About

The “Erasing 76 Crimes” news site focuses on the human toll of 66+ countries’ anti-LGBTI laws and the struggle to repeal them.

Editor/publisher: Colin Stewart

Colin Stewart
Colin Stewart

Colin Stewart is a 45-year journalism veteran living in Southern California. After his retirement from paid newspaper work in 2011, he launched the Erasing 76 Crimes blog and helped with the Spirit of 76 campaign that assembled a multi-national team of 26 LGBTI rights activists to advocate for change during the International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C., in July 2012. He is the president of the St. Paul’s Foundation for International Reconciliation, which supports LGBTQ+ rights advocacy journalism, including the Erasing 76 Crimes blog and the African Human Rights Media Network. Contact him via X (Twitter) @colinstewart or @76crimes or by email at info (at) 76crimes.com. Mailing address: 21 Marseille, Laguna Niguel CA 92677 USA.


Reporter: Mike Daemon

No Strings logo
Mike Daemon

Mike Daemon is the pseudonym of the founder and presenter of the No Strings podcasts, based in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, which provide a voice for the country’s LGBTIQ+ community. Through the No Strings website, he reports on issues affecting the lives of LGBTQ+ Nigerians. He launched and maintains the Qtalk app, which provides safe and private access to legal and psychosocial counseling for LGBTQ+ Nigerians. Contact him by email via info (at) nostringsng.com.


Reporter: Courtney Stans

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Courtney Stans

Courtney Stans is the pseudonym for a Cameroonian human rights defender whose name is withheld for her protection. She fills the role of reporter covering LGBTI issues in Cameroon, where our previous reporter, Eric Ohena Lembembe, was murdered in July 2013. She is an experienced activist advocating for justice for LGBTI Cameroonians and against HIV/AIDS. Both as a journalist and as an activist, she works to promote health education and to help keep gay and lesbian Cameroonians out of prison, despite the Cameroonian law against same-sex intimacy. Contact her by email via 76crimes (at) gmail.com.


Reporter: Kikonyogo Kivumbi

Kikonyogo Kivumbi

Veteran journalist Kikonyogo Kivumbi, the executive director of the Uganda Health and Science Press Association, has covered AIDS and minority sexuality issues for at least 10 years. From 2014 to 2017, he served as the elected representative of Uganda’s key populations (those most at risk of contracting AIDS, including sex workers and sexual minorities) on the board that helps to oversee Uganda’s fight against AIDS, the Country Co-ordinating Mechanism (CCM) of the Global Fund. Contact him by email via 76crimes (at) gmail.com.


Editor/Reporter: Ruby Pratka

Ruby Pratka

Ruby Irene Pratka is a freelance journalist based in Montreal. She is a queer woman who has never cared much for gender conformity. She most enjoys reporting on immigration and refugee rights as well as housing and food security issues.She speaks English, French, Russian, and some Haitian Creole. Her work has appeared in Erasing 76 Crimes, 76 Crimes en français, Vice, Huffington Post, Xtra and Life in Québec Magazine. She also does translation, editing, and research for TV and film projects. Contact her by email via 76crimes (at) gmail.com.


Writer: Maurice Tomlinson

Maurice Tomlinson
Maurice Tomlinson

Maurice Tomlinson of Jamaica was the inaugural winner of the David Kato Vision and Voice Award and has been involved in HIV and AIDS and LGBTI activism in the Caribbean for over 15 years. An attorney-at-law, he leads and supports legal challenges seeking the repeal of anti-sodomy and homophobic laws around the Caribbean. His current focus is the project LGBTI Aware Caribbean, which provides critical LGBTI awareness training for key sectors across the Caribbean. Contact him by email via 76crimes (at) gmail.com.


Editor: Bruno Agar

Bruno Agar
Bruno Agar

Bruno Agar is a doctor of the Paris-Saclay Evry-Val-d’Essonne University at the Centre Universitaire de Mayotte. He studies and writes about contemporary media issues, especially in the African context. A determined supporter of the LGBTQ cause, he co-organized a demonstration in France when the sultan of Brunei threatened to introduce harsh laws against LGBT people there. He is a member of the African Human Rights Media Network. Contact him by email via 76crimes (at) gmail.com.


Editor: Moïse Manoel

Moise Manoel
Moïse Manoel

Moïse Manoel lives and does research in Paramaribo, Suriname. He is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology from the University of the West Indies. His field of study and research is homophobia and neocolonialism on the Guyana Plateau in South America. He is a strong supporter of LGBT activism in Amazonia and in the Caribbean. Contact him by email via 76crimes (at) gmail.com.


Writer: Eric Lembembe

Eric Lembembe
Eric Lembembe

Eric Ohena Lembembe of Cameroon wrote some of this blog’s best-read articles and commentaries, which continue to attract many readers. A journalist and activist based in Yaoundé, Cameroon, he was a co-founder of the Cameroonian Foundation for AIDS. He was murdered in July 2013, which many believe was because of his advocacy for LGBTI rights.

View Comments (20)
  • Hello, i am an algerian gilr living in Scotland. Two days ago been rejected for Gay asylum with a reason of there is no risk to go back to Algeria and live your normal life there.
    I am going to appeal now but i need to provide evidence that i cant live in Algeria as a lesbian. Becaise my family will just kill me if they find out and i cant be accepted by the community.
    I need proofs of recent cases
    Videos
    Articles of gay people in Algeria and haters of gay people.
    Thank you for your help

    • Hi. Thanks for the nudge. You’re quite right. That task had slipped through the cracks. He’s off the list now.
      — Colin Stewart, editor/publisher of this blog

  • Hi I am from Britain’s Channel 4 News.

    Are you able to help me please. I am trying to ascertain which countries British Colonial Era Anti-Sodomy Laws are still in place. I have a list below but I do not know if it is up to date or if I have included all the countries that were subject to Colonial era sodomy laws.

    I would be grateful for you assistance.
    Girish

    MY LIST

    Section 377 was the first colonial “sodomy law”. It became the model for countries far beyond India. Its influence stretched across Asia, the Pacific islands, and Africa, almost everywhere the British imperial flag flew.

    Asia
    Malaysia, and Uganda, Australia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Fiji, Hong Kong, India, Kiribati, Malaysia, Maldives,

    Marshall Islands, Myanmar (Burma), Nauru, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Western Samoa.

    African countries
    Botswana, Gambia, Ghana[16], Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Nigeria, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Swaziland, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.[17]

    Among these, only New Zealand Australia, Hong Kong and Fiji have put the legacy, and the sodomy law, behind them.

  • I reply very late, but it needs saying that your list did not include the former Dominion of Canada, which shed the old Sodomy laws in 1969, where Sexual Orientation is a part of Canadian Constitution’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms (by interpretation of the Supreme Court) and where fully protected civil and human rights for LGBT now exists, including marriage and adoption rights. Canada’s Rights protections have primacy over all other legislation.

  • I’m writing you with an important story that deserves to be told.

    My spouse Kevin and I spent 2016 in Windhoek, Namibia ??. Kevin is an environmental attorney and I’m a social worker here in Minneapolis. Kevin received a Fulbright to teach at the University of Namibia. In Windhoek we met Phillip and Guermillo, a gay couple. Both are Lecturers in Architecture at the Namibian University of Science and Technology. Guermillo is Mexican and met Phillip in graduate school in the Netherlands. Phillip is native Namibian.

    Subsequently, Phillip & Guermillo have chosen to have children through surrogacy. Recently, Phillip was denied entrance into Namibia with his newborn twin daughters. The Namibian courts will be ruling on this case in the next few weeks. It has sparked an LGBTI protest movement in Namibia. Unlike South Africa, Namibia did not adopt a positive LGBTI public policy stance after gaining independence in 1991. There are no constitutional rights for LGBTI citizens and this case is really on the cutting edge of LGBTI rights in Africa. Also this is not the first case in this vein.

    We are in contact via What’s ap with Phillip & Guermillo and with another gay Namibian couple who have experienced similar issues of moving between SA and Namibia.

    Here is a link with lots of info – below

    https://linktr.ee/bringourtwinshome

    Thank you for your consideration and I hope this story is something that 76 Crimes will cover.

    Gerald Tyrrell

    Sent from my iPhone

    • Dear Gerald,
      Thanks for writing to us about this dreadful situation. I hope we can cover it and help change the government’s policy.
      Best,
      Colin Stewart, editor of Erasing 76 Crimes

  • Is there a reason the site’s commenting platform isn’t moderated? I’m all for discourse, but are there limits/guidance so those seeking help aren’t harassed? I came here just to read an article and most of the comments are anti-queer.
    Might be worth investigating if there’s a way to guide conversations, or at least automate a limit to spamming by setting a bot to search for patterns of hate speech from a single user.

    • Thanks for raising the issue.

      So far, the site doesn’t attract so many comments that an automated solution is not needed.

      But I haven’t figured out where to draw a line that would eliminate hate speech without eliminating every single comment from anti-gay Christians. So far, I’ve blocked comments that essentially contain death threats. I don’t imagine that it would be practical to limit comments to people declaring how wonderful it is to be LGBT and/or to be inclusive. Probably there’s a sensible rule for what to exclude, but I don’t know what it would be.

      — Colin Stewart, editor/publisher of this site

  • The Cook Islands Parliament will be asked today (12April) to repeal sections 152 to 155 of the Crimes Act which make consensual anal intercourse and consensual sexual activity between members of the same sex illegal. If approved (and the expectation is that it will be) the law will change on 1 June 2023. This is a huge step forward for the tiny South Pacific nation which made international headlines in 2020 when there were plans to tighten the existing laws and increase penalties for breaches.

  • Love the content but the website sucks. Your pages don’t load well and it takes forever and your pages partially load. This all occurs on an iphone using both cell data and wifi. You need to find a new webmaster to manage your site!

  • Thank You for your website. Now I know which countries to travel to and those countries are the 67 crimes.

  • Hi. I live in Istanbul Turkey. I’m passive gay and I want to take refuge in the Netherlands. I’m passive gay and my English is not good. It’s hard to live as a gay, please help me.

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