LGBULLETIN #177 – THE WEEK IN LGBTI NEWS (13-19 NOVEMBER 2020)

United States: hate crimes reach record high, FBI report shows

Hate crimes and murders of LGBT people reached record high last year, a new FBI report claims.

The FBI’s 2019 Hate Crimeoffences that are motivated by hate or bias against a particular group of people. This could be based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, or sex characteristics amongst others. More Statistics report documented 7,314 criminal incidents – an increase of about 3 percent from 2018 – and 8,559 related offenses as being motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientationrefers to a person’s capacity for profound emotional, affectional and sexual attraction to - and intimate and sexual relations with - individuals of a different gender or the same gender or more than one gender. More, disability, gender, and gender identity.
In particular, hate crimes targeting trans and gender-diverse people have been escalating: while the proportion of crimes targeting persons on the grounds of their sexual orientation remained the same compared to 2018, those based on the offenders’ gender identity bias increased from 2,2 to 2,7 percent of the total.

According to activists, the document only goes as far as scratching the surface of anti-LGBT hate in the country, as it only reflects data that law enforcement agencies voluntarily submitted to the FBI.

“Yet another year with alarming levels of bias-motivated crimes underscores just how urgent it is to address this hate crimes epidemic,” Human Rights Campaign President Alphonso David said. “This year [2020], we saw a tragic new record of fatal violence against transgender and gender-nonconforming people in this country, particularly against Black and brown transgender women. These alarming statistics represent real trauma for individuals and families across this country who have to bear the brunt of these hate crimes.”

#FueTravesticidio #DianaSacayan presente, ahora y siempre! https://t.co/oPFVe3Z0RX

— ILGALAC (@ILGALAC) November 19, 2020

Argentina: the Court of Cassation rejects appeal on Diana Sacayán case

After failing to recognise the murder of activist Diana Sacayán as a hate crime in October, the Court of Cassation in Argentina has rejected an appeal to ask the Supreme Court to review the ruling and reintroduce hatred on the grounds of gender identity as an aggravating factor.

While confirming the lifetime prison sentence for the man who killed the activist, the Court argued that the plaintiffs hadn’t “shown what specific harm the change in legal classification would cause them”. The decision to overturn an historic aspect of the 2018 ruling, which had considered the crime as an act of gender-based violence and had listed hatred on the grounds of gender identity among its aggravating factors, had shocked many in the country.

Diana Sacayán, the travesti activist who was among the driving forces behind the law to establish workplace quotas in the public sector for trans persons, was murdered in October 2015: she was only 39 years old. At the time, she was a member of the Movimiento Antidiscriminatorio de Liberación (M.A.L.) and alternate representative of the then-Trans Secretariat on the Board of ILGA World.

Three years later, a 25-year-old man was sentenced to life imprisonment for the crime. The ruling had been considered historic: “The murder of a travesti person had never led to a trial where the victim’s gender identity was recognised among the grounds for the crime,” the plaintiff had explained. “There also are only a few cases of murders of travesti persons that have reached the trial stage, and a sentence was delivered just in four of such cases.” According to reports, the term travesticidio had never been used in courts across Latin America before this trial.

Samoa: a debate on whether fa’afafine can run for office stirs criticisms

A televised debate on whether Samoa’s fa’afafine can run for public office has stirred criticism, leading the church-run television station to apologise publicly.

The debate took place between two youth groups from the Congregational Christian Church of Samoa, but reactions to the debate were almost immediate: many members of the public, including some from the fa’afafine community, took to social media to criticise the program. The Church’s General Secretary responded with a live-streamed apology on Facebook.

Despite the public outcry, the Samoa Fa’afafine Association President Alex Su’a brushed aside the apology. “There’s a division of views as some are saying that it’s creating a lot of discrimination against our Fa’afafine Association while some are saying it’s just a debate”. Su’a further argued that, despite acknowledging the discriminatory nature of the issue that was discussed, the debate had “some benefits” as it’s an “educational topic”.

Hungary: city bans “LGBTQ propaganda”

Following many Polish local jurisdictions’ footsteps, the city of Nagykáta in Hungary has adopted a resolution banning “dissemination and promotion of LGBTQ propaganda”. In particular, the decision came to halt the distribution of an inclusive fairy tale book that featured queerpreviously used as a derogatory term to refer to LGBT individuals in the English language – and still perceived as offensive by some - queer has been reclaimed by people who identify beyond traditional gender categories and heteronormative social norms. Although not universally accepted, it is often used as a catch-all to include many people within the larger community of people with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and sex characteristics. More characters.

The declaration of what activists deemed the first “LGBT-free zone” established in the country is the umpteenth attack against the rights of LGBTI people, a worrying trend to which the European Commission recently responded by announcing its first LGBTI strategy.

“The Hungarian Government County Office should call on the local government to revoke this unlawful decision,” ILGA-Europe said.

Last week, the Hungarian government submitted amendments that would add a provision to the Constitution stating that “the mother is a woman, the father is a man”, while also presenting a bill to explicitly state that only married couples can adopt children. In May, Hungary approved an amendment to the Act on Civil Registration Procedure, which includes an article replacing the category of “sexrefers to the classification of a person as male, female, or other - usually made at birth, written on a birth certificate, and usually based on the appearance of their external anatomy. A person’s sex, however, is actually a combination of bodily characteristics, including chromosomes, hormones, internal and external reproductive organs, and secondary sex characteristics. More” on the civil registry with “sex assigned at birth”, making access to legal gender recognitionlaws, administrative procedures or processes by which a person can change their sex/gender marker and names on official identity documents. More impossible for trans and intersexan umbrella term for the spectrum of variations of sex characteristics that naturally occur within the human species. Intersex people are born with variations of sex characteristics (such as genitals, reproductive organs, hormonal and chromosomal patterns) that are more diverse than stereotypical definitions of male or female bodies. Up to 1.7% of the global population are born with such traits; yet, because their bodies are seen as different, intersex children and adults are often stigmatised and subject to harmful practices – including in medical settings - and discriminated against. More people.

Deportation of a gay person to the Gambia violates human rights, the European Court of Human Rights rules

The deportation of a gay person to the Gambia would violate the right to protection from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, the European Court of Human Rights ruled. According to the Court, while the mere existence of laws criminalising same-sex intimacy between consenting adults does not necessarily indicate ill-treatment, it highlights widespread discrimination against LGBTI persons and a lack of State protection.

As ILGA World’s State-Sponsored Homophobiafear, unreasonable anger, intolerance or/and hatred directed towards people attracted to others of the same gender. More report documents, in 2014 the Gambia has amended its Criminal Code to tighten the existing ban on “homosexual acts”, extending the applicable punishment to life imprisonment. Further, there is little hope for a near-future change, as Gambian authorities have recently declared having no intention of decriminalising consensual same-sex relations.

The Court considered that “no one should be obliged to conceal his or her sexual orientation in order to avoid persecution” and that “the applicant’s sexual orientation could be discovered if he were removed to the Gambia”, putting his life at risk.

“The findings in this judgment have been long-awaited. For the first time the European Court of Human Rights established that in consideration of deportation cases, the failure of sufficiently assessing the risks of ill-treatment based on one’s sexual orientation, particularly by non-state actors in a country of origin, gives rise to violation of Article 3 [freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment]”, said Arpi Avetisyan, ILGA-Europe’s Senior Litigation Officer. “We welcome this judgement as a significant step forward in protecting rights of LGBTI asylum seekers and hope it will serve as a beacon of Court’s guidance on similar cases across Council of Europe.”

Japanese firms could soon be removing gender section from job application forms

Japan’s firms could soon scrap the requirement for job applicants to indicate their gender in their resumé, media claim.

According to reports, a campaign stressing that such practices can lead to discrimination has collected over 10,000 signatures, while some companies have already started changing their rules. The requirement is particularly problematic for trans people, experts said.

The Japan Alliance for LGBT Legislation welcomed the proposed elimination of gender sections on job application forms while raising concern over a possible inability “to calculate the ratio between men and women in the workforce.”

“It is desirable to ask for gender identity rather than (legal) gender that does not respect the person’s perception. We also need the option of neither,” said Yuichi Kamiya, secretary general of the Japan Alliance for LGBT Legislation. “We need to listen to and consider the opinions of experts about their necessities for hiring and how people should be asked.”