By Tony Grew

J-Flag, the Jamaican lesbian and gay rights group, has rejected calls for a tourist boycott in protest at homophobia on the island.

J-FLAG

Canadian newspapers have been focusing on the prejudice and violence gay people face in Jamaica since a leading activist sought asylum there, and some have called for Canadians to refuse to holiday in the popular destination.

In a statement released yesterday, J-Flag, Jamaica's Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays, said it shared the frustration at the "slow progress towards transforming the social climate that makes it difficult for gays and lesbians in Jamaica to lead lives free from homophobic violence.

"Yet, because of the possible repercussions of increased homophobic violence against our already besieged community, we feel that a tourist boycott is not the most appropriate response at this time.

"In our battle to win hearts and minds, we do not wish to be perceived as taking food off the plate of those who are already impoverished.

"In fact, members of our own community could be disproportionately affected by a worsened economic situation brought about by a tourist ban.

"The concern and support of the international community has been critical in focusing attention to our situation.

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By Ashante Infantry

Canadians should consider a tourism boycott to pressure Caribbean governments to protect the human rights of their gay citizenry, said participants in a University of Toronto forum Friday evening.

Buju Banton

Elephant Man

About 200 people attended the two-hour discussion, The Sound of Hate: Where Sexual Orientation, Race, Dancehall Music and Human Rights Collide.

The debate focused on a popular segment of reggae that gay rights activists have dubbed "murder music," because it contains threatening sentiments toward homosexuals and pejorative patois terms for them.

They also allege that the songs have motivated brutal attacks on Jamaican gays by mobs who often recite the hateful lyrics of songs such as "Boom Bye Bye" (Buju Banton) and "Log On" (Elephant Man).

"The sound of hate is also the rhythm of pain, because people are being kicked and chopped by people singing these songs; there is no way for me as a Jamaican to appreciate reggae right now," said panelist Gareth Henry.

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The Deputy Commissioner of Police in Jamaica has said his officers need training to improve the way they deal with gay people.

The Commonwealth country is notorious as one of the most homophobic places on earth.

In the course of the last month a leading LGBT activist has fled the island claiming he was brutalised by police and an officer has gone into hiding after being abused by colleagues about his sexuality.

Deputy commissioner Mark Shields told The Gleaner "I think there is a place for minorities, whoever they are, to have the opportunity to speak to recruits during their initial (police) training.

"Diversity is something that needs to be embraced. Therefore, the only way to do that is to train police officers so that they are no longer just citizens with a view and with prejudices."

Sex between men in Jamaica is illegal, and punishable with up to ten years in jail, usually with hard labour.

In December 2003, a World Policy Institute survey on sexual orientation and human rights in the Americas said:

"In the Caribbean, Jamaica is by far the most dangerous place for sexual minorities, with frequent and often fatal attacks against gay men fostered by a popular culture that idolises reggae and dancehall singers whose lyrics call for burning and killing gay men."

Hatred for gay people is often publicly expressed by political and religious leaders in Jamaica.

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'My life is in great, great jeopardy' in a country where violence against homosexuals is pervasive

By Dana Flavelle

A Jamaican police officer says he's living in fear after coming out as a gay man and hopes to come to Canada where he can safely speak up on behalf of other gay Jamaicans.

Michael Hayden, who has been on the police force for four years, said other officers routinely attacked and abused him after becoming suspicious of his sexual orientation.

But after speaking out publicly about the problem in The Jamaica Star newspaper this month, the 24-year-old Hayden said he began receiving death threats.

"I want to stay here and fight," Hayden said in a telephone interview from Jamaica yesterday. "But it's not safe for me. My life is in great, great jeopardy."

Human rights groups say Hayden's case is the latest in a series of disturbing anti-gay incidents in the Caribbean tourist destination.

The Jamaican police force declined to comment on Hayden's situation. Sodomy is a criminal offence in Jamaica, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years.

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By Marc Lacey

MANDEVILLE, Jamaica — One night last month, Andre and some friends were finishing dinner when a mob showed up at the front gate. Yelling antigay slurs and waving machetes, sticks and knives, 15 to 20 men kicked in the front door of the home he and his friends had rented and set upon them.

“I thought I was dead,” Andre, 20, a student, recounted in a faint voice, still scared enough that he was in hiding and did not want his full name to be used.

The mob pummeled him senseless. His right hand, the one he used to shield himself from the blows, is now covered with bandages. His skull has deep cut marks and his ear was sliced in half, horizontally. Doctors managed to sew it back together and he can hear out of it again.

Being gay in Jamaica is not easy. For years, human rights groups have denounced the harassment, beating and even killing of gays here, to little avail. No official statistic has been compiled on the number of attacks. But a recent string of especially violent, high-profile assaults has brought fresh condemnation to an island otherwise known as an easygoing tourist haven.

“One time may be an isolated incident,” said Rebecca Schleifer, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who has studied the issue and regularly gets calls from the island from gays under attack. “When they happen on a repeated basis across the country, it is an urgent problem that deserves attention at the highest levels.”

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JAMAICAN CHURCH leaders stand resolute that despite strong lobbying by international gay rights activists, homo-sexuality will not be accepted as normal.

Jamaica-Gleaner.com - The Church's rebuke comes in the wake of a recent scathing report from the New York-based Human Rights Watch and protests last week by a Florida church sympathetic to gays.

The Rev Dr Merrick 'Al' Miller, pastor of the Fellowship Taber-nacle in St Andrew, said that Jamaicans generally deem homo-sexuality wrong.

Members of OutburstUK  and Outrage! Protesting Anti-Gay Jamaican Policies

Immoral in every way

He said the demands of gay activists who are attempting to force their beliefs on society will in no way influence Jamaicans to change their views.

"Homosexuality is wrong from every possible angle," said Miller. "It's immoral from a physical, social and spiritual standpoint." He said that despite this, the Church was willing to help and support those homosexuals who are in need of counselling or assistance to change their lifestyle.

"I have no problem in supporting and helping someone who sees that he is going the wrong way and wants help in changing his life, but where I draw the line is when you say that it is OK and want to force others to accept your abnormal behaviour," he added.

It was reported last week that on Valentine's Day, leaders of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) in Florida staged a demonstration outside the Jamaican consulate in Miami over what they said was a series of anti-gay murders and gay-bashing incidents in the island.

The MCC, a worldwide assembly of gay, lesbian and transsexual congregants, said they were prepared to push for a boycott of Jamaican tourism if the country fails to deal with reported attacks on gays.

Sensitising police

The church also staged protests at consulates in New York, Toronto and Philadelphia. They reportedly called for a public aware-ness campaign to promote a more "gay-friendly" environment, and called on the Jamaican police to begin sensitivity training regarding the gay and lesbian communities.

The Rev Dr Lloyd Maxwell, of the AGAPE Christian Fellowship in Portmore, said that Scripture takes a very clear stance on the matter of homosexuality and, as such, the Church would not sanction nor encourage the lifestyle.

Rev Maxwell said the idea of conducting a public awareness campaign to sensitise Jamaicans on the issue is ludicrous.

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Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Mark Shields has embraced the idea of sensitivity training for members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) to enhance the manner in which they relate to individuals of particular minority groups, including those from the homosexual community.

Mark Shields

"I think there is a place for minorities, whoever they are, to have the opportunity to speak to recruits during their initial JCF training," DCP Shields told The Gleaner yesterday. "Diversity is something that needs to be embraced. Therefore, the only way to do that is to train police officers so that they are no longer just citizens with a view and with prejudices."

Protests staged

DCP Shields' comments follow recent demands made by gay activists of a Florida-based church who staged protests outside several Jamaican consulates in the United States last week.

Leaders of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), a worldwide assembly of gay, lesbian and transsexual congregants called for the Jamaican police to begin sensitivity training in relation to the gay and lesbian communities.

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US church demands protection for homosexuals in Jamaica Friday, 15 February 2008 Leaders of the US-based Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) led a demonstration in Miami on Thursday to protest a series of reported anti-gay murders and gay-bashing incidents in Jamaica.

The church also sponsored protests at consulates in New York, Toronto and Philadelphia.

A contingent of religious leaders from the MCC's Sunshine Cathedral in Fort Lauderdale met with Jamaican Consulate General Richard Allicock and three top staff members for more than an hour in the consulate's office in downtown Miami.

Church leaders said they were not going to stop their protests until gays and lesbians are protected in Jamaica.

They also declared they were "on the verge" of calling for a global boycott of the island.

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By Maxine Clarke

Jamaica. Even the sweet, cool sound of the island rolls easily off your tongue like iced coconut. What an idyllic place to visit. Twenty-four hour party people reggae-dancing long into the night. Short-shorted, coconut-oiled beach boys and beautiful, brown, bikinied babes playing cricket on the beach and serving pina coladas from sundown to sunrise in a rum-soaked ganja haze. All beautiful smiles and laid-back, open-hearted friendliness. No worries rastaman, right? Not quite.

Not if you’re gay or lesbian, especially not if you’re a gay man, and definitely not if you’re a gay Jamaican man.

Dancehall homophobe Buju Banton.

Though Jamaicans have long held a reputation as being happy-go-lucky, music-loving beach layabouts, the island of Jamaica has a history steeped in oppression and sadness.

The original inhabitants of the islands, the Arawak Indians, died out shortly after European contact. Legend has it that on watching European slave drivers and their African slaves, the proud Arawaks decided they would rather die than become slaves themselves, and by an extraordinary act of will, secluded themselves in the hills and simply stopped reproducing until they ceased to exist.

The history of slavery in Jamaica was long and bloody. The West Indies formed part of the dreaded ‘Middle Passage’ of the Atlantic slave trade, and Jamaican plantations were notoriously harsh. While slavery officially ended in 1838, and independence reached Jamaica in 1971, many British laws which have since been repealed throughout all, or parts, of the United Kingdom - such as those relating to homosexuality - still exist in Jamaica today, and are reinforced by the prejudices of the general populus.

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By Trenton Daniel

South Florida religious leaders met with Jamaican officials Thursday morning at the Jamaican Consulate in Miami to discuss recent attacks against gays, lesbians and transgender individuals on the Caribbean island.

''I'm encouraged,'' the Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson said after the almost hour long meeting. ``This is the beginning today of a global movement to stop the violence against gays in Jamaica.

Wilson and other religious leaders pressed Consul General Ricardo Allicock and his staff to launch a public awareness campaign about gay rights in Jamaica, and also to see authorities investigate gay-related hate crimes.

Homophobia has long been a concern in Jamaica, but it has been especially worrisome in recent years as the number of mob-related attacks have grown.

According to Human Rights Watch in New York, a mob broke into a house in the central Jamaican town of Mandeville last month and slashed the occupants inside, sending two to the hospital. One went missing and is feared dead, the advocacy group reported.

The attack echoed another that happened in Mandeville last year, the human rights group reported. A mob crashed the funeral of a gay man, breaking church windows with bottles and threatening the mourners. Police showed up but did little to intervene, the rights group reported.

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Gareth Henry, a leading Jamaican gay activist, has come to Canada claiming refugee status.

Gareth Henry

Henry says 13 of his friends have been killed in Jamaica since 2004.

One 22-year-old friend who was suspected of being gay was chased by a mob, Henry told CBC News. The only place he could run to was the harbour. He couldn't swim.

"Everyone," said Henry, "stood and watched him drown."

Henry, who was vocal activist with the country's pioneering gay-rights organization J-FLAG, Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays, has had his own troubling experiences.

On Valentine's Day last year, he was caught in a pharmacy and surrounded by an angry mob, he said. There was no protection from the police or state.

"When you find police officers who are leading mob attacks, turning up at people's home like myself, pointing guns at my window, with civilians with them, and saying that I need to leave or they're going to kill me, it reinforces homophobia."

Henry said he wants to stay in Canada and is claiming refugee status.

He says Canada understands and protects human rights and that Jamaica is not a place he can return to.

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Widespread Homophobic Violence Shows Failure of Police Protection

(New York, February 1, 2008) – A homophobic mob attack in Jamaica that left one man severely injured and another missing and feared dead shows yet again that authorities must take urgent action against violence and hatred, Human Rights Watch said today. This incident is the latest in a string of homophobic mob violence over the last year, including an attack on mourners in a church.

“Roving mobs attacking innocent people and staining the streets with blood should shame the nation’s leaders,” said Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. “Gays and lesbians in Jamaica face violence at home, in public, even in a house of worship, and official silence encourages the spread of hate.”

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By Jean-Cosme Delaloye

Kingston. Janice has been beaten up for being a lesbian. Sitting in the small windowless room in an anonymous house in uptown Kingston, the 31-year old Jamaican shows a scar above her left eye. She says she never leaves her house without her knife nowadays. She claims she used it “a couple of times for self-defense”. When she speaks about her life as a lesbian in Jamaica, one can feel the pain in her angry eyes. She left home as a teenager because her family never approved her sexuality. : " I was 14, she says. My sisters had boyfriends, and I didn’t want any. So, I told my mom I was not going to have any boyfriend and any kids because I was different. She did not accept it ".

At the time, Janice moved in with a friend. " When I left home it was quite ok for a while until I was on my own on the streets, she adds. I left my friend’s place when I was 17. It was just hell for me because I could not just walk to a person and say “hey I am gay, but it’s ok” because Jamaicans are so much against it”.

Jamaica has anti-sodomy laws and gay sex is punishable with up to 10 years in jail. Sexual acts between women are not mentioned in the law and are therefore legal but are not tolerated by most Jamaicans. At the same time, the crime rate is skyrocketing on the Caribbean island. Over 1440 people have been killed since the beginning of 2007 and the country could match its record of nearly 1,700 murders in 2005.

By TIM PADGETT/KINGSTON

Brian wears sunglasses to hide his gray and lifeless left eye—damaged, he says, by kicks and blows with a board from Jamaican reggae star Buju Banton. Brian, 44, is gay, and Banton, 32, is an avowed homophobe whose song Boom Bye-Bye decrees that gays "haffi dead" ("have to die"). In June 2004, Brian claims, Banton and some toughs burst into his house near Banton's Kingston recording studio and viciously beat him and five other men. After complaints from international human-rights groups, Banton was finally charged last fall, but in January a judge dismissed the case for lack of evidence. It was a bitter decision for Brian, who lost his landscaping business after the attack and is fearful of giving his last name. "I still go to church," he says as he sips a Red Stripe beer. "Every Sunday I ask why this happened to me."

Though familiar to Americans primarily as a laid-back beach destination, Jamaica is hardly idyllic. The country has the world's highest murder rate. And its rampant violence against gays and lesbians has prompted human-rights groups to confer another ugly distinction: the most homophobic place on earth.
 

In the past two years, two of the island's most prominent gay activists, Brian Williamson and Steve Harvey, have been murdered — and a crowd even celebrated over Williamson's mutilated body. Perhaps most disturbing, many anti-gay assaults have been acts of mob violence. In 2004, a teen was almost killed when his father learned his son was gay and invited a group to lynch the boy at his school. Months later, witnesses say, police egged on another mob that stabbed and stoned a gay man to death in Montego Bay. And this year a Kingston man, Nokia Cowan, drowned after a crowd shouting "batty boy" (a Jamaican epithet for homosexual) chased him off a pier. "Jamaica is the worst any of us has ever seen," says Rebecca Schleifer of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch and author of a scathing report on the island's anti-gay hostility.

Harvey, 30, was found dead early in the morning of November 30. According to Jamaican police, at least four assailants forced their way into Harvey’s home when he returned from work around 1 a.m. They tied up Harvey and two people staying with him, stole a number of their possessions, and abducted Harvey in the company car. Harvey was found with gunshot wounds in his back and head in a rural area miles from his home.

Jamaica may be the worst offender, but much of the rest of the Caribbean also has a long history of intense homophobia. Islands like Barbados still criminalize homosexuality, and some seem to be following Jamaica's more violent example. Last week two CBS News producers, both Americans, were beaten with tire irons by a gay-bashing mob while vacationing on St. Martin. One of the victims, Ryan Smith, was airbused to a Miami hospital, where he remains in intensive care with a fractured skull.

Gay-rights activists attribute the scourge of homophobia in Jamaica largely to the country's increasingly thuggish reggae music scene. Few epitomize the melding of reggae and gangsta cultures more than Banton, who is one of the nation's most popular dance-hall singers. Born Mark Myrie, he grew up the youngest of 15 children in Kingston's Salt Lane — the sort of slum dominated by ultraconservative Christian churches and intensely anti-gay Rastafarians. Banton parlayed homophobia into a ticket out of Salt Lane. One of his first hits, 1992's Boom Bye-Bye, boasts of shooting gays with Uzis and burning their skin with acid "like an old tire wheel."

A gay Jamaican man who feared persecution if forced to leave the United States for his home country was granted asylum Thursday by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“I am grateful to the United States government for saving my life,” Ven Messam said in a statement released by the Columbia Law School's Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic, which assisted him with his case. “My life in Jamaica was constantly in danger, with angry mobs carrying machetes, stones, knives, and guns, threatening to kill me because I am gay. When I tried to contact the police for help, the police instead threatened to arrest me and told me to leave the country if I wanted to stay safe.”

The following 6 articles concern the recent national crisis in Jamaica created by the discovery of a proposed secondary school text book with a few entries mentioning gay people. The articles represent a sample of the news and opinion  published last week in Jamaica on this issue.

The reactions and commentary of Jamaicans in authority is suggestive, alarming and sad. The opinions expressed by authors in any of these articles are of course their own.

By BALFORD HENRY

The education ministry moved swiftly yesterday to quell fears among teachers and parents that it had hit rock bottom by endorsing a school textbook that apparently promoted same-sex unions and homosexuality.

Minister of Education Andrew Holness said a decisive 'no' to Rita Dyer and Norma Maynard's book, C-SEC Home Economics and Beyond (Management), which reportedly refers to same-sex unions as family.

Holness angrily dismissed as "very unfortunate" a lead article in yesterday's Gleaner newspaper which reported that the book was recommended reading by the education ministry, despite the fact that it included a section suggesting that there has been a "broadening of the traditional definitions of a family structure" and that "when two women or two men live together in a relationship as lesbians or gays, they may be considered as a family".

By Anonymous

The furore this past week over reports of a textbook being used in some secondary schools with reference to same-sex unions as a type of family option has again thrown into sharp focus the challenge to the Jamaican society of contending values and view points, and how to deal with them.

A majority of Jamaicans claim to embrace Christian values and teachings. Among these values is an overwhelming public hostility to any hint of endorsement of same-sex unions. So, it is hardly surprising that there has been a firestorm over published reports of the existence of a book being used which says, against the background of much recent debate about family structures, gay unions may be considered a family type. The visceral reaction this has provoked has since moved the discussion from the sublime to the ridiculous, where an entire text is now being labelled a 'gay textbook'.

Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation

The authors of a controversial textbook which the Ministry of Education here ordered removed from schools say that are not advocating homosexuality.

Education Minister Andrew Holness ordered the removal of the home economics text which made reference to homosexual unions as a family option after its presence in several schools caused a public outcry.

However, authors Rita Dyer and Norma Maynard, who are both based in St Lucia, told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) that they knew Jamaica’s stance on homosexuality and were not trying to go against it.

They accused Jamaicans of pointing to only a few lines in the textbook.

"It is unfortunate that four sentences on page four in the text under the sub-heading family forms, were used to label the total text as a gay book; we are very angry about that because that was not the intention.

By D.M.O. MITCHELL

THE EDITOR, Sir:

As a former teacher, now involved in higher education administration, I wish to add my voice to the debate initiated by the text CSEC Home Economics and Beyond (Management) and am happy that the Ministry of Education has vehemently denied that this is a recommended text. The authors should reword the offensive section if they wish to have their book considered for use in Jamaican schools.

I support the position posited by Mrs. Ester Tyson, principal of Ardenne High School in The Sunday Gleaner of November 4, 2007, and would ask principals of all other schools in this our beloved country to shun any overt or covert mechanism being used to negatively influence the minds of our children and youth. I must express my extreme disappointment with the editorial which suggests that "The fears seem grounded in a belief that any idea or suggestion which is contrary to the majority views is likely to prove more influential."