexual relations’ where minors are present.
In effect, the law inhibits any such presentation of LGBT identities in the public domain. It has a chilling effect on freedom of expression, being vague enough to make Russians afraid to fall foul of the law. Hungary’s law has strong echoes although it goes even further, banning any depiction of LGBT people to children.
Russia’s law has had a stifling effect on teachers and counsellors and has been used to shut down an online support network for LGBT kids. It has been associated with an upturn in homophobic violence. There is no reason to think the impact of Hungary’s law will be any different.
The ‘gay propaganda law’ has proved a very effective tool for Putin—if very harmful for many Russians. On a domestic level, the negative connnotations of ‘propaganda’, with its Stalinist associations, and the positive affirmation of purported national ‘tradition’, pitted against the forces of globalisation, have proved an effective shorthand. They have mobilise Putin’s small-town and rural supporters in the face of public protests in the big urban centres (in as much as these have been allowed).
Regionally, the rhetoric has been used to contest spheres of influence between the Russian-backed Eurasian customs union and the European Union. On a global level, at the United Nations Russia has been at least partially successful in assuming the mantle of protector of ‘traditional values’—counterposed to universal norms such as human rights—and in the process forging geopolitical alliances with like-minded states.
Sustained attack
Poland under the Law and Justice Party (PiS) has become another outlier in Europe, where the independence of the judiciary, civil society and the media have been under sustained assault. The government has cast LGBT rights as a dangerous and subversive ideology, while local authorities have declared ‘LGBT-ideology free zones’.
Warsaw has systematically attacked reproductive rights and comprehensive sexuality education and threatened to withdraw from the Istanbul convention—the convention includes a reference to sexual orientation and a broad definition of gender. This was an election rallying point in 2019, designed to help the PiS secure a second term in office.
Leaders such as Orbán, or the key PiS figure Jarosław Kaczyński, and the parties they represent project an unalloyed vision of their societies. They present themselves as the authentic voice of ‘the people’, against ‘liberal elites’ accused of defying ‘common sense’.
This dangerous world of nationalist rhetoric produces ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, shoring up support by concocting imagined threats to the nation. In Hungary, migrants have been vilified as a perceived external demon, while LGBT people have been cast as both an internal threat and a foreign influence.
‘Gender ideology’
Why do advances in women’s or LGBT rights elicit such apocalyptic fantasies of destruction of the social order? Connecting developments in Poland and Hungary is the concept of ‘gender ideology’. This is closely linked to the idea of traditional values but more amorphous and, it seems, better able to rally disparate groups against a common perceived enemy. First coined decades ago by the Holy See, ‘gender ideology’ has become a ubiquitous term, strategically deployed to curtail sexual and reproductive rights.
As an ‘empty signifier’ (in semiotic terms), gender ideology simultaneously means nothing and everything. This has allowed it to become the symbolic ‘glue’, uniting disparate groups in opposition—to feminism, transgender equality, the existence of intersex bodies, elimination of sex stereotyping, family-law reform, same-sex marriage, access to abortion and contraception, and comprehensive sexuality education.
The anti-gender movement is increasingly well resourced and co-ordinated, and more strategic and sophisticated than in the past. It has mobilised against gender- and sexuality-based human-rights advances at the national level, as well vis-à-vis regional and global mechanisms relating to rights, development and public health.
The anti-gender movement has even co-opted the language of human rights—positioning itself domestically as protecting free speech and religious freedom against ideological conformity and internationally as protecting national cultural integrity against imperialism. In this way, LGBT identities have come to stand in for something much bigger, being construed as a threat to the fabric of society itself.
Proceedings initiated
Last month, LGBT activist groups submitted a legal complaint to the European Commission, asserting that Poland’s ‘LGBT-ideology free zones’ and other discriminatory measures ran counter to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the directive on equal treatment in employment and occupation. In mid-July, the commission initiated infringement proceedings against Poland, because of local authorities having adopted ‘LGBT-ideology free zone’ resolutions (three have since reneged), and against aspects of Hungary’s disingenuous paedophilia law falling foul of its human-rights obligations.
Aside from violations relating to trade and the free flow of information, the commission asserted, the Hungarian provisions infringed rights to non-discrimination, human dignity, freedom of expression and information and respect for private life. The Polish authorities meanwhile had failed to respond adequately to its inquiry as to the meaning and impact of municipalities becoming ‘LGBT-ideology free zones’.
These are serious allegations, with far-reaching implications, and the commission is right to identify depredations of basic human rights and core European values. Both states enjoy the economic benefits attached to EU membership, yet under their current governments eschew the associated obligations.
Supporting the rights of, and equality for, LGBT people in these settings is thus more than defending members of a minority group, vital though that is. It is defending democracy and human rights for everyone.
Germany’s political parties negotiating coalition agreements to create a new government should make a commitment to change the law on legal gender recognition, so that it is based on self-determination, not so-called expert reports, Human Rights Watch said today. While the parties try to reach agreements on key issues such as climate, foreign policy, migration, and the economy, they should also address the current pathologizing and onerous procedure for transgender people to modify their registered name and gender. “Germany’s current procedure for gender recognition is out of tune with developments in international law and medical science,” said Cristian González Cabrera, LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “All political parties should agree to a change to the status quo in the next legislative session and make the procedure straightforward, nonjudicial, accessible, and based on self-determination for all trans people.”
Germany’s Transsexuals Law (Transsexuellengesetz) specifies that to have the name and gender with which they identify legally recognized, trans people need to provide a local court (Amtsgericht) with two expert reports. The reports must attest to “a high degree of probability” that the applicant will not want to revert to their previous legal gender. The law does not have a minimum age at which a trans person can seek legal gender recognition, an aspect of the law that should be retained.
According to a 2017 report from the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, applicants consider the assessment process humiliating. Some applicants said that to secure the necessary reports, they had to disclose immaterial details from their childhood and their sexual past, and even undergo physical examinations. The report found that the legal procedure can take up 20 months and costs an average of €1,868 (approx. US$2,160).
The political parties most likely to form a coalition government following Germany’s September elections are the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Union parties’ (CDU/CSU), the Free Democratic Party (FDP), and the Greens. These parties have made previous unsuccessful legislative attempts to reform Germany’s legal gender recognition procedure under the current government.
The SPD, the junior partner in the current ruling coalition, announced in January 2021 that negotiations broke down as the Union parties opposed a process based solely on self-determination. The Greens and the FDP, both in the opposition in the last legislative period, each presented bills to reform the Transsexuals Law, which the parliament rejected.
A growing number of countries around the world have removed burdensome requirements to legal gender recognition, including medical or psychological evaluation. Countries including Argentina, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Portugal, and Uruguay center individual autonomy over gender identity, providing for simple administrative processes based on self-declaration. Costa Rica and the Netherlands have taken steps toward removing gender markers on identity documents altogether.
The move toward straightforward administrative procedures based on self-declaration reflect science-based and human rights standards. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, an interdisciplinary professional association with over 700 members worldwide, has found that medical and other barriers to gender recognition for transgender people, including diagnostic requirements, “may harm physical and mental health.” The most recent International Classification of Diseases, which will come into effect in January 2022, formally depathologizes trans identities.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Germany is a party, provides for equal civil and political rights for all, everyone’s right to recognition before the law, and the right to privacy. The United Nations Human Rights Committee, in charge of interpreting the ICCPR, has called on governments to guarantee the rights of transgender people, including the right to legal recognition of their gender, and for countries to repeal abusive and disproportionate requirements for legal recognition of gender identity.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled in Goodwin v. United Kingdom(2002) that the “conflict between social reality and law” that arises when the government does not recognize a person’s gender identity constitutes “serious interference with private life.” The European Union’s LGBTIQ Equality Strategy (2020-2025) also upholds “accessible legal gender recognition based on self-determination and without age restriction” as the human rights standard in the member bloc.
As a member of the Equal Rights Coalition, the Global Equality Fund, and the UN LGBTI Core Group, Germany plays an important role in advocating for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) rights beyond its borders. In March 2021, the federal government pledged to do more through a LGBTI Inclusion Strategy, which, among its many goals, aims to further Germany’s role in promoting LGBTI people’s rights at international and regional human rights institutions.
“While Germany remains at the forefront of advancing the rights of LGBTI people overseas, its outdated approach to legal gender recognition for trans people taints its domestic human rights record,” González said. “In current coalition negotiations, Germany’s lawmakers should seize the opportunity to ensure that Germany’s transgender residents have their rights fully respected in law and make Germany a leader when it comes to gender diversity at home and abroad.”
A Kuwaiti court has sentenced a transgender woman to prison for “imitating the opposite sex” online, Human Rights Watch said today. Such laws violate the rights to free expression, privacy, and nondiscrimination under Kuwait’s constitution and international law. The authorities should immediately release her and quash the conviction.
The court on October 3, 2021, sentenced Maha al-Mutairi, 40, to two years in prison and a fine of 1,000 Kuwaiti dinars (USD 3,315) for “misusing phone communication” by “imitating the opposite sex” online under article 70 of the telecommunication law and article 198 of the penal code. She has been arrested multiple times since 2019 for her transgender identity, but the current conviction is apparently based on her online activities in 2021.
“The Kuwaiti government’s monitoring, repeated arrests, and imprisonment of Maha al-Mutairi for her trans identity is a blatant violation of her basic rights,” said Rasha Younes, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Kuwaiti authorities should immediately reverse her conviction and allow her to live safely as a woman.”
Al-Mutairi told Human Rights Watch in a phone interview on October 8 that after receiving news of her conviction she went into hiding. But the police arrested her on October 11 at the hotel where she was staying. She is being held in Kuwait Central Prison, a men’s prison, in a solitary cell designated for transgender detainees.
Ibtissam al-Enezi, al-Mutairi’s lawyer, told Human Rights Watch that the court used al-Mutairi’s social media videos as evidence to convict her on grounds that she was wearing makeup, speaking about her transgender identity, allegedly making “sexual advances,” and criticizing the Kuwaiti government. Her appeals hearing is scheduled for October 31.
Al-Enezi said the prison officials have not mistreated al-Mutairi and that police had allowed her to call her lawyer. Al-Mutairi told Human Rights Watch that this was the sixth time she has been arrested due to her transgender identity and that before her current arrest she had been barred from traveling outside the country because of the cases against her.
On June 5, 2020, the authorities summoned al-Mutairi for “imitating women” – the fourth time she had faced the charge that year – after she posted a video online saying that the police had raped and beaten her while she was detained in a male prison for seven months in 2019 for “imitating the opposite sex.” The authorities released al-Mutairi on bail on June 8, 2020, without charge. She told Human Rights Watch that the police abused her during those three days in detention, including by spitting on her, verbally abusing her, and sexually assaulting her by taking turns touching her breasts.
A 2007 Kuwaiti law amended article 198 of the penal code, criminalizing “imitating the opposite sex.” Under article 70 of the telecommunication law, a person who “misuses” telephone communication may be imprisoned for up to a year and fined up to 2,000 Kuwaiti dinars (USD 7,091).
In 2012, Human Rights Watch documented the negative effects of article 198 on the lives of transgender women, who reported multiple forms of abuse at the hands of the police while in detention. They described degrading and humiliating treatment such as being forced to strip and parade around police stations, being forced to dance for officers, sexual humiliation, verbal taunts and intimidation, solitary confinement, and emotional and physical abuse that could amount to torture.
The Kuwaiti National Assembly should repeal the 2007 amendment to article 198, and Kuwaiti authorities should investigate all allegations of police brutality including sexual violence, hold officers accountable for misconduct, and protect transgender people from violence, Human Rights Watch said. Kuwaiti authorities should also amend article 70 of the telecommunication law to remove imprisonment as a punishment for speech violations that amount to defamation as defined by law.
Article 36 of Kuwait’s constitution guarantees freedom of opinion and expression. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Kuwait has ratified, also guarantees the right to freedom of expression and requires that any restrictions “must be constructed with care,” ensure that they do not stifle freedom of expression in practice and should not provide for “excessively punitive measures and penalties.”
The United Nations Human Rights Committee, which monitors compliance with the ICCPR, has made clear that the covenant prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation in upholding any of the rights protected by the treaty. As a state party to the ICCPR and the Arab Charter on Human Rights, Kuwait is required to protect the rights to freedom of opinion and expression, including for transgender people.
“Al-Mutairi’s story is one of many horrific accounts by transgender Kuwaitis whose only crime is expressing themselves publicly,” Younes said. “Kuwait should immediately release al-Mutairi, investigate her allegations of sexual violence in detention, and end its criminalization and harassment of transgender people.”
India’s National Medical Commission has ordered publishers and medical schools to edit their textbooks and curricula to exclude discriminatory and unscientific portrayals of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people.
The order from the country’s highest medical regulator follows a June 2021 Madras High Court rulinginstructing institutions across the country to roll back prejudicial and inaccurate portrayals of sexual and gender minorities. In the judgment, Judge Anand Venkatesh said, “Ignorance is no justification for normalizing any form of discrimination.” His language echoes previous court rulings and commission reports in India.
In 2018, when the Supreme Court unanimously struck down India’s colonial-era criminal prohibition on same-sex relations, Justice Indu Malhotra stated that, “an apology [is owed] to members of the LGBT community … for the ostracization and persecution they faced because of society’s ignorance.” In the case’s early stages, the Indian Medical Association made clear: “We are seriously concerned that homosexuality is looked upon as a disorder and in our joint petition appealed to the Supreme Court that it was not an illness.”
In January 2021, the Delhi Child Rights Commission recommended a ban on medically unnecessary “normalizing” surgeries on children born with intersex variations. This follows the southern state of Tamil Nadu banning such operations in 2019 after a court upheld the informed consent rights for intersex children. The commission’s recommendation received support from the Delhi Medical Council, which wrote that, “[s]urgical interventions … that are not deemed medically necessary should be delayed until the patient can provide meaningful informed consent.”
Welcoming the medical commission’s advisory this week, Dr. L. Ramakrishnan, vice president of SAATHII, an LGBT advocacy group, said: “The issue is not only one of misrepresentation but also one of absence. For instance, standard Indian textbooks in Pediatrics do not mention same-gender attraction or transgender identity in a non-pathologizing manner while addressing child and adolescent development.”
The National Medical Commission’s announcement further indicates the widespread support for reform among Indian legal and medical experts. It is a good precedent for what is needed across the education sector – a comprehensive update of outdated curricula.
Rwandan authorities rounded up and arbitrarily detained over a dozen gay and transgender people, sex workers, street children, and others in the months before a planned June 2021 high-profile international conference, Human Rights Watch said.
They were held in a transit center in Gikondo neighborhood of the capital Kigali, unofficially called “Kwa Kabuga,” known for its harsh and inhuman conditions, which appear to have deteriorated further due to the increase in the number of detainees held there and the pandemic. The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), first scheduled for June 2020 and rescheduled for June 2021, was eventually postponed indefinitely in May.
“Rwanda’s strategy to promote Kigali as a hub for meetings and conferences often means continued abuse of the capital’s poorest and most marginalized residents,” said Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “As the meeting is rescheduled, Rwanda’s Commonwealth partners have a choice: either speak up for the rights of the victims or be silent as the crackdown is carried out in their name.”
Following reports on abuses at the Gikondo transit center in 2015, 2016, and 2020, this practice was condemned during Rwanda’s review by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, a Geneva-based treaty body, in February 2020. Between April and June 2021, Human Rights Watch interviewed via telephone 17 former detainees from Gikondo. Interviews with nine people who identified as transgender or homosexual, three women who were detained with their babies, four men who worked as street vendors at local markets, and a 13-year-old boy living on the streets in Kigali, confirmed that patterns of abuse that Human Rights Watch documented previously are ongoing. Due to fear of reprisals against interviewees, Human Rights Watch has withheld all identifying information.
At Gikondo, detainees are held in overcrowded rooms in conditions well below standards required by Rwandan and international law. The former detainees said they have inadequate food, water, and health care; suffer frequent beatings; and are rarely allowed to leave filthy, overcrowded rooms. People were detained there without basic due process standards. None of the former detainees interviewed were formally charged with any criminal offense and none saw a prosecutor, judge, or lawyer before or during their detention. There were no measures to protect people from Covid-19, and former detainees said they did not have access to testing, soap, masks, or basic hygiene and sanitation amenities.
People interviewed who identified as gay or transgender said that security officials accused them of “not representing Rwandan values.” They said that other detainees beat them because of their clothes and identity. Three other detainees, who were held in the “delinquents’” room at Gikondo, confirmed that fellow detainees and guards more frequently and violently beat people they knew were gay or transgender than others.
In the past, round-ups have been connected to high-profile government events, ahead of which security forces may ramp up efforts to “clear up” Kigali’s streets. Human Rights Watch documented a similar round-up in 2016 before an African Union Summit held in Kigali. Ahead of the now postponed 2021 Commonwealth meeting, several former detainees said the police told them they did not want them on the streets during the event.
A civil society activist in Kigali said: “The streets were empty before the meeting. You couldn’t see any street children in town. Even the fruit vendors were taken [to Gikondo]. But now you can see them in the streets again.” Sources in Kigali confirmed that fewer people were living or working on the streets in the month preceding the date for the meeting. Several former detainees said the conditions at Gikondo had worsened in the lead-up to the meeting due to severe overcrowding.
An 18-year-old woman, a street vendor arbitrarily detained for two weeks with her 9-month-old baby, said: “[The police] said the government wanted to clear the city because of CHOGM. They said they would detain us until CHOGM has happened without our filth on display.”
Rwanda is one of a few countries in East Africa that does not criminalize consensual same-sex relations. Vagrancy, begging, and sex work are not criminalized either. Yet the authorities continue to use Gikondo Transit Center to imprison people accused of “deviant behavior that is harmful to the public,” including street vending and homelessness.
Rwanda should urgently close the transit center in Gikondo and amend the legal framework governing the National Rehabilitation Service. The authorities should promptly investigate all reported cases of ill-treatment and beatings of detainees by police and transit center personnel – including reports of detainees dying in detention – and prosecute the suspected abusers, Human Rights Watch said.
“Based on past experience, there is every likelihood that similar patterns of abuse will occur ahead of whatever new date is set for the Commonwealth meeting,” Mudge said. “Locking up marginalized people and abusing them simply because the authorities believe they tarnish their country’s image violates human dignity, and Commonwealth leaders should not tolerate this.”
Gikondo Transit Center
Since 2017, legislation and policies under the government’s strategy to “eradicate delinquency” have sought to legitimize and regulate so-called transit centers, presenting them as part of a “rehabilitation” process aimed at supporting poor and marginalized people. The authorities acknowledge that there are 28 “transit centers” in Rwanda, including “Kwa Kabuga,” the unofficial name of Kigali’s transit center situated in the Gikondo residential suburb of Kigali.
A January 2020 Human Rights Watch report found that the 2017 legislation provides cover for the police to round up and arbitrarily detain people accused of so-called “deviant behaviors” at Gikondo in deplorable and degrading conditions, and without due process or judicial oversight. Detainees are released with very little formal procedure, reflecting the arbitrary manner in which they were initially arrested.
Based on the 2017 legal framework and statements by Rwandan authorities, the broader objective of Gikondo is to serve as a short-term screening center to allow authorities to process detainees to send on to rehabilitation centers. However, in practice, there is no judicial process to determine the length of time people spend at the center or whether they are released or transferred. Some people interviewed said they were released when the center was overcrowded. Two said they were released in June 2021, after the decision to postpone the Commonwealth meeting was announced.
The 13-year-old boy said he was held for two weeks in late April and May, in a room with over 200 other street children, and was released after the announcement: “The police told us: ‘Don’t be afraid, children. The meeting isn’t happening; you’ll be released tomorrow.’” He said that district authorities collected all children detained at Gikondo and returned them to the streets of Kigali. He was not offered support to rejoin his family or return to school.
The civil society activist confirmed that, “Children were detained, moto-taxis had to stop working, street vendors were harassed – all because of the Commonwealth meeting. Since it’s been postponed, the abuse has calmed down.”
Former detainees said police told them that they were “trash,” and that they would be detained during the meeting and released in August. “Before the [Commonwealth] meeting, they would arrest us and seize our goods,” said a 20-year-old street vendor, who was detained for two weeks in April with her 9-month-old baby. “With this meeting coming up … Gikondo [was] very overcrowded.”
Arrest and Transfer to Gikondo
Round-ups by police or officers from the District Administration Security Support Organ (DASSO), a local state security body, are often the first step toward arbitrary detention at Gikondo. The arbitrary nature of the detention is reflected in the complete absence of due process once people are taken to Gikondo. In most cases, detainees are held in various police stations or sector (local government) offices across Kigali before being transferred to Gikondo. None of the interviewees were taken before a judge or given access to a lawyer before being transferred to Gikondo.
Detention of Gay and Transgender People
The detention of transgender people at Gikondo was reported in the media in November 2020. The nine transgender or gay people interviewed by Human Rights Watch were detained at Gikondo between December 2020 and April 2021. They said they had been targeted due to their sexual orientation or gender identity and treated worse than other detainees.
Several said the police or local security officers detained them after members of the public reported seeing them with their partners and other lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, or wearing women’s clothing if they were perceived not to be female. At Gikondo, police officers or guards accused them of being homeless, thieves, or delinquents and held them in a room reserved for “delinquent” men. One 27-year-old transgender woman said:
They took me at Kabuga and said I was causing problems in Rwanda…. When I arrived, police asked why am I looking like this? Why am I looking like a girl? They asked: ‘Are you a prostitute?’ I said, ‘No, I am a Rwandan.’ They jailed me with other people who were [accused of being] thieves.
One said he was arrested in late December 2020, after leaving a bar in Nyamirambo neighborhood in Kigali: “When we were about to get on motorbikes, local patrol men came and asked us who we are and what we are doing here … they said we don’t represent Rwandan customs. My friend [a transgender woman] has long hair and was wearing a skirt.” Another former detainee was arrested by local security officials in February 2021 after kissing his same-sex partner in a bar. He said customers from the bar insulted them and called the security patrol, who took them straight to Gikondo transit center.
Transgender and gay people interviewed described being harassed, insulted, and beaten by security officials during their arrest and detention. A former detainee who was arrested by DASSO officials in December 2020 said she was taken to the Nyabugogo police station. “They asked me what I was doing … if I am a girl or a boy,” she said. “I said I am a girl and that’s when the problems started … At Kabuga, we were beaten by the leaders. They asked if we were boys or girls.”
A transgender woman detained at Gikondo in February 2021 said: “Police said we were cursed, and asked how we could behave in this way, having sex with people of the same sex as us. They said we’re delinquents and put us in that room. But in the room, we were badly beaten by other detainees and police did nothing despite our cries.” Another gay former detainee who was arrested with a group of transgender people said a policeman beat his feet and told him he should be “rehabilitated.”
Several other former detainees confirmed these patterns of abuse. An 18-year-old street vendor accused of “delinquency” was detained with about 1,000 other men, where he said “men who dressed as women” – referring to transgender people – “were beaten more than the others. We were all beaten but they were really badly beaten.” All transgender women interviewed were housed in male facilities.
Beatings
Beatings often begin as soon as people are rounded up and taken to a nearby police station or post. A 30-year-old woman with a 3-year-old child said:
I was taken to the police, where they kept us in a room with others who had been arrested. At that point we were violently beaten. I had a baby with me, but they still beat me, although they didn’t beat him. At 2 a.m. they transferred us to “Kwa Kabuga.” They told me: “Your baby is none of our business. Get in with the others.” I insulted them, so they beat me badly. They said they don’t want me to do this kind of business [on the streets].
Once detainees arrive at Gikondo, they are registered and often beaten by other detainees. Long-term detainees at Gikondo, known as “counsellors,” are often in charge of daily life in the rooms and beat other detainees. The 30-year-old street vendor said that other detainees in the women’s room beat her and her child: “An adult woman is hit twenty times, whereas her child will be beaten four times. It’s only babies under one year old that are not beaten.”
Interviewees detained in the women’s room also said they were beaten when their child defecated or cried: “We were beaten every day. We were also beaten when we asked for permission to use the toilet. If a baby cried, or urinated, its mother would pay the price,” said the 23-year-old mother of a 2-year-old child, who was detained at Gikondo for three weeks in April.
Guards or “counselors” also regularly beat detainees in the children’s room or rooms for adult men. Children are often beaten when they make noise or play together. “We were beaten a lot…. If you fight, if you make a mistake, or if you shout, they beat you with sticks,” the 13-year-old boy said. A 21-year-old street vendor held in the room for “delinquents” said that detainees are beaten for spending too long in the bathroom, for talking too loudly, or “for any fault you commit.”
Conditions at Gikondo
Conditions in Gikondo Transit Center, as Human Rights Watch has extensively documented since 2006, fall well below international standards and violate Rwandan law.
In March 2020, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture called on governments to “reduce prison populations … wherever possible by implementing schemes of early, provisional or temporary release.” Yet Rwandan authorities continued to detain people in Gikondo transit center, without due process or judicial oversight. Overcrowding and poor hygienic and sanitary conditions at Gikondo put people at greater risk of contracting Covid-19 due to close proximity, inability to practice “social distancing,” a lack of adequate sanitation and hygiene, and lack of adequate medical care, including a lack of Covid-19 testing.
During their arrest and transfer to Gikondo, people interviewed said, they were not tested for Covid-19, were not given masks to wear, and were not given the space to maintain distances from other detainees. Many were taken to Gikondo in an overcrowded truck with windows closed. Some said that upon arrival, they washed their hands with water, but were not given soap. One former detainee said hand sanitizer was confiscated by the authorities upon arrival.
Former detainees who were held at Gikondo between 2019 and 2021 estimate that between 50 and 200 girls and boys detained together at a time in the “children’s room,” in deplorable and degrading conditions. But they described conditions in the room for male “delinquents” – which also holds teenage boys – and facilities for adult women with their infants as far worse.
In those two rooms, some children were held together with adults in severely overcrowded conditions and many detainees were forced to sleep on the concrete floor. Former detainees held in the room for “delinquents” estimated that over 1,000 people were held together. One person interviewed said it was not possible to see the floor at night when the detainees attempted to lay down to sleep on the concrete floor.
Most former detainees said they were given food once a day, in insufficient quantities and with poor nutritional value. Food is particularly insufficient for young children and babies, who regularly get sick. One woman said she was released after her baby got so ill he had blood in his stool, while another said her baby had to be transferred directly to a hospital due to malnutrition.
Detainees in the rooms for women and “delinquents” had irregular access to drinking water, sometimes only once a day. “Sometimes we go an entire day without drinking water, and then they give a tiny amount that we all have to share,” said one interviewee who was held at Gikondo for almost all of April.
Sanitation and hygiene conditions are very poor, and many interviewees reported being allowed to wash at most once a week. One former detainee said: “When it’s time to wash, they take a 20-liter basin and around 20 to 30 people wash at the same time.” Former detainees said they were rarely given soap. The mother of a 3-year-old said: “We only washed once a day with filthy water that had worms in it, mostly without soap … we didn’t change our clothes.”
Three interviewees said that during their time at Gikondo, they saw or heard of detainees who had died due to the poor conditions and lack of appropriate medical care. “In the two weeks I spent [at Gikondo] there were three nights where we couldn’t sleep because there were too many people in the room,” said a 40-year-old street vendor detained at the transit center in April. “Two people died because of this treatment and illnesses…. They were ill and had diarrhea and skin rashes. They were refused permission to see a doctor, and one morning they were found dead. I don’t know what caused their death or what their names are.”
Human Rights Watch requested information on these allegations from the Justice Ministry and the National Rehabilitation Service but received no response and was not able to independently verify them.
Lack of Government Response; Criticism by Regional and International Entities
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which reviewed Rwanda’s record on January 27 and 28, 2020, said it was concerned that the reference to “deviant behaviors” in Rwanda’s legislation was leading to “the deprivation of liberty of children in need of protection.” The committee said the abusive detention should end and that the government should change the law.
During the committee’s review, the Rwandan government denied that the detention of street children in transit centers is arbitrary. The government also claimed that children in transit centers are either placed with a family or transferred to a “rehabilitation center” within 72 hours. These claims contradict reports by the National Commission for Children and the National Commission for Human Rights, as well as Human Rights Watch findings.
In response to the Human Rights Watch January 2020 report, then-Justice Minister Johnston Busingye was quoted in KT Press saying: “These children have been redeemed…. We believe they can become useful citizens…. HRW [Human Rights Watch] can come and interview them if they wish.” During Rwanda’s review by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the gender and family promotion minister, Soline Nyirahabimana, also said that independent observers should visit the center.
On December 4, 2020, the African Court on Human and People’s Rights held that states’ laws enabling the detention of people who, often because of poverty, are forced to live on the street, violate human rights law. The opinion issued in response to a request by the Pan African Lawyers Union, upheld the rights of people deemed “vagrants” by the state. The opinion concluded that laws permitting the forcible removal or warrantless arrest of a person declared to be a “vagrant,” violate the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and other human rights instruments.
On February 6, 2020, December 14, 2020, and August 23, 2021, Human Rights Watch wrote letters to then-Justice Minister Busingye following up on these statements, requesting access to Gikondo and other transit centers in Rwanda, and asking about steps taken by the Rwanda authorities to remedy the abusive legal framework governing its National Rehabilitation Service. He has not responded.
Rwandan authorities rounded up and arbitrarily detained over a dozen gay and transgender people, sex workers, street children, and others in the months before a planned June 2021 high-profile international conference, Human Rights Watch said.
They were held in a transit center in Gikondo neighborhood of the capital Kigali, unofficially called “Kwa Kabuga,” known for its harsh and inhuman conditions, which appear to have deteriorated further due to the increase in the number of detainees held there and the pandemic. The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), first scheduled for June 2020 and rescheduled for June 2021, was eventually postponed indefinitely in May.
“Rwanda’s strategy to promote Kigali as a hub for meetings and conferences often means continued abuse of the capital’s poorest and most marginalized residents,” said Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “As the meeting is rescheduled, Rwanda’s Commonwealth partners have a choice: either speak up for the rights of the victims or be silent as the crackdown is carried out in their name.”
Following reports on abuses at the Gikondo transit center in 2015, 2016, and 2020, this practice was condemned during Rwanda’s review by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, a Geneva-based treaty body, in February 2020. Between April and June 2021, Human Rights Watch interviewed via telephone 17 former detainees from Gikondo. Interviews with nine people who identified as transgender or homosexual, three women who were detained with their babies, four men who worked as street vendors at local markets, and a 13-year-old boy living on the streets in Kigali, confirmed that patterns of abuse that Human Rights Watch documented previously are ongoing. Due to fear of reprisals against interviewees, Human Rights Watch has withheld all identifying information.
At Gikondo, detainees are held in overcrowded rooms in conditions well below standards required by Rwandan and international law. The former detainees said they have inadequate food, water, and health care; suffer frequent beatings; and are rarely allowed to leave filthy, overcrowded rooms. People were detained there without basic due process standards. None of the former detainees interviewed were formally charged with any criminal offense and none saw a prosecutor, judge, or lawyer before or during their detention. There were no measures to protect people from Covid-19, and former detainees said they did not have access to testing, soap, masks, or basic hygiene and sanitation amenities.
People interviewed who identified as gay or transgender said that security officials accused them of “not representing Rwandan values.” They said that other detainees beat them because of their clothes and identity. Three other detainees, who were held in the “delinquents’” room at Gikondo, confirmed that fellow detainees and guards more frequently and violently beat people they knew were gay or transgender than others.
In the past, round-ups have been connected to high-profile government events, ahead of which security forces may ramp up efforts to “clear up” Kigali’s streets. Human Rights Watch documented a similar round-up in 2016 before an African Union Summit held in Kigali. Ahead of the now postponed 2021 Commonwealth meeting, several former detainees said the police told them they did not want them on the streets during the event.
A civil society activist in Kigali said: “The streets were empty before the meeting. You couldn’t see any street children in town. Even the fruit vendors were taken [to Gikondo]. But now you can see them in the streets again.” Sources in Kigali confirmed that fewer people were living or working on the streets in the month preceding the date for the meeting. Several former detainees said the conditions at Gikondo had worsened in the lead-up to the meeting due to severe overcrowding.
An 18-year-old woman, a street vendor arbitrarily detained for two weeks with her 9-month-old baby, said: “[The police] said the government wanted to clear the city because of CHOGM. They said they would detain us until CHOGM has happened without our filth on display.”
Rwanda is one of a few countries in East Africa that does not criminalize consensual same-sex relations. Vagrancy, begging, and sex work are not criminalized either. Yet the authorities continue to use Gikondo Transit Center to imprison people accused of “deviant behavior that is harmful to the public,” including street vending and homelessness.
Rwanda should urgently close the transit center in Gikondo and amend the legal framework governing the National Rehabilitation Service. The authorities should promptly investigate all reported cases of ill-treatment and beatings of detainees by police and transit center personnel – including reports of detainees dying in detention – and prosecute the suspected abusers, Human Rights Watch said.
“Based on past experience, there is every likelihood that similar patterns of abuse will occur ahead of whatever new date is set for the Commonwealth meeting,” Mudge said. “Locking up marginalized people and abusing them simply because the authorities believe they tarnish their country’s image violates human dignity, and Commonwealth leaders should not tolerate this.”
Gikondo Transit Center
Since 2017, legislation and policies under the government’s strategy to “eradicate delinquency” have sought to legitimize and regulate so-called transit centers, presenting them as part of a “rehabilitation” process aimed at supporting poor and marginalized people. The authorities acknowledge that there are 28 “transit centers” in Rwanda, including “Kwa Kabuga,” the unofficial name of Kigali’s transit center situated in the Gikondo residential suburb of Kigali.
A January 2020 Human Rights Watch report found that the 2017 legislation provides cover for the police to round up and arbitrarily detain people accused of so-called “deviant behaviors” at Gikondo in deplorable and degrading conditions, and without due process or judicial oversight. Detainees are released with very little formal procedure, reflecting the arbitrary manner in which they were initially arrested.
Based on the 2017 legal framework and statements by Rwandan authorities, the broader objective of Gikondo is to serve as a short-term screening center to allow authorities to process detainees to send on to rehabilitation centers. However, in practice, there is no judicial process to determine the length of time people spend at the center or whether they are released or transferred. Some people interviewed said they were released when the center was overcrowded. Two said they were released in June 2021, after the decision to postpone the Commonwealth meeting was announced.
The 13-year-old boy said he was held for two weeks in late April and May, in a room with over 200 other street children, and was released after the announcement: “The police told us: ‘Don’t be afraid, children. The meeting isn’t happening; you’ll be released tomorrow.’” He said that district authorities collected all children detained at Gikondo and returned them to the streets of Kigali. He was not offered support to rejoin his family or return to school.
The civil society activist confirmed that, “Children were detained, moto-taxis had to stop working, street vendors were harassed – all because of the Commonwealth meeting. Since it’s been postponed, the abuse has calmed down.”
Former detainees said police told them that they were “trash,” and that they would be detained during the meeting and released in August. “Before the [Commonwealth] meeting, they would arrest us and seize our goods,” said a 20-year-old street vendor, who was detained for two weeks in April with her 9-month-old baby. “With this meeting coming up … Gikondo [was] very overcrowded.”
Arrest and Transfer to Gikondo
Round-ups by police or officers from the District Administration Security Support Organ (DASSO), a local state security body, are often the first step toward arbitrary detention at Gikondo. The arbitrary nature of the detention is reflected in the complete absence of due process once people are taken to Gikondo. In most cases, detainees are held in various police stations or sector (local government) offices across Kigali before being transferred to Gikondo. None of the interviewees were taken before a judge or given access to a lawyer before being transferred to Gikondo.
Detention of Gay and Transgender People
The detention of transgender people at Gikondo was reported in the media in November 2020. The nine transgender or gay people interviewed by Human Rights Watch were detained at Gikondo between December 2020 and April 2021. They said they had been targeted due to their sexual orientation or gender identity and treated worse than other detainees.
Several said the police or local security officers detained them after members of the public reported seeing them with their partners and other lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, or wearing women’s clothing if they were perceived not to be female. At Gikondo, police officers or guards accused them of being homeless, thieves, or delinquents and held them in a room reserved for “delinquent” men. One 27-year-old transgender woman said:
They took me at Kabuga and said I was causing problems in Rwanda…. When I arrived, police asked why am I looking like this? Why am I looking like a girl? They asked: ‘Are you a prostitute?’ I said, ‘No, I am a Rwandan.’ They jailed me with other people who were [accused of being] thieves.
One said he was arrested in late December 2020, after leaving a bar in Nyamirambo neighborhood in Kigali: “When we were about to get on motorbikes, local patrol men came and asked us who we are and what we are doing here … they said we don’t represent Rwandan customs. My friend [a transgender woman] has long hair and was wearing a skirt.” Another former detainee was arrested by local security officials in February 2021 after kissing his same-sex partner in a bar. He said customers from the bar insulted them and called the security patrol, who took them straight to Gikondo transit center.
Transgender and gay people interviewed described being harassed, insulted, and beaten by security officials during their arrest and detention. A former detainee who was arrested by DASSO officials in December 2020 said she was taken to the Nyabugogo police station. “They asked me what I was doing … if I am a girl or a boy,” she said. “I said I am a girl and that’s when the problems started … At Kabuga, we were beaten by the leaders. They asked if we were boys or girls.”
A transgender woman detained at Gikondo in February 2021 said: “Police said we were cursed, and asked how we could behave in this way, having sex with people of the same sex as us. They said we’re delinquents and put us in that room. But in the room, we were badly beaten by other detainees and police did nothing despite our cries.” Another gay former detainee who was arrested with a group of transgender people said a policeman beat his feet and told him he should be “rehabilitated.”
Several other former detainees confirmed these patterns of abuse. An 18-year-old street vendor accused of “delinquency” was detained with about 1,000 other men, where he said “men who dressed as women” – referring to transgender people – “were beaten more than the others. We were all beaten but they were really badly beaten.” All transgender women interviewed were housed in male facilities.
Beatings
Beatings often begin as soon as people are rounded up and taken to a nearby police station or post. A 30-year-old woman with a 3-year-old child said:
I was taken to the police, where they kept us in a room with others who had been arrested. At that point we were violently beaten. I had a baby with me, but they still beat me, although they didn’t beat him. At 2 a.m. they transferred us to “Kwa Kabuga.” They told me: “Your baby is none of our business. Get in with the others.” I insulted them, so they beat me badly. They said they don’t want me to do this kind of business [on the streets].
Once detainees arrive at Gikondo, they are registered and often beaten by other detainees. Long-term detainees at Gikondo, known as “counsellors,” are often in charge of daily life in the rooms and beat other detainees. The 30-year-old street vendor said that other detainees in the women’s room beat her and her child: “An adult woman is hit twenty times, whereas her child will be beaten four times. It’s only babies under one year old that are not beaten.”
Interviewees detained in the women’s room also said they were beaten when their child defecated or cried: “We were beaten every day. We were also beaten when we asked for permission to use the toilet. If a baby cried, or urinated, its mother would pay the price,” said the 23-year-old mother of a 2-year-old child, who was detained at Gikondo for three weeks in April.
Guards or “counselors” also regularly beat detainees in the children’s room or rooms for adult men. Children are often beaten when they make noise or play together. “We were beaten a lot…. If you fight, if you make a mistake, or if you shout, they beat you with sticks,” the 13-year-old boy said. A 21-year-old street vendor held in the room for “delinquents” said that detainees are beaten for spending too long in the bathroom, for talking too loudly, or “for any fault you commit.”
Conditions at Gikondo
Conditions in Gikondo Transit Center, as Human Rights Watch has extensively documented since 2006, fall well below international standards and violate Rwandan law.
In March 2020, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture called on governments to “reduce prison populations … wherever possible by implementing schemes of early, provisional or temporary release.” Yet Rwandan authorities continued to detain people in Gikondo transit center, without due process or judicial oversight. Overcrowding and poor hygienic and sanitary conditions at Gikondo put people at greater risk of contracting Covid-19 due to close proximity, inability to practice “social distancing,” a lack of adequate sanitation and hygiene, and lack of adequate medical care, including a lack of Covid-19 testing.
During their arrest and transfer to Gikondo, people interviewed said, they were not tested for Covid-19, were not given masks to wear, and were not given the space to maintain distances from other detainees. Many were taken to Gikondo in an overcrowded truck with windows closed. Some said that upon arrival, they washed their hands with water, but were not given soap. One former detainee said hand sanitizer was confiscated by the authorities upon arrival.
Former detainees who were held at Gikondo between 2019 and 2021 estimate that between 50 and 200 girls and boys detained together at a time in the “children’s room,” in deplorable and degrading conditions. But they described conditions in the room for male “delinquents” – which also holds teenage boys – and facilities for adult women with their infants as far worse.
In those two rooms, some children were held together with adults in severely overcrowded conditions and many detainees were forced to sleep on the concrete floor. Former detainees held in the room for “delinquents” estimated that over 1,000 people were held together. One person interviewed said it was not possible to see the floor at night when the detainees attempted to lay down to sleep on the concrete floor.
Most former detainees said they were given food once a day, in insufficient quantities and with poor nutritional value. Food is particularly insufficient for young children and babies, who regularly get sick. One woman said she was released after her baby got so ill he had blood in his stool, while another said her baby had to be transferred directly to a hospital due to malnutrition.
Detainees in the rooms for women and “delinquents” had irregular access to drinking water, sometimes only once a day. “Sometimes we go an entire day without drinking water, and then they give a tiny amount that we all have to share,” said one interviewee who was held at Gikondo for almost all of April.
Sanitation and hygiene conditions are very poor, and many interviewees reported being allowed to wash at most once a week. One former detainee said: “When it’s time to wash, they take a 20-liter basin and around 20 to 30 people wash at the same time.” Former detainees said they were rarely given soap. The mother of a 3-year-old said: “We only washed once a day with filthy water that had worms in it, mostly without soap … we didn’t change our clothes.”
Three interviewees said that during their time at Gikondo, they saw or heard of detainees who had died due to the poor conditions and lack of appropriate medical care. “In the two weeks I spent [at Gikondo] there were three nights where we couldn’t sleep because there were too many people in the room,” said a 40-year-old street vendor detained at the transit center in April. “Two people died because of this treatment and illnesses…. They were ill and had diarrhea and skin rashes. They were refused permission to see a doctor, and one morning they were found dead. I don’t know what caused their death or what their names are.”
Human Rights Watch requested information on these allegations from the Justice Ministry and the National Rehabilitation Service but received no response and was not able to independently verify them.
Lack of Government Response; Criticism by Regional and International Entities
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which reviewed Rwanda’s record on January 27 and 28, 2020, said it was concerned that the reference to “deviant behaviors” in Rwanda’s legislation was leading to “the deprivation of liberty of children in need of protection.” The committee said the abusive detention should end and that the government should change the law.
During the committee’s review, the Rwandan government denied that the detention of street children in transit centers is arbitrary. The government also claimed that children in transit centers are either placed with a family or transferred to a “rehabilitation center” within 72 hours. These claims contradict reports by the National Commission for Children and the National Commission for Human Rights, as well as Human Rights Watch findings.
In response to the Human Rights Watch January 2020 report, then-Justice Minister Johnston Busingye was quoted in KT Press saying: “These children have been redeemed…. We believe they can become useful citizens…. HRW [Human Rights Watch] can come and interview them if they wish.” During Rwanda’s review by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the gender and family promotion minister, Soline Nyirahabimana, also said that independent observers should visit the center.
On December 4, 2020, the African Court on Human and People’s Rights held that states’ laws enabling the detention of people who, often because of poverty, are forced to live on the street, violate human rights law. The opinion issued in response to a request by the Pan African Lawyers Union, upheld the rights of people deemed “vagrants” by the state. The opinion concluded that laws permitting the forcible removal or warrantless arrest of a person declared to be a “vagrant,” violate the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and other human rights instruments.
On February 6, 2020, December 14, 2020, and August 23, 2021, Human Rights Watch wrote letters to then-Justice Minister Busingye following up on these statements, requesting access to Gikondo and other transit centers in Rwanda, and asking about steps taken by the Rwanda authorities to remedy the abusive legal framework governing its National Rehabilitation Service. He has not responded.
Protesters picketed Weill-Cornell, a private institution part of the New York Presbyterian Hospital system, earlier this month, demanding the hospital cease medically unnecessary surgeries on children born with intersex traits, and investigate a surgeon who conducts these operations.
Intersex people, or people born with variations in their sex characteristics, make up approximately 1.7 percent of the population. Surgeons popularized cosmetically “normalizing” surgeries on infants to remove gonads, reduce the size of the clitoris, or increase the size of the vagina. Intersex advocacy groups, as well as a range of medical and human rights organizations, have spoken out against the operations and called for regulation.
One type of procedure surgeons conduct reduces the size of the clitoris for cosmetic reasons. It carries the risk of pain, nerve damage, and scarring. Intersex activist Pidgeon Pagonis, who underwent one of these at age four without their consent, called the operation a “clit job,” emphasizing that it should be an individual’s choice to modify their body.
As survivors of this procedure began speaking up, it became controversial. Weill-Cornell’s pediatric urology chief, Dr. Dix Poppas, in 2007 published a medical article that attempted to disprove claims of nerve damage from his clitoral surgeries by touching the genitals of girls he had operated on with a “vibratory device” and querying what they felt.
New York Presbyterian, in response to questions from Human Rights Watch, said, “In all circumstances we will continue to put our individual patients’ life and safety first” but did not commit to ending the surgeries at their hospitals; Dr. Poppas did not reply to a request for comment.
All hospitals should end these harmful surgeries immediately.
The Russian LGBT Network has reported that in May 2021, Chechen-speaking men abducted Ibragim Selimkhanov in Moscow and forcibly returned him to Chechnya’s capital Grozny, where authorities interrogated him about gay people in the region. This is the latest chapter in Chechnya’s relentless assault on sexual and gender minorities.
In 2017 and 2019, Chechen authorities orchestrated lethal purges of men perceived to be gay or bisexual. The award-winning documentary “Welcome to Chechnya” details the purge and also documents the experience of lesbians, whose horrific ordeals are usually perpetuated by family members.
Government critics and other undesirables in Chechnya risk retaliation from a ruthless security apparatus, with scant avenues for recourse. Authorities control virtually all aspects of social life, including politics, religion, academic discourse, and family matters.
In 2017, as reports of the purge surfaced, gay and bisexual men began escaping Chechnya, knowing the dangers they faced. “Magomed” told Human Rights Watch, “My life is ruined. I cannot go back. And it’s not safe here either. They have long arms and they can find me and the others anywhere in Russia, just give them time.”
The threats haunted people abroad as well. In September 2017, just months after escaping Chechnya and arriving in Canada, a Chechen gay man in Toronto faced threats. Police investigated claims that two Chechen men lured him on a dating app, then proceeded to berate him for his sexual orientation.
In February 2021, Russian police apprehended Salekh Magamadov and Ismail Isaev, who had escaped Chechnya, and returned them to Grozny, where they remain in detention and are standing trial for posting anti-government messages on social media. In March, Chechen authorities detained and threatened family members of the men who demanded access to legal counsel. Multiple United Nations human rights experts and the European Court of Human Rights have demanded the men be granted access to medical care and lawyers. A lawyer finally met with them in earlier this month, and reported prison officials had tortured the pair in detention.
Selimkhanov is more fortunate for now. Authorities released him to live under surveillance with his mother, and later he escaped Chechnya a second time. But as long as Moscow continues to tolerate and deny accountability for the ruthless campaign, he, and many others like him, will not be safe.
Hungary’s parliament should reject a bill that would prohibit discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation, and violates Hungary’s international legal obligations, Human Rights Watch said today. The law targets content “promoting” or “portraying” sexual and gender diversity and could have sweeping consequences for health providers, educators, and artists, among others.
The draft “Laws enabling stricter action against pedophile offenders and the protection of children” bans the “portrayal and the promotion of gender identity different from sex at birth, the change of sex and homosexuality” aimed at people under 18. The bill, sponsored by Fidesz, the ruling party, is due for a vote in parliament on June 15, 2021.
“Hungary’s ruling party is cynically deploying a ‘protection of children’ narrative to trample on rights and try to render LGBT people invisible,” said Neela Ghoshal, associate LGBT rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Children do not need to be protected from exposure to diversity. On the contrary, LGBT children and families need protection from discrimination and violence.”
The draft law is the latest in a series of attacks on LGBT equality under Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government. In May 2020 the government rushed through an omnibus bill that included provisions preventing transgender and intersex people from changing their gender marker on official documents, in defiance of their obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In December, parliament adopted an amendment to the constitution effectively banning same-sex couples from adopting children.
Orban’s government has sought to scapegoat LGBT people as part of a wider strategy to sidestep human rights obligations and cement Orban’s brand of authoritarianism.
In the case of the current bill, Fidesz members of the legislative committee added language on “portrayal and promotion” of diverse gender identities and sexual orientations at the last minute to an existing draft bill on pedophilia. The bill already contained provisions hostile to LGBT people, including one that the state should protect “family relations based on parent-child relations where the mother is a woman, the father is a man,” and another aimed at “ensuring the right of children to an identity in line with their sex at birth.”
The new provisions take aim at any discussion of diversity, and seem to stem in part from efforts by artists and advertisers to promote inclusion and acceptance of sexual and gender minorities. In 2019, Fidesz threatened a boycott in response to Coca-Cola advertisements featuring same-sex couples sharing a soft drink. In 2020, when Labrisz, a lesbian, bisexual and transgender women’s organization published a fairy tale anthology entitled “Wonderland is for Everyone” featuring some LGBT protagonists, the government forced it to attach stickers to the books with the disclaimer that they contained “behaviour inconsistent with traditional gender roles.”
Hungary’s draft pedophilia law introduces provisions into the Child Protection Act, the Act on Business Advertising Activity, the Media Act, the Family Protection Act, and the Public Education Act that would establish administrative sanctions for licensed professionals or institutions that violate it, threatening the right to education and the right to health, including the explicit right to health information under international law. In addition, the law is likely to contribute to violence and other forms of harassment against LGBT youth, in violation of the rights to security of person and freedom from violence.
Fidesz efforts to silence speech acknowledging the existence and human rights of LGBT people echo the so-called “gay propaganda” law passed in Russia in 2013. Human Rights Watch has extensively documented how that law exacerbated hostility toward LGBT people and stifled access to LGBT-inclusive education and support services, with harmful consequences for children.
Russia’s propaganda law has been used to shut down online information and mental health referral services for children and to discourage support groups and mental health professionals from working with children. It stigmatizes LGBT children and their families and has had a chilling effect on mental health professionals who work with LGBT youth. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2017 that the law was discriminatory and harmful to children. It held that authorities adopting such laws are seeking to reinforce stigma and prejudice and encourage homophobia, which is incompatible with the values of a democratic society.
The proposed bill in Hungary similarly violates the rights to freedom of expression and freedom from discrimination guaranteed in the European Convention on Human Rights, Human Rights Watch said. As the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee for Human Rights has observed, “authorities have a positive obligation to take effective measures to protect and ensure the respect of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons who wish to … express themselves, even if their views are unpopular or not shared by the majority of the population.”
The right to freedom of expression includes the right to seek and receive information and ideas of all kinds. The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe has noted the right to seek and receive information includes “information on subjects dealing with sexual orientation and gender identity.” In recognition of children’s particular need for information, the Convention on the Rights of the Child requires states to ensure children’s “access to information and materials from a diversity of national and international sources.”
In June 2020 the European Court of Human Rights found that Hungary violated its obligation under the European Convention on Human Rights to respect transgender people’s private lives, and has to provide a procedure to allow them to have their gender identity legally recognized on documents.
The EU Commission adopted in November 2020 its first-ever five-year LGBTIQ Equality Strategy and in March, the European Parliament declared the EU an “LGBTIQ Freedom zone.” This latest anti-LGBT attack in Hungary triggers a responsibility for the European Commission and other EU member states to take action and hold Hungary’s government to account. EU’s Equality Commissioner, Helena Dalli, should strongly denounce Hungary’s latest attack against non-discrimination, a core right under the EU treaties, and call on the Hungarian parliament to reject the draft bill.
“Equating sexual and gender diversity with pedophilia is in itself a frontal attack on the basic dignity and humanity of LGBT people, and poses real risks to their safety and well-being,” Ghoshal said. “Hungarian members of parliament should reject this effort to silence marginalized people and should instead redouble their efforts to protect the basic human rights of everyone in Hungary, including people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.”
Transgender people in Japan face continuing barriers to changing their legally recognized gender, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The Japanese government should heed increasing calls from activists and experts to revise its abusive and outdated transgender recognition law.
The 43-page report, “‘The Law Undermines Dignity’: Momentum to Revise Japan’s Legal Gender Recognition Process,” documents the persistent barriers transgender people face in Japan under the Gender Identity Disorder (GID) Special Cases Act. The procedure for changing one’s legally recognized gender, which requires sterilization surgery and an outdated psychiatric diagnosis, is anachronistic, harmful, and discriminatory. Many transgender people in Japan and domestic medical, legal, and academic experts, as well as international health and human rights bodies, have said that the law should be substantially revised.May 25, 2021
“Transgender people are courageously speaking out against Japan’s abusive and discriminatory transgender law, and increasingly gaining support from experts in medicine, law, and academia,” said Kanae Doi, Japan director at Human Rights Watch. “Tokyo officials should embrace public opinion and local-level policies and update the law to reflect current medical and legal perspectives.”
The current law has five requirements for a transgender person to be legally recognized according to their gender identity. They must be: at least 20 years old; unmarried; not have any children under age 20; not have gonads or permanently lack functioning gonads; and have a physical form that is “endowed with genitalia that closely resemble the physical form of an alternative gender.”
Each of these requirements contravenes Japan’s international human rights obligations, and is opposed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other medical expert bodies. The medical requirements in particular underpin widespread prejudice against transgender people. The diagnosis requirement rests on an outdated and pejorative notion that a transgender identity is a “mental disorder” and the surgery requirements force transgender people who want legal recognition to undergo lengthy, expensive, invasive, and irreversible medical procedures. Forcing people to divorce and not allowing those under 20 to change their legal gender is discriminatory.
Itsuki Dohi, a transgender woman and teacher in Kyoto, told Human Rights Watch: “The five requirements of the GID Law all narrow down the life choices that transgender people have. This undermines our dignity.” Miho Mitsunari, a professor at Nara Women’s University, said: “The five requirements are based on the idea of changing transgender people’s sex from ‘deviations’ to ‘normal.’ It promotes prejudice against transgender people who cannot, or do not want to, change their body.”
This is the third report by Human Rights Watch since 2016 addressing transgender issues in Japan. The 2016 and 2019 reports documented the stories of transgender people who described their struggles to fit into rigid school systems designed around strict gender binaries, to seek and obtain employment, to access health care, and to raise families in accordance with their basic rights.
Japan’s GID Special Cases Act was drafted in 2003 and came into force in 2004. For that era, it is not unique. Other legal regimes around the world from that period contain similar discriminatory and abusive provisions. Legislatures, domestic courts, and regional human rights courts and bodies have in recent years found that such requirements violate international human rights law. Governments around the world have removed sterilization requirements, or drafted laws without surgery requirements at all. Some countries, such as Sweden and the Netherlands, have recognized compulsory sterilizations of transgender people that took place in the past as rights violations, and compensated survivors.
Medical expert bodies have similarly urged governments to remove medical requirements from legal gender recognition procedures. In 2019 the WHO, in its revised International Classification of Diseases, removed “transsexualism” and “gender identity disorder” as “mental disorders.” Reacting to the changes, the prominent Japanese transgender activist Fumino Sugiyama wrote: “The WHO says I don’t have a mental disorder, but in Japan my government says I do.” Sugiyama, who co-chairs Tokyo Rainbow Pride, the annual festival, said: “I underwent a mastectomy in 2009 because I wanted the surgery to affirm my identity and shape how my body felt. But like many other trans people I know, I don’t want to be sterilized.”
Over time, an increasing number of trans people in Japan have taken the legally prescribed steps and changed their legal gender. In 2019, 948 people were approved for legal gender change, but activists have said the law limits the number of people who are willing to undergo the full procedure.
“The five requirements in Japan’s legal gender recognition law need to become a thing of the past,” Doi said. “Japan’s government should urgently turn to revising the law.”