LGBT news in Africa

[the_future_modernes]

RIGHTS: Outspoken Activists Defend Africa's Sexual Diversity

Yemisi Ilesanmi: African governments are afraid of the advances in LGBT human rights in other countries.

LGBT rights in Africa

Nigerian LGBT activist Yemisi Ilesanmi stresses that the focus for LGBT activism in African countries should be on decriminalisation.

In Africa, Sudan, Mauritania and parts of Somalia and Nigeria impose the death penalty for same-sex acts, according to the non-governmental International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association.

Sierra Leone, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Malawi, Zambia and parts of Nigeria impose prison sentences ranging between life-long and 11 years.

Countries that impose sentences of between a month and 10 years are: Eritrea, Ethiopia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, the Comoros, Libya, Egypt, Western Sahara, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Togo, Senegal, Guinea, Mauritius and parts of Somalia. Countries that impose imprisonment without stating the period are Namibia, Angola, Mozambique and Liberia.

Mauritius, Mozambique and South Africa prohibit discrimination in employment on the basis of sexual orientation while South Africa allows marriage and joint adoption by same-sex parents.MORE

Fighting to free those found 'guilty' of Homosexuality

Alice Nkom: Lack of tolerance for diversity is one of the causes of terrorism.

CAPE TOWN, Feb 3 (IPS) - In 2003, Alice Nkom made a decision that has put her on a collision course with the police, prosecutors and judges of Cameroon. Nkom, who has been a barrister at the Cameroonian Bar for 40 years, was chatting with some young men whom she considers her own children.

She realised they were gay. Not only that, having gone after school to France to study and only ever living there as out gay men, they were oblivious to the extent of the persecution they faced for expressing their sexuality in Cameroon. Extortion and unfair prosecution of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people are common occurrences in the Francophone west African state.

They were handsome and full of life, talking passionately about their plans. She was struck by the injustice of their situation and felt she had a duty to do something, otherwise ‘‘coming back to Cameroon means having to choose to go to jail for who you are, to have one’s dignity trampled upon all the time, to be a victim of the police’’.

She founded the Association for the Defence of Homosexuals and has ever since been acting as defence lawyer for LGBT people in Cameroon. MORE

LGBT news in South America

[the_future_modernes]

ARGENTINA: New Voice for Sexual Minorities

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 26 (IPS) - A monthly magazine published by an Argentine umbrella group of some thirty organisations of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and trans (LGBTs) seeks to become a major communications channel for the community and an instrument for disseminating the actions that sexual minorities undertake to defend their rights.

"The Pride March (Argentina's annual LGBT celebration organised since 1992) is a big part of us, but it doesn't cover all of our community. There are lesbians with no visibility and transgender women who have fought for years to have their identity recognised," Mónica Ferrari, editor-in-chief of the just-released monthly publication Queer, which is distributed free of charge, told IPS.

The magazine is the official voice of the Argentine Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Trans (FALGBT) and has a circulation of 15,000 copies in print and a summarised version online. The name Queer was chosen because of its connection to a theory of diversity that sees sexual identity as constructed socially and not determined by biology.

The magazine had already appeared for a few years but was forced out of circulation in 2002 due to lack of funding. Queer's original editor-in-chief and founder was FALGBT's current president, María Rachid, who has now supported this new edition.

"Queer was meant as a way of bringing us closer to our organisations, to communicate with them and convey to them how we're doing, what we need, and what we can do to fulfil our needs," Rachid said at the publication's presentation. "We have a lot of challenges ahead of us." MORE

COLOMBIA: Equal Rights for Same-Sex Partners

BOGOTA, Mar 2 (IPS) - Members of the gay civil rights advocacy group Colombia Diversa just celebrated their fifth anniversary with a big event, which the occasion clearly merited due to a recent landmark decision by the Constitutional Court recognising equal rights for heterosexual and same-sex partners in common-law unions.

With the ruling, the Court took a historic leap with regard to the rights of gays and lesbians, granting same-sex partners all of the guarantees and benefits offered to unmarried heterosexual couples, except adoption, and placing Colombia at the forefront in Latin America in terms of legal recognition of the rights of gays and lesbians.

Marcela Sánchez, a lesbian activist who heads Colombia Diversa, told IPS that the legal decision handed down by the Court in late January marked the end of a long battle for equal rights for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community.

It also expanded on earlier legal decisions issued by the Court in 2007 and 2008, which extended several common-law marriage property and inheritance rights, as well as social security and health insurance rights, to same-sex couples.

"Uruguay was the first country in the region to recognise the rights of homosexual couples, but overall, the Uruguayan law grants fewer rights than those now covered by Colombia’s legislation," said Sánchez.
"Argentina, Mexico and Brazil also recognise rights for gays and lesbians, but with differences between states, or limited to specific sectors, such as public employees," she added. MORE

(no subject)

[the_future_modernes]

The Case of the Cuban Five: American Justice as a Political Weapon

The decision by a Miami court on Tuesday October 13 to reduce Antonio Guererro's life sentence to 22 years imprisonment is the latest chapter in the ongoing legal battle to free a group of men known as the Cuban Five. Largely anonymous in the United States yet celebrities in their native Cuba, their conviction symbolizes the fraught relationship that exists between the two countries. The re-sentencing is the result of a decision taken last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which stated that the court in Miami, where the original trial was held, may have erred when it imposed sentences on three of the five men. The hearing takes place at a time when many Cubans and Americans have high hopes for improved diplomacy between their nations.


The case of the Cuban Five is inextricably linked to the ongoing standoff between Havana and Washington. In the early 1990s, the Cuban government sent a group of men known as The Wasp Network to the United States to infiltrate anti-Castro organizations, which had been operating from Miami with apparent impunity since the 1960s. After these anti-Castro organizations orchestrated the bombings of Cuban hotels and the shooting down of a Cuban passenger aircraft near Barbados in 1976, the Cuban government decided to take covert actions, believing that the United States was not interested in helping prevent more attacks.

One of the groups targeted by The Wasp Network was Brothers to the Rescue (BTTR). The group was made up of Cuban exiles whose initial goal was rescuing Cuban rafters who were emigrating from the country, but whose focus changed after new U.S. immigration policy mandated that rescued rafters be sent back to Cuba, rather than taken to the United States. The group then began chartering planes to drop anti-Castro leaflets in Cuba, making repeated illegal incursions into Cuban airspace. Cuban authorities made numerous complaints to U.S. aviation authorities, but this failed to put a stop to the flights. On February 24, 1996, two BTTR planes were shot down by the Cuban Air Force, resulting in the death of the four pilots on board. The deaths provoked outrage in the United States, and led directly to the strengthening of the U.S. embargo on Cuba via the controversial Helms-Burton Act.But George Bush's government was secretly paying the Miami Herald to inflame opinion agianst them during the trial. And that was just the start of the irregularities.

Dead women in the name of "morality"

[the_future_modernes]

RIGHTS: Unsafe Abortions Killing 70,000 a Year

LONDON, Oct 14 (IPS) - Unsafe abortions kill about 70,000 women a year, says a report by the U.S.- based Guttmacher Institute. An additional five million women are treated annually for complications arising from unsafe abortion, adds the report, based on a global survey.

The institute, which seeks to advance sexual and reproductive health through research and policy education, notes that the number of abortions worldwide fell from 45.5 million in 1995 to 41.6 million in 2003. But that has still not reduced the number of deaths.

"Unsafe abortions, including deaths from unsafe abortions, have not changed, even though overall rates of abortion are declining," Sharon Camp, president of the Guttmacher Institute, told IPS in an interview.

"The explanation for this is that populations of women are growing faster in various parts of the world that are least likely to make safe abortion widely available, and so women in some of the poorest countries of the world with the most rapid rates of population growth are having unsafe abortions at the same rate as they have for the last decade," she said. More