This
report reviews human rights practices in seventy countries and describes
events from November 1999 through October 2000.
Copyright
© 2001 Human Rights Watch
LESBIAN AND
GAY RIGHTS
Protection
from abuse remained elusive for lesbians, gay men, and bisexual and transgender
people in 2000, despite the reaffirmation in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights that “All people are born free and equal in dignity and
rights.” In virtually every country in the world, people suffered from
de jure and de facto discrimination based on their actual or perceived
sexual orientation or gender identity. Sexual minorities were persecuted
in a significant number of countries and in many ways, including the application
of the death penalty or long prison sentences for private sexual acts between
consenting adults. In some countries, sexual minorities were targeted for
extrajudicial execution. In many countries, police actively participated
in the persecution. Pervasive bias within the criminal justice system in
many countries effectively precluded members of sexual minorities from
seeking redress.
These
attacks on human rights and fundamental freedoms also occurred in international
fora where states were supposedly working to promote human rights. For
example, in New York in June at the five year review meeting for the Fourth
World Conference on Women, many delegates refused to recognize women’s
sexual rights and some states continued to defend violations of women’s
human rights in the name of religious and cultural practices. Activists
stressed the connection between the need for states to recognize women’s
right to control their sexuality and enjoy physical autonomy if states
were serious about wanting to reduce violence against women. Many delegates
refused to acknowledge that discrimination against lesbian and single women
created a climate in which attacks on such women were deemed justified.
Other
intergovernmental bodies played a significant role in upholding the human
rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals. In July,
for example, the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly approved Armenia
and Azerbaijan’s applications for membership with the understanding that
each country would repeal legislation that discriminated against lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and transgender persons. In a further debate the assembly
voted to support recommendations that national governments recognize persecution
on the grounds of sexual orientation for the purposes of asylum and grant
bi_national same_sex couples the same residence rights as bi_national heterosexual
couples. In September, the Parliamentary Assembly called upon its member
states to include sexual orientation among the prohibited bases of discrimination,
revoke sodomy laws and similar legislation criminalizing sexual relations
between consenting adults of the same sex, and apply the same age of consent
for all sexual relations.
Despite
the council’s laudable efforts, the International Gay and Lesbian Association
(IGLA) reported to the Parliamentary Assembly’s Legal Affairs and Human
Rights Committee in March that “discrimination against lesbian, gay and
bisexual persons remains endemic and extremely serious” in Europe and that
“[h]omophobic violence is common, even in countries like Sweden which are
world leaders in their support for lesbian and gay rights."
Persecution
Lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals were vilified by officials of
several states. Their claims to equal enjoyment of rights and equal protection
before the law were routinely denied in many states. State-sponsored hostility
and entrenched bias toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people
not only placed them at risk of violence and persecution by agents of the
state, but virtually guaranteed that they would face serious obstacles
if they turned to the state for protection or redress when attacked by
private actors.
World Pride 2000, an international
event calling attention to human rights violations of lesbian, gay, bisexual,
and transgender people, held in July in Rome, came under heavy criticism
from the Vatican. In the wake of the Vatican’s criticism, Italy’s prime
minister Guiliano Amato ordered the country’s minister for equal rights
to cancel her ministry’s official sponsorship of World Pride. The pope
went on to condemn the event as “an offense to the Christian values of
the city.”
Leaders
in Namibia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe continued to denounce lesbian, gay, bisexual,
and transgender individuals during the year. Zimbabwean President Robert
Mugabe continued his longstanding anti-gay campaign. At a New Year’s Day
celebration, he characterized same-sex marriage as “an abomination, a rottenness
of culture, real decadence of culture.” In Namibia, President Sam Nujoma
was regularly quoted as calling lesbians and gays “unnatural” and against
the will of God. State television reported in October 2000 that Home Affairs
Minister Jerry Ekandjo urged new police officers to “eliminate” lesbians
and gays “from the face of Namibia.”
Ugandan
President Yoweri Museveni appeared to back away from his September 1999
directive to Criminal Investigations Division officers to “look for homosexuals,
lock them up and charge them.” At a news conference in November 1999, he
criticized lesbians and gays for “provoking and upsetting” society but
suggested that they could live in Uganda as long they “did it quietly.”
In
the month after President Museveni ordered the arrest of lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender Ugandans, the International Gay and Lesbian Human
Rights Commission (IGLHRC) received reports that several students had been
expelled from schools for their involvement in same-sex relationships.
The offices of Sister Namibia, a magazine known for
its strong support of gay and lesbian rights, was set on fire on July 10
in what appeared to be a deliberate attack; the Namibian National Society
for Human Rights noted, “While the motive for the attack is not yet known,
the attack occurred barely a week after Namibian President Sam Nujoma launched
a verbal attack on the homosexual community.”
According
to the Lebanese human rights organization Multi-Initiative on Rights: Search,
Assist and Defend (MIRSAD), Beirut Morals Police (Police des M?urs) officers
entered the offices of Destination, an Lebanese internet service provider,
in April to obtain information about the owners of a website for Lebanese
gays and lesbians that was accessible to internet users in Lebanon but
maintained in the United States. Later that month, officers questioned
the general manager and another senior staff member at the Hobaich police
station. When MIRSAD posted an urgent action message on several websites,
the military prosecutor charged MIRSAD and Destination officials with “tarnishing
the reputation of the Morals Police by distributing a printed flier,” in
violation of article 157 of the Military Penal Code; their trial was scheduled
for September 25. If convicted, they would face three months to three years
of imprisonment.
Gay
men, lesbians, and transgender people have been subjected to a campaign
of terror, violence, and murder in El Salvador over the last several years.
Governmental indifference to these offenses was compounded by state agents’
active participation in violence. A person who identified himself as a
member of the special Presidential Battalion used his weapon to threaten
a transgender person who was participating in Lesbian and Gay Pride Day
celebrations in the Constitution Plaza in San Salvador. Asociaci?n “Entre
Amigos” Executive Director William Hern?ndez repeatedly received death
threats. The Salvadorean police acknowledged that Hern?ndez and “Entre
Amigos” qualified for protection due to the repeated attacks and threats
to which they had been subjected. Nevertheless, the chief of the National
Civil Police initially refused to appoint any officers to provide protection
because officers who “do not share the sexual tastes” of those they should
protect would feel uncomfortable doing their work. Hern?ndez was placed
under special police protection following an international campaign.
In
August, a longstanding prohibition against the use of a public park in
Aguascalientes, Mexico, by “dogs and homosexuals” became the focus of public
attention after a sign announcing the ban was repaired and reposted at
the park entrance. Asked for his thoughts on the gay community in interviews
broadcast on the Mexican network Televisa and in the national newspaper
La
Jornada, Aguascalientes Director of Regulations Jorge Alvarez
Medina stated that he was against “this type of people” and declared that
he “will not allow access to homosexuals” while he remained in charge of
municipal regulations. In a welcome development, however, National Action
Party (Partido de Acci?n Nacional, PAN) National President Lu?s Felipe
Bravo Mena denied that Alvarez Medina’s remarks reflected the policy of
the PAN, the governing party in Aguascalientes. Declaring that “we reject
and repudiate” Alvarez Medina’s remarks, Bravo Mena stated, “If any doubt
remains, I can say that I feel that this is absolutely reprehensible. We
do not believe in any type of discrimination and reject it.”
At
least four transgender persons in Valencia, in the Venezuelan state of
Carabobo, were reportedly detained without judicial order by Carabobo police,
according to Amnesty International. In July, police improperly detained
two transgender persons for eight days; in August, officers forced two
other members of Valencia’s transgender community to undress in the street,
beat them, and then held them for several days in August without permitting
them legal, medical, or family visits.
In
September, the Brazilian GLBT Pride Parade Association of S?o Paulo (Associa??o
da Parada do Orgulho GLBT de S?o Paulo) received a letter bomb, one day
after several gay and lesbian rights organizations and other human rights
NGOs received letters threatening to “exterminate” gays, Jews, blacks,
and persons from Brazil’s northeast. There were an estimated 169 bias-motivated
killings of sexual minorities in Brazil in 1999, according to a May report
issued by the Grupo Gay de Bahia; the states of Pernambuco and S?o Paulo
recorded the highest number of killings.
The Criminalization of Private Sexual
Conduct
Over
eighty countries continued to criminalize sexual activity between consenting
adults of the same sex, according to the IGLHRC. Elsewhere, national or
local legislation discriminated against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
persons by imposing different standards for the legal age of consent. In
addition, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons were often targeted
for arrest under provisions relating to “scandalous conduct,” “public decency,”
loitering, and similar charges.
In Saudi Arabia, where sodomy was
punishable by the death penalty, six men were executed for that crime in
July. In April, nine men were sentenced to up to 2,600 lashes each for
transvestism and “deviant sexual behavior”; because the sentence could
not be carried out in a single session without killing the men, it was
to be carried out at fifteen-day-intervals over a period of two years.
Sri
Lanka’s Press Council fined a gay rights activist in June for filing a
complaint against a newspaper that had published a letter urging that lesbians
be turned over to convicted rapists. The council declared that being a
lesbian was an “act of sadism” and that the activist, rather than the newspaper,
was guilty of promoting improper values.
At
this writing, the Romanian Senate was considering the abolition of article
200, which criminalized all sexual relations between consenting adults
of the same sex if “committed in public or if producing public scandal.”
The article was interpreted to include casual gestures of intimacy such
as holding hands and kissing. The measure passed the Chamber of Deputies,
the Romanian Parliament’s lower house, on June 28. The measures under consideration
did not address article 201, which continued to penalize “acts of sexual
perversion” if “committed in public or if producing public scandal” with
one to five years of imprisonment. A 1998 report jointly published by Human
Rights Watch and the IGLHRC documented the human rights abuses suffered
by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons in Romania as a result
of both provisions.
In
response to a 1993 decision of the European Court of Human Rights, Cyprus
amended its criminal laws in June to equalize the male age of consent,
setting it at eighteen. Before the amendment, the age of consent for men
engaging in heterosexual sex had been sixteen, while the age of consent
for men engaging in homosexual sex had been eighteen. The age of consent
for all women continued to be sixteen. Other European countries continued
to maintain unequal ages of consent. A notable example was Austria, where
the age of consent was fourteen for heterosexual males and eighteen for
men who had sexual relations with other men.
In
the United States, fifteen states retained laws prohibiting consensual
sexual relations between adults of the same sex, classifying these acts
as “sodomy,” “sexual misconduct,” “unnatural intercourse,” or “crimes against
nature.” A Texas court overturned the state’s sodomy law in June, while
the highest court of the neighboring state of Louisiana upheld the state’s
“crimes against nature” statute in July. A challenge to Massachusetts’
sodomy law was pending at this writing. Massachusetts was the only state
in New England to retain legislation prohibiting sexual relations between
consenting adults of the same sex.
In
August, former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and his adopted
brother Sukma Dermawan were both convicted of sodomy. Anwar was sentenced
to nine years in prison; Sukma received six years and four lashes with
a rattan cane. The prosecution of Anwar was widely viewed inside and outside
Malaysia as a case of political revenge against Anwar and his supporters,
who had grown increasingly critical of Prime Minister Mahathir in the months
prior to Anwar’s ouster and arrest. Anwar’s prosecution was also seen as
undermining the integrity of the Malaysian judiciary, which had already
been criticized widely for its lack of independence (see Malaysia chapter).
In
May, the Zimbabwe Supreme Court upheld former President Canaan Banana’s
1998 conviction for sodomy and indecent assault. Banana was quoted in 1999
as describing homosexuality as “deviant, abominable, and wrong according
to the scriptures and according to Zimbabwean culture.”
Even
in countries where the laws criminalizing private consensual conduct between
adults were not enforced, the existence of these laws provided the foundation
for attacks on sexual minorities. Men and women who identified as gay,
lesbian, or bisexual were attacked as immoral and putative criminals. Thus,
discrimination on the basis of this characterization was deemed justified.
The Military
In
September 1999, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the United
Kingdom’s ban on lesbian and gay service members violated the Convention
on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. In July 2000, the court awarded
four gay British service members compensation for their discharge.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
individuals were not barred from military service throughout much of the
rest of Europe. In remarks published in the French gay magazine T?tu
in May, Gen. Alain Raevel declared of France’s policy with regard to lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and transgender service members, “The army which we are
building is an extension of society . . . . We need to recruit boys and
girls for 400 different types of work. The fact that they may be homosexual
does not concern us.” Similarly, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
individuals served in Canada and Israel without official retaliation.
With
most of its allies either allowing homosexuals to serve openly or having
no policy on the subject they considered unrelated to job performance,
the United States found itself increasingly isolated in maintaining restrictions
on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender servicemembers. Turkey was the
only other member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that
continued to ban gays and lesbians from its armed forces. Six years after
the U.S. military codified and implemented its “don’t ask, don’t tell”
policy, its own investigations found that training on implementation of
the law was lagging and that anti_gay comments and harassment were pervasive.
Although the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was ostensibly intended to
allow a greater number of gay, lesbian, or bisexual service members to
remain in the military, discharges increased significantly after the policy’s
adoption. From 1994 to 1999, a total of 5,412 service members were separated
from the armed forces under the policy, with yearly discharge totals nearly
doubling, from 617 in 1994 to 1,149 in 1998. In 1999, the number of separations
dropped slightly, to 1,034; nevertheless, the discharge rate was still
73 percent higher than it was prior to the implementation of “don’t ask,
don’t tell.” Women were discharged at a disproportionately high rate. In
addition, the policy enabled male harassers to threaten to “out” women—and
end their careers—if the women rejected their advances or threatened to
report them.
Even
more disturbing than the increase in the number of service members separated
from the military under this policy was the continued failure of the U.S.
Department of Defense to hold anyone accountable for violations of the
policy. This lack of accountability spilled over to the murder case of
Barry Winchell, a gay army private at Fort Campbell in 1999. A U.S. Army
review, issued in July, of the circumstances surrounding the beating death
of Winchell on the base, concluded that no officers would be held responsible
for the killing and that there was no “climate” of homophobia on the base.
This conclusion contradicted a Defense Department inspector general report
issued in March which found that harassment based on perceived homosexuality
was widespread in the military. It also contradicted numerous reports that
Winchell was relentlessly taunted with anti-gay slurs in the months before
he was murdered.
Marriage and Discrimination Based
on Family Configuration
Barriers
to the legal recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families
continued to crumble slowly in a number of countries throughout the world.
In March, the European Parliament, the legislative body of the European
Union, called on its member states to “guarantee one-parent families, unmarried
couples, and same-sex couples rights equal to those enjoyed by traditional
couples and families.”
On
September 13, the Dutch Parliament passed legislation permitting marriage
between same-sex couples. The legislation, which was limited to Dutch citizens
and to those with residency permits, also provided for adoption rights
and access to the courts in cases of divorce.
The law was expected to go into effect
in early 2001, making the Netherlands the first country to allow same-sex
couples to marry.
Denmark, Greenland, Iceland, Norway,
and Sweden had provisions for registered partnerships, which did not provide
all of the benefits of civil marriage—often according limited or no adoption
rights, in particular—and were generally limited only to citizens or to
residents who had lived in the country for several years. France’s civil
pact of solidarity (pacte civile de solidarit?, PACS) and Hungary’s cohabitation
law had similar limitations. In June, Iceland expanded its registered partnership
law to permit same-sex couples to adopt each other’s biological children.
The law was also extended to cover Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians living
in Iceland; other foreigners were permitted to enter into registered partnerships
after they had resided in Iceland for two years.
A
comprehensive same-sex partnership bill introduced in Germany on July 5
would grant same-sex couples spousal rights in taxation, inheritance, immigration,
social security, child custody, health insurance, name changes, and other
areas. The plan was expected to pass the Bundestag, the lower house of
the German parliament; support in the Bundesrat, necessary to enact some
aspects of the proposal, was not assured.
The
U.S. state of Vermont enacted legislation in April providing for civil
unions between same-sex couples. The law was passed in response to a December
1999 decision of the Vermont Supreme Court holding that the state’s constitution
required Vermont “to extend to same-sex couples the common benefits and
protections that flow from marriage under Vermont law.” Although civil
unions carried virtually all of the state rights and responsibilities of
marriage, they were not recognized by the federal government or any other
U.S. state.
Brazil
granted same-sex partners the same rights as married couples with respect
to pensions, social security benefits, and taxation in June. This step
was achieved by decree: legislation to provide for civil unions between
persons of the same sex remained pending in the federal Chamber of Deputies.
In
November 1999, the Latvian Parliament’s Human Rights and Public Affairs
Commission rejected proposed legislation that would provide for registered
partnerships for same-sex couples. In August, Slovak Justice Minister Jan
Carnogursky announced that same-sex partnerships would not be registered
in Slovakia, reportedly stating that such partnerships would “degrade”
heterosexual families.
Israel’s
Interior Ministry announced in July that it allowed same-sex partners to
receive immigration benefits on equal terms with heterosexual common-law
spouses. Under the ministry’s policy, the noncitizen partner is granted
a renewable one-year tourist permit with employment authorization and may
request temporary resident status after four years; eventually, the partner
may seek permanent residence and then citizenship.
With
the addition of Israel, at least fourteen countries offered immigration
benefits to same-sex couples. Unlike most countries’ immigration policies
with regard to married heterosexual couples, these policies typically required
same-sex couples to demonstrate that they had had a committed relationship
for one to two years or more before they were eligible for any immigration
benefits. Australia required same-sex couples to show “a mutual commitment
to a shared life” for at least the twelve months preceding the date of
application.In New Zealand, same-sex couples had to have been “living in
a genuine and stable de facto relationship” for two years. The United Kingdom
required applicants to show that they had had “a relationship akin to marriage”
for two years or more. Belgium required a relationship of at least three
and a half years’ duration. The other countries that offered same-sex immigration
benefits were Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Namibia, the Netherlands,
Norway, South Africa, and Sweden.
Harassment and Discrimination Against
Students
Lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and transgender students in the United States and elsewhere
were frequently targeted for harassment by their peers.
Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth
were nearly three times as likely as their peers to have been involved
in at least one physical fight in school, three times as likely to have
been threatened or injured with a weapon at school, and nearly four times
as likely to skip school because they felt unsafe, according to the 1999
Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Moreover, the survey found that
those who identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual were more than twice
as likely to consider suicide and more than four times as likely to attempt
suicide than their peers.
Efforts
to provide a safe, supportive environment for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender students in the United States were hampered by discriminatory
legislation in several states. In addition, many students also faced hostile
school administrations. In two particularly prolonged disputes, school
districts in Utah and California attempted to deny students the right to
form clubs known as gay-straight alliances, in violation of the federal
Equal Access Act. Both school districts began to permit the student groups
to meet in September 2000, doing so only after the students who sought
to form the groups filed lawsuits against the districts. (See Children’s
Rights).