Which country will repeal its anti-gay law next? Why do your blog’s writers use pseudonyms? Were you attacked? Here are my answers to questions posed by a Brazilian journalist writing about LGBTI rights and the Erasing 76 Crimes blog. Continue reading
Increasing desperation in the Bangladeshi LGBT community came to a head Friday, May 19, when police in Bangladesh broke up a social gathering, making 29 arrests in what seems to be part of a government crackdown against the LGBT community. Continue reading
Bangladeshi activists are seeking to raise £25,000 to mount a legal challenge to the country’s colonial-era anti-LGBT law. Continue reading
LONDON – A group of up to 17 countries led by Belarus has blocked a plan to include the rights of gay, lesbian and transgender communities in a new urban strategy drawn up by the United Nations, according to sources close to negotiations. Thompson Reuters Foundation published the story Oct. 11-12. The headline was: … Continue reading
London-based Bangladeshi gay rights activist Riaz Osmani today issued this statement seeking the repeal of Bangladesh’s anti-LGBTI law, Section 377 of the Penal Code. That law provides for life imprisonment for anyone who engages in “carnal intercourse against the order of nature,” which the law defines as involving penetration other than heterosexual intercourse. Osmani has … Continue reading
Human Rights Watch reported: Pakistan: Attacks on Transgender Women Surge Promptly Investigate, Prosecute Those Responsible (New York, August 23, 2016) – Pakistani authorities should urgently investigate the surge in violent attacks on transgender women in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Human Rights Watch said today. They should also investigate allegations that medical staff and police failed to … Continue reading
Police in Bangladesh have identified five people involved in the April 25 murder of LGBT rights activists Xulhaz Mannan and Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy, but have not yet arrested them, according to news accounts in Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi online newspaper bdnews24.com reported: Detectives are trying to arrest these suspects, an official of the Detective Branch, speaking … Continue reading
Sadly, the 49 people killed by an anti-LGBT gunman in Orlando, Florida, are just the latest additions to a list of 1000s of victims of anti-LGBT attacks worldwide. The names of many of the first identified victims of the June 12 massacre have been added to this blog’s tally of victims of homophobic hate-crime killings. … Continue reading
Riaz Osmani, a Bangladeshi activist currently living in London, writes: Below is a screenshot of a Facebook page of a Bangladeshi Islamic fundamentalist group called Basherkella. That page is the online face of the discredited political party called Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir. That party once opposed Bangladesh’s independence and assisted the … Continue reading
Western media and local Bangladeshi newspapers gave distinctly different accounts of the May 14 arrest of an Islamic extremist in connection with last month’s machete deaths of two LGBT activists in Bangladesh. The Associated Press and the BBC played up the alleged role of the suspect, Shariful Islam Shihab. He was arrested “for his alleged … Continue reading
