Reply #13: "but the truth is that most crimes against gays in Jamaica are actually committed by fellow gays"

[FreeState]

Yes blame the gays - The Christian right does it here in America too - and its just as homphobic.

The Most Homophobic Place on Earth? Time Magazine http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1182991,00.html

Jamaica: Battybwoys affi dead" <"Faggots have to die"> Amnesty International http://www2.amnesty.se/hbt.nsf/actjamaica?OpenPage


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Jamaica

Violence against homosexuals

According to Human Rights Watch (2004), Verbal and physical violence, ranging from beatings to brutal armed attacks to murder, are widespread. For many, there is no sanctuary from such abuse. Men who have sex with men and women who have sex with women reported being driven from their homes and their towns by neighbors who threatened to kill them if they remained, forcing them to abandon their possessions and leaving many homeless.

In addition, police actively support homophobic violence, fail to investigate complaints of abuse, and arrest and detain men based on their alleged homosexual conduct.<6>
In one gay-hate murder, several witnesses that police participated in the abuse that ultimately led to his mob killing, first beating the man with batons and then urging others to beat him because he was homosexual.<7>

Amnesty International agrees: "Gay men and lesbian women have been beaten, cut, burned, raped and shot on account of their sexuality";<8> and gays and lesbians constitute one of the "most marginalized and persecuted communities in Jamaica".<9> Amnesty gave an example of a recent incident reported in a national newspaper, where a father encouraged a mob to beat up his son, who he suspected was gay, while he looked on smiling. No charges were laid. While police do not compile statistics on attacks against homosexuals,<10>, J-FLAG, the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays, report that they know of 30 gay men who have been murdered in Jamaica between 1997 and 2004.<11>

The violence has prompted hundreds of LGBT Jamaicans to seek asylum in nations such as Great Britain, Canada and the United States,<12> and several have been successful.<13> In 2005, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on Jamaica to repeal their sodomy laws and to actively combat widespread homophobia.<14>
Recent reported incidents of violence include:

In February 2007, three men were accosted by a large mob in a shopping area in Kingston and accused of being homosexual. Riot police were called, and they eventually carried the men to safety. There are allegations, however, that the men were also abused by the police. <2> <3>.

In January 2006, Nokia Cowan, a young Jamaican man, plunged to his death off a pier in Kingston after reportedly being chased through the streets by a mob yelling homophobic epithets.<15>

In April 2006, students at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies rioted as police attempted to protect a man who had been chased across the campus because another student had claimed the man had propositioned him in a bathroom. The mob demanded that the man be turned over to them. It only dispersed when riot police were called in and one officer fired a shot in the air. If the claim of a sexual advance is substantiated, the chased man could face charges.<16>