Four people have reportedly been arrested in Uganda in the Buikwe district, located in central Uganda along Lake Victoria.
Police told the AFP that that four people – two of whom were women – were arrested after receiving a tip that “homosexuality” was happening at a massage parlor in the area.
“The police operation was carried out following a tip-off by a female informant to the area security that acts of homosexuality were being carried out at the massage parlor,” said police spokesperson Hellen Butoto.
The arrests come just months after Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed the country’s new Anti-Homosexuality Act, which contains provisions allowing for the death penalty in cases of “aggravated homosexuality.” Even though the World Bank and the U.S. have condemned the law as a violation of human rights, the Christian-marjority nation has stood its ground, accusing the West of “blackmail.”
“We do not consider homosexuality as a constitutional right,” Chris Baryomunsi, Uganda’s Information Minister, said of the international backlash. “It is just a sexual deviation which we do not promote as Ugandans and Africans.”
Artist Carmen Rose used to perform regularly in Malaysia, until a police raid last year put an end to the veteran drag queen’s act and fueled the fears of the LGBTQ community at a time when Islamists are rapidly gaining political clout.
Since the raid, during which several party-goers were arrested, Rose has stopped doing shows, and rarely ventures out in public in costume.
“It’s always a risk going out in drag. If there was a raid, who do we call? Do we bring our boy clothes just in case?” said Rose, who declined to disclose her non-drag identity due to fears of reprisal. “They see us as sexual deviants or sinners.”
Queer Malaysians and rights groups told Reuters that LGBTQ communities face increasing scrutiny and discrimination under Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s government, despite the longtime opposition leader’s reputation as a progressive reformer.
Analysts say Anwar, who took office after a November general election, is under pressure to bolster his Islamic credentials among the Muslim majority in the face of an increasingly popular ultra-conservative opposition that has steadily gained more political ground since the vote.
Malaysia’s opposition bloc includes Islamist party PAS, which promotes a strict interpretation of sharia law and opposes LGBTQ rights. The party holds the most number of seats in parliament for the first time ever, and its gains in state elections this month reinforced its political influence.
A PAS lawmaker recently said LGBTQ people should be classified as “mentally ill.” Another PAS leader urged the government to cancel a concert by Coldplay because the band supports queer rights.
“Anwar doesn’t feel politically stable, so he has to be more Islamic than the other side,” said James Chin, a political analyst at the University of Tasmania in Australia.
Sodomy is a crime in Malaysia, which also has Islamic sharia laws banning same-sex acts and cross-dressing. The multi-ethnic, multi-faith country has a dual-track legal system with Islamic laws for Muslims running alongside civil laws.
Carmen Rose in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, on July 25, 2023.Hasnoor Hussain / Reuters
While Anwar has never expressed support for the LGBTQ community, activists say they expected him to show more tolerance as he advocated for an inclusive society during his 25 years in the opposition.
“There was some hope when Anwar came to power that the reform agenda would seep in to some extent,” said Dhia Rezki Rohaizad, deputy president of JEJAKA, an organization that supports gay, bisexual and queer men.
“It’s disappointing that it has not happened. At the very least, we had hoped that they would just leave us alone, not be actively persecuting us.”
Discrimination and threats
Anwar vowed this year that Malaysia would never recognize LGBTQ rights.
His government has banned books for “promoting the LGBT lifestyle”, detained demonstrators expressing support for queer rights and confiscated Pride-themed watches made by Swiss watchmaker Swatch.
Last month, authorities halted a music festival, after the frontman of British pop band The 1975 kissed a male bandmate onstage and criticized Malaysia’s anti-LGBTQ laws.
Asked about the government’s position on LGBTQ rights, government spokesperson and communications minister Fahmi Fadzil told Reuters: “Whatever the prime minister has said is the position.”
Some analysts say Anwar’s uncompromising stance on LGBTQ rights stems from a desire to wipe out doubts about his own sexuality which surfaced after he was jailed for nearly a decade for sodomy. Anwar has repeatedly said the charges were fabricated and politically motivated, but some political opponents still question his Islamic values.
Activists say online harassment and death threats against queer Malaysians are rampant on social media, while undercover police often attend LGBTQ-friendly events. Many groups now ensure there are lawyers at these events in case of a raid.
Thilaga Sulathireh, founder of LGBTQ advocacy group Justice for Sisters, said the government’s rejection of queer Malaysians was tantamount to a human rights violation.
“This has emboldened the conservatives and the right wing, it allows discrimination and violence to take place against LGBT people with impunity,” said Sulathireh, who uses they/them pronouns.
Justice for Sisters is receiving more queries from LGBTQ Malaysians seeking asylum in other countries, they said, adding that the community is also increasingly adopting self-censorship to stay under the radar.
Drag queen Carmen Rose said she canceled a show this year, fearing another crackdown. She occasionally performs in neighboring Singapore, and is now considering leaving Malaysia.
“This is not me running away. I’m just tired and I have to also think about myself and my own happiness,” she said.
Ted Brown said his now-deceased civil partner of 50 years, Noel Glynn, received bruises and cigarette burns from homophobic workers while living in a London nursing home for nine months. Brown sued the local council that oversees the home, and the council offered a £30,000 ($38,266 U.S.) settlement to Brown two years ago, but he said he hasn’t received any of the promised money yet.
Glynn lived in the Albany Lodge Nursing Home in Croydon in South London from December 2018 to October 2019 while receiving care for dementia. Brown paid £1,400 ($1,787) a month for Glynn’s care. Brown said two LGBTQ+ residents advised them to stay closeted otherwise “that won’t be good for either of you.” Brown became alarmed several months later when he discovered that Glynn had tried to independently leave the nursing home four times.
“I don’t like it here, they beat me up,” Glynn told a social worker in January 2019, The Guardian reported. Glynn told Brown that he had been held down and punched, leaving him with bruises on his chest and wrists, My London News reported.
When Brown and a friend examined Glynn’s body, they found “a bruise on his body that went from his navel, around his back, together with a yellowing bruise on his chest where you could still see the knuckle prints where he had been punched,” the aforementioned publication noted.
A whistleblower at the home told Brown that he witnessed a staff member approach Glynn in the hallway and ask, “Are you a gay man? Do you like gay men?“ The worker then dragged Glynn into his room and “everyone heard the sounds of him calling out for help for two or three minutes.”
A doctor who examined Glynn said in court documents, “He could not give me any details of who beat him up, how many times and when and where this happened, but he clearly appeared frightened and distressed.”
Brown also said that the staff refused to acknowledge their relationship. He two met at the first-ever London Pride event in 1972, which Glynn helped organize. But even though the two were legally civil partners, the staff referred to Glynn as Brown’s “father,” something that made no sense to Brown.
“There is no way these people could have mistaken Noel for being my father,” he told My London News. “At the time he was 76. I was 69…. I’m Black. He was white. No way was he my father. I think this was just the written way of letting me know [that] we don’t recognize your civil partnership.”
“Several of us fought to get the rights that we’ve got now,” Brown told The Guardian, “and, as we get older, we have the frightening reality that we have to go back into the closet if we go into a care home.”
A spokesperson from Future Care Group, which owns Albany Lodge, said that they worked closely with authorities in investigating the claims and implementing changes since then.
“The health and wellbeing of our residents has always been our greatest priority and, in line with our values, we have mandatory diversity and equality training for all staff,” the spokesperson said.
Glynn moved out of the nursing home and into a new facility in October 2019. Glynn died in December 2021 after falling and fracturing his ribs.
A 2021 survey found that LGBTQ+ elders are suffering alarming rates of poverty, discrimination, health care risk, and abuse, but most don’t report it over fear of retaliation or hopelessness of anything being done to help them.
An attacker has been sentenced to over a year in jail after he punched and threatened a man who he thought was gay with a deactivated AK-47 rifle and bayonet in a homophobic incident.
Marcin Skalimowski, 41, assaulted an unidentified man in an unprovoked attack after the man tried to talk to him at the St James Wine Bar in St Helier, Jersey on the evening of 20 March.
Skalimowski was removed from the bar after the assault, but he returned 10 minutes later to threaten the victim, who he assumed was gay, with the two weapons.
Crown advocate Luke Sette, prosecuting, told the court that Skalimowski asked door staff if the victim was “still inside” before he unzipped the bag containing the deactivated AK-47 rifle, the Jersey Evening Post reported.
Fearing for their safety and the lives of customers, the door staff wrestled the man to the ground and alerted police.
While under interview, Skalimowski, who admitted to assault and possessing an offensive weapon, said he had “nothing against” LGBTQ+ people but wanted them to keep “themselves to themselves rather than bothering straight people”.
During sentencing on Friday (18 August), bailiff Sir Timothy Le Cocq said the incident was “incredibly stupid and reckless” and included a “significant element of homophobia”.
The bailiff sentenced Skalimowski to 12 months for possession of a weapon and three months for the assault, with both sentences to run concurrently. Skalimowski also received a consecutive three-month sentence for breach of a previous community service order.
On 13 August, at 10.15pm, two men, one in his 20s and the other in his 30s, were attacked by a man with a knife outside the Two Brewers bar. The attacker then fled the scene on foot, which resulted in an urgent investigation by authorities.
Both victims were taken to hospital and later discharged.
Members of the LGBTQ+ community have been in shock since the horrific incident, saying they feel like their “second home was attacked”.
On Saturday Jordan’s king approved a draconian cybercrime law that was rammed through parliamentand is significantly worse than its antecedent. The law jeopardizes rights online and offline, including free expression and the right to privacy, and contains vague provisions that could target marginalized groups, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.
The 2023 Cybercrime Law, under articles 13 and 14, punishes the production, distribution, or consumption of “pornographic content,” which is undefined, and content “promoting, instigating, aiding or inciting immorality,” with at least six months’ imprisonment and a fine. These provisions could target digital content around gender and sexuality, as well as individuals who use digital platforms to advocate for the rights of LGBT people.
The law also threatens the right to anonymity under article 12 by appearing to prohibit use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), proxies, and Tor, which many LGBT people use to shield themselves online, effectively forcing individuals to choose between keeping their identity secure and freely expressing their opinions.
A Jordanian LGBT rights activist told me the new law will “destroy all forms of LGBT expression online” and intensify “interference in people’s private lives.”
Jordanian authorities’ use of cybercrime laws to target LGBT people, intimidate activists, and censor content around gender and sexuality is not new. In a 2023 report, Human Rights Watch documented the far-reaching offline consequences of online targeting against LGBT people, including in Jordan, where LGBT people said they felt unable to safely express their sexual orientation or gender identity online, and that LGBT rights activism has subsequently suffered.
A gay man from Jordan whom I interviewed for the report was sentenced to six months in prison in 2021 based on a provision in the 2015 cybercrimes law that criminalized “promoting prostitution online,” after he went to the authorities for protection from online extortion. Another gay activist said Jordan’s intelligence agency summons him for interrogation whenever content around LGBT rights in Jordan is shared on social media.
The new cybercrime law will only exacerbate these abusive practices and expand censorship of free expression. Jordanian authorities should safeguard the rights of everyone, including by protecting freedom of expression online and the privacy of digital communications. The first step is to repeal the 2023 Cybercrimes Law.
A Russian court has convicted — and possibly detained and beaten — transgender blogger Milana Petrova for allegedly violating laws against spreading “LGBTQ+ propaganda” and “discrediting” the Russian military.
Mizulina wrote via Telegram that Moscow’s Tverskoy Court had fined the blogger 200,000 rubles ($2,061 U.S.) for posting LGBTQ+ content and 50,000 rubles ($515) for “discrediting the army.” However, Petrova wasn’t present in court for the ruling, Mizulina wrote.
Over the weekend, a closed Telegram channel named Lightning Moscow reported that Petrova had been detained by Russian authorities and placed in a “special detention center for 24 hours, according to a pro-LGBTQ+ blog covering developments about the country’s propaganda law.
The post reportedly included “her photo with traces of beatings and an audio message in which Petrova says that ‘Everything is fine, relatively,’” the aforementioned site reported.
Mizulina denied these reports, writing that Petrova tried to “divorce” herself from her audience by spreading fake news about her detention.
“This was done to advertise one of the [Telegram] channels,” Mizulina wrote. She added that Russian authorities should block Petrova’s Telegram and YouTube channels because they violate Russian law.
Petrova left Russia at the end of 2021 to avoid persecution over her identity, the aforementioned blog reported. Previous to leaving, police summoned her to investigate alleged “propaganda” charges. In 2022, she announced her gender transition and launched the Bad Russians YouTube show, where she discussed her life. After the show’s first episode went live, she received many threats and promises to report her to authorities.
Russia’s infamous law against LGBTQ+ “propaganda”
Russian President Vladimir Putin first signed a law banning so-called “gay propaganda” in Russia in June 2013. The law ostensibly sought to “protect children” from any “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relationships,” as stated in the law’s text. The new law extends the restrictions to not just children but Russians of all ages.
The law has mostly been used to silence LGBTQ+ activist organizations, events, websites, and media, as well as to break up families and harass teachers. It has also been roundly condemned by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, the human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as civil rights activists around the world.
Last December, Putin signed a law expanding the country’s prohibition on LGBTQ+ “propaganda.” The newly signed law effectively outlaws any public expression of LGBTQ+ life in Russia by banning “any action or the spreading of any information that is considered an attempt to promote homosexuality in public, online, or in films, books or advertising,” Reuters reported.
Anti-LGBTQ+ religious leaders and right-wing political figures in the U.S. have praised Putin for his law. Indeed, Republican legislators, so-called “parents’ rights groups,” and right-wing pundits have increasingly moved to ban American kids from accessing any LGBTQ+ content, gender-affirming healthcare, or drag shows over untrue claims that these “sexualize” and “groom” children.
In 2013, Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) President Austin Ruse said Russia’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws were a “good thing” that “most of the people in the United States” would support. In 2014, anti-LGBTQ+ evangelical leader Franklin Graham also defended the law.
Early into its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia quickly outlawed any negative coverage of the invasion. To this day, Russia refuses to publically refer to its deadly invasion and the deadly conflict it began as a “war,” preferring instead the term “special military operation.”
In Berlin last weekend, a vandal defaced the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under National Socialism with biblical quotations denouncing homosexuality before attempting to set fire to the concrete structure.
Overnight on Saturday, a security guard witnessed a man, still at large, throw a burning object at the memorial. The structure didn’t sustain any lasting damage.
Our activism was born in these forgotten papers—and lies—generated decades ago, retooled and weaponized for our time.
The concrete cube, erected in 2008 at the edge of Tiergarten Park near the main monument to the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, features a small opening through which video of a same-sex couple kissing can be seen.
German police have opened an inquiry into the vandalism.
On the same night, another Holocaust memorial in Berlin was also the target of an arson attack.
An unknown assailant set fire to a “book box” containing reading material about the Nazi era, part of the “Platform 17” memorial honoring Jews sent to their deaths from the Grünewald train station.
An estimated 50,000 German Jews were deported to Nazi concentration and death camps at Riga, Warsaw, Auschwitz, and Theresienstadt through the station beginning in 1941.
Police said the display was almost entirely destroyed.
The LSVD German LGBTQ+ rights organization said in a statement it was “shocked by the incitement of hate” behind both incidents.
It noted that the Old Testament verse on the notes affixed to the LGBTQ+ monument, which linked the death penalty and homosexual sex, is “frequently abused for queer-hostile agitation.”
The memorial has been the object of vandalism in the past. Just nine months after the unveiling, the window revealing the same-sex embrace was smashed three times in back-to-back incidents.
Monument designers Ingar Dragset and Michael Elmgreen have said the view to the kiss is at the heart of the memorial’s message.
“It was important to have direct imagery of a love scene, a passionate scene, an emotional scene between two same-sex persons, because that is the main problem in homophobia,” Elmgreen told the Associated Press in 2008. “You can get whatever rights, you can get acceptance on an abstract level, but they don’t want to look at us.”
Nazi Germany considered homosexuality an aberration and a threat to the German Reich. More than 50,000 LGBTQ+ Germans were convicted as criminals, with an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 gay men sent to concentration camps.
That’s me grinning at FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s grave on the cover photo. I am relishing this moment. Like the millions of tourists who annually visit Washington for selfies and pics in front of their favorite attractions, I chose a grave for a feel-good image of my own. I, a citizen “sex deviate”—the pejorative and crime invented by Director Hoover decades ago—returned for a reckoning of my own. It took a lifetime for me to be able to stand here with a smile, no trace of anger, on my face.
I could have chosen other places and moments to tell my story—from White House ceremonies and holiday parties to Supreme Court hearings and events at the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution exhibiting our work. Or maybe standing before a bower of plastic flowers with my husband at our marriage at the DC Superior Court. But this place is it—J. Edgar’s neatly fenced grave, a packaged plot for the tourists and dog walkers at Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC. Here I can mark the distance LGBTQ Americans have traveled since his creation of the FBI Sex Deviates program in 1951, the year of my birth in Dallas.
I hold my bound copy of the Mattachine Society of Washington, DC’s amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, the same-sex marriage victory that opened the door for a million LGBTQ Americans to marry those whom they love. That victory is now protected by federal law. This “friend of the court” brief presents our case for same-sex marriage.
Dubbed the “animus amicus” by the Washington Post, it steadies and delights me because it tells stories of endurance and courage we uncovered because they were erased or forgotten. “Animus, therefore, was a culture,” our brief declares. “And with that culture came a language. For decades, government officials referred to homosexuality in official, often highly confidential or privileged communications, as ‘unnatural,’ ‘abnormal,’ ‘immoral,’ ‘deviant,’ ‘pervert(ed).’ An ‘abomination.’ ‘Uniquely nasty.’”
From where I stand, going back in time to J. Edgar’s Sex Deviates program, one can measure the distance between our era and his. I was once so enmeshed and implicated in the long history of hiding that the liberation side of life’s equation would only come decades later, like a late blooming. For me it started atop a rickety pull-down ladder into a dusty attic—and with a new way to converse with history we call Archive Activism.
Provided byUniversity of North Texas Press
We all know the well-worn observation “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” But what if you cannot find the past? What happens when all evidence, every shred, has been erased, deleted, sealed, or purposefully forgotten? What if the past is torched or stuffed into garbage bags and dumpsters? For LGBTQ Americans this has been the way of our world. “This Didn’t Happen” is the sign over the iron gate. Homosexual is an adjective, not a noun. You don’t exist. You are a behavior. Your uncle’s old love letters embarrass the family. No politics for you. History is for a people, not for queers.
Breaking through this was the challenge of the first generation of pioneering LGBTQ community historians and activists who succeeded beautifully at confronting the invisibility and the lies. But it is never over. The historic animus has seeped down into the dark and violent corners of American life. Today, a This Didn’t Happen movement called Don’t Say Gay flourishes.
Archive Activism is a rescue mission for primary archival materials located in archives and libraries, large and small, worldwide. It is preservation-minded movement to recover and protect historical queer memory. Archive Activism is a populist mission to recover the erased past and to document the government animus that continues to course through LGBTQ political and policy history. It is a popular brand of citizen archivery representing those living or passed who were wrongly investigated or silenced, their lives and careers thwarted or destroyed.
Internationally, Archive Activists uncover the names of those killed or “disappeared.” This is not an approach for scholars or professional historians. It is freeing not to hoard research or wait for book deals or seek tenure. Rather, Archive Activists use their discoveries and the power of history to fight for social justice, equality, and even our own safety. We believe it is possible to be armed with library cards. Archive Activists wield documents and let them speak for themselves. The Latin phrase “vox populi,” the voice of the people or public opinion, may be less important than the power of the documentary evidence itself, the “vox docs.”
***
“What it boils down to is that most men look upon homosexuality as something ‘uniquely nasty,’ not just a form of immorality,” wrote US Civil Service Commission lawyer John Steele in his influential 1964 policy memorandum addressing gay and lesbian “suitability” for federal employment. His rationale banned us from earning a living—and a life. From postal clerks and air traffic controllers to postal clerks and soldiers, we were done; “once a homo, always a homo,” he wrote.
Uniquely nasty.
Worse than plain nasty. Really?
How did that happen?
In my youth I did some mean things and had some “nasty” thoughts, but uniquely so?
In Dallas in 1964, I am working on my Eagle Scout, preparing to run for student council president, and starting to crush on a guy in my class. My seventh-grade friends and I are all into British director Richard Lester’s black-and-white film A Hard Day’s Night, especially the Beatlemania shot of the band sprinting through a London tube station. I imagine myself running with them, definitely not on the Elvis side of the continental divide. The Beatles, sucking up to Texas, wore cowboy hats when they arrived at Dallas Love Field. This was probably their gay manager Brian Epstein’s idea. He loved to dress them up. This set my adolescent energy in motion. I join an all-night line with a bedroll at the Preston State Bank in University Park to buy my Beatles tickets. The kid next to me is wearing his Beatles wig, and I like that better than the cowboy hats.
We are in a new world, teen sixties Dallas. Running fast in a mania of our own, past questions without answers, it has been one year since Dallas’s darkest day, the day on which John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Are we truly a City of Hate? Confronted by historic hatreds, it is our teenage time of innocence lost. Taking a lot of our cues and all of our soul off Dallas white radio (white radio? Even radio is segregated) from breakthrough Black DJ Cuzzin’ Linnie, we keep running. Cuzzin’ Linnie is not about Liverpool; he’s playing Memphis. We know it is time, our time for change. Still, so many are dead set against LBJ and his “communist” ideas like civil rights. Our congressman Bruce Alger voted against the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960—and he will do so again.
How could we know in such a time that an epithet like “uniquely nasty” struck at one’s core, deeper than just “immorality”? Immorality we could do something about. We realized that, according to the papers we unsealed and the boxes we discovered many decades later in people’s attics, the National Archives, and elsewhere, this insult was an organized, bipartisan federal assault. I and millions more like me, spanning generations, Black and white, invisible and unknown to one another, were assigned to this subaltern place before we even knew the words used to denigrate us.
In the years to come, we would uncover those words to examine them not as lies, but as living things. Still used to shock and stun, a lot of them are rattlesnake ugly, discovered under flipped rocks. We find them inside classified, sealed, hidden files that are part of the vast American archive. We breathe deeply the dust and blood rising off the old carbons with traces of that mimeograph smell that make you dizzy. Words like deviate, pervert, revulsion, suitability, insanity, disordered, dishonorable, disloyal, and groomer anger us—and then inspire our work to ensure none of this is erased or can ever happen again.
Our activism was born in these forgotten papers—and lies—generated decades ago, retooled and weaponized for our time. Whether slimed as perverts in the fifties, compared to “man on dog” years later in Texas, or defiled as pedos and groomers today, it is the same personal and political calumny.
Running still, I hit the intersection of history and memory. It was in Dallas where I first engaged with the idea of history itself.
*For more information on Archive Activism or to purchase the book, visit the UNT Press website.
Anti-gay remarks made on Saturday by a Hezbollah leader in Lebanon who has recently called for anti-gay violence sparked panic and terror among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, described same-sex relations as a “sexual perversion,” and warned that gay people’s existence is a “threat to society.”
Days before, on July 22, Nasrallah explicitly incited violence against gay and lesbian people. He called for them to be killed, urged people to use derogatory terms to describe gay people and to “collectively face this phenomenon [homosexuality], by all means necessary, without any limits.”
LGBT people, who already face heightened risks in Lebanon, have reported online harassment and death threats following his July 22 speech.
A gay man residing in Beirut’s southern suburbs told me that, following Nasrallah’s remarks, he received a threat on Grindr, which said: “We will find you and expose you one by one. We have your pictures, chats, and numbers, you “faggots.” We have been monitoring this platform and all the data is ready. The zero hour is here.”
Jack Harrison-Quintana, director of Grindr for Equality, the dating app’s advocacy arm, told Human Rights Watch that Grindr took immediate measures to protect users in Lebanon from such threats.
In a 2023 report, Human Rights Watch reported on the far-reaching offline consequences of online targeting against LGBT people, including being blackmailed and outed, family violence, and arbitrary arrests by Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces.
Lebanon’s government effectively banned pro-LGBT events, due to an unlawful directive issued in June 2022 by Interior Minister Bassam al-Mawlawi. In November, following a court order to suspend the directive, al-Mawlawi issued a second directive banning any “conference, activity, or demonstration related to or addressing homosexuality.” Since 2017, Lebanese security forces have regularly interfered with human rights events related to gender and sexuality.
Still, activism, including around the rights of LGBT people, will continue in Lebanon. Government and nongovernment actors should uphold freedom of expression and assembly for LGBT people and rights defenders, and not attempt to undermine their fundamental human rights.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov ordered the torture and murder of a popular Chechen singer because the Putin ally was personally insulted to have unknowingly shaken hands with the gay man, according to a new report.
Zelimkhan Bakaev went missing within hours after returning to Chechnya for his sister’s wedding in 2017. The popular singer had fled to Moscow due to the gay purge taking place in his home region. The new report from SK SOS said Kadyrov was aghast a photo existed of the two men shaking hands. SK SOS reports he ordered security forces to “deal with” Bakaev, who was tortured during much of the 13 hours he was in custody before he was executed.
The report also said Bakaev’s body was returned to his family with the order to “bury him like a dog.”
Months after Bakaev went missing, Kadyrov gave a speech to service members accusing Bakaev’s family of killing him because they learned he was gay.
“They told him, ‘Come over,’ and when he arrived, apparently his cousins or second cousins confronted him and said, ‘You’re gay,’” Kadyrov claimed in the 2018 speech.
Despite the denial of involvement, the speech was the first official admission that Bakaev was dead.
During this same period, Kadyrov denied gay people existed in the country. During an interview with HBO’s Real Sports in 2017, he took offense at questions from reporter David Scott on his nation’s imprisonment and killing of gay and bisexual men.
“We don’t have those kinds of people here,” Kadyrov responded after scolding Scott for asking the question. “If there are there take them to Canada… Take them far from us so we don’t have them at home… To purify our blood, if there are any here, take them.”
