International News

[Kobi]

By DAVID CRARY
AP National Writer
January 17, 2014


While gay-rights activists celebrate gains in much of the world, their setbacks have been equally far-flung, and often sweeping in scope.

In Russia, a new law against "gay propaganda" has left gays and lesbians unsure of what public actions they can take without risking arrest. In India, gay-rights supporters were stunned by a recent high court ruling re-criminalizing gay sex. A newly signed law in Nigeria sets 10-year prison terms for joining or promoting any gay organization, while a pending bill in Uganda would impose life sentences for some types of gay sex.

In such countries, repression of gays is depicted by political leaders as a defense of traditional values. The measures often have broad support from religious leaders and the public, limiting the impact of criticism from outsiders. The upshot: A world likely to be bitterly divided over gay rights for years to come.

Globally, the contrasts are striking. Sixteen countries have legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, including Canada, South Africa, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and New Zealand as well as 10 European nations, and gay marriage is legal in parts of the United States and Mexico. Yet at least 76 countries retain laws criminalizing gay sex, including five where it's punishable by death.

Here's a look at major regions where the gay-rights movement
remains embattled or marginalized:

___


AFRICA:

According to human rights groups, more than two-thirds of African countries outlaw consensual same-sex acts, and discrimination and violence against gays, lesbians and transgender people is commonplace. While many of the laws date to the colonial era, opposition to homosexuality has gained increasing traction as a political tactic over the past two decades.

In 1995, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe — who's still in office — denounced gays and lesbians as "worse than pigs and dogs." He has since been joined by political and religious leaders continent-wide calling for punishments ranging from arrest to decapitation.

Africans promoting anti-gay legislation have expressed alarm about gains made by sexual minorities in the United States and Europe. They say laws such as the one newly signed in Nigeria can serve as a bulwark against Western pressure to enshrine gay rights.

In Liberia, for example, a religious group called the New Citizen Movement has spent the past year collecting signatures urging President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to sign a law banning same-sex marriage — even though, as in Nigeria, there has been no local movement to legalize it.

Rev. Cleopatra Watson, the group's executive director, said Nigeria's law was "a prayer answered" that could lead to the passage of similar legislation in other African countries.

From afar, Nigeria's new law has drawn harsh criticism from human rights groups, Western governments, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. However, support for anti-gay legislation presents few domestic political risks for African leaders, with polls suggesting most citizens believe sexual minorities are not entitled to basic civil rights.

In Cameroon, gay men are routinely sentenced to prison for gay sex, and in July a prominent gay activist, Eric Ohena Lembembe, was tortured and killed in an attack.

Gay-rights supporters nonetheless hold out hope for long-term change, suggesting that recent anti-gay rhetoric and laws were a response to an emergence of sustained gay-rights activism.

"If there weren't an increasingly effective movement, there would not be such a virulent backlash," said Neela Ghoshal, a researcher at Human Rights Watch.

___


ASIA:

The world's largest continent, Asia is a mixed bag when it comes to gay issues, due to vast differences in culture, religion and history. Though no Asian nation yet allows gay marriage, Thailand has a government-sponsored campaign to attract gay tourists, while China, Vietnam and Taiwan, among others, are increasingly accepting of gays and lesbians.

However, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Pakistan outlaw gay sex and, for the moment, so does India, following the recent decision of its high court to revive a ban on gay sex that had been quashed by a lower court in 2009. The high court said it's up to lawmakers, not judges, to change the law.

Amid the legal wrangling, gays and lesbians have gained a degree of acceptance in parts of India, especially in big cities where gay-pride parades are now a fixture. Many bars have gay nights, and some high-profile Bollywood films have dealt with gay issues.

In most of the country, however, being gay is seen as shameful, and many gays remain closeted.

Gautam Bhan, an Indian gay activist, said he was heartened by the vocal outcry against the high court ruling.

"There may be a backlash and reversals, but the long-term trend is toward openness, freedom and diversity," he said. "Eventually we will get past this law."

In majority-Muslim Malaysia, the government has shown no interest in promoting gay rights. Sodomy is punishable by 20 years in prison and whipping with a rattan cane, and censorship rules forbid the production and screening of films that might be considered supportive of gay rights.

Earlier this month, the Home Ministry declared a coalition of activist groups illegal, partly because they were deemed to have championed gay rights.

"Malaysia is at the worst end of the scale," said Grace Poore, a Malaysian who is Asia program coordinator for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. "They are targeting LGBT people because they are convenient scapegoats."

In heavily Muslim Indonesia, gay sex is not criminalized, and many young, urban Indonesians are relatively tolerant of homosexuality, but most citizens consider it unacceptable.

"Gay people are still living in fear," said King Oey, chairman of the country's main gay-rights group.

___


CARIBBEAN/LATIN AMERICA:

While the gay-rights movement has achieved major victories in some South American countries, gays remain targets of violence and harassment in parts of Central America and the Caribbean.

In Honduras, activists report a serious problem of violence against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people. According to Human Rights Watch, more than 90 members of the LGBT community were killed between 2009 and 2012.

Several countries in the English-speaking Caribbean still have colonial-era laws criminalizing sex between men, including Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada, St. Lucia and Dominica. Gays in Jamaica say they suffer frequent discrimination and abuse, and have little recourse because of widespread anti-gay stigma.

"Homophobia is expected, celebrated, culturally ingrained," said Dane Lewis, leader of the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All Sexuals and Gays.

Anti-gay sentiment is fueled by some church leaders who accuse gays of flaunting their behavior to "recruit" youngsters, and some stars of Jamaican dancehall music use gay-bashing lyrics to rouse concertgoers.

For gay tourists, the Caribbean is generally safe, but not always. Masked gunmen broke into a vacation cottage in St. Lucia in 2011 and beat three gay Americans while making anti-gay slurs. In 2006, two gay men from New York were assaulted outside a bar in Dutch St. Maarten; one of the victims sustained brain damage.

In Cuba, homosexuality was frowned on in the early decades after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution. Gays were commonly harassed by police, sent to work camps or dismissed from government jobs. Some fled into exile.

More recently, Castro apologized for the persecution. His niece, Mariela Castro, the daughter of current President Raul Castro, is a leading activist for LGBT rights on the island and has lobbied, so far unsuccessfully, for same-sex marriage.

___


EASTERN EUROPE:

Russia's law banning "gay propaganda" has drawn extensive criticism abroad, but seems to be widely accepted at home — perhaps not surprising in a country where a popular news anchorman recently said homosexuals' hearts should be buried or burned.

The law was signed in June by President Vladimir Putin after sailing through Parliament. It levies heavy fines on anyone convicted of propagandizing "nontraditional sexual relations" among minors.

Putin, in his third term, has been catering to an increasingly conservative constituency, repeating catch-phrases about Russia's traditional values and condemning the West for trends that threaten to destroy them, including homosexuality.

That language has struck a chord in much of Russia, where the rising influence of the Orthodox Church and widespread ignorance about gays has contributed to acceptance of the propaganda law. Polls indicate that the vast majority of Russians don't have a single gay acquaintance and oppose expansion of gay rights.

As a result, a growing cadre of public figures shows no hesitation to demonize gays.

State television anchor Dmitry Kiselyov told audiences that homosexuals should be banned from donating blood or organs, saying that they should be burned or buried instead. Kiselyov later was appointed by Putin to head Russia's largest news agency.

Ivan Okhlobystin, a popular actor and former priest, told his fans that he would gladly "burn them (gays) alive," calling them "a real danger to my children."

Gays face various problems in many other parts of Eastern Europe, including the Balkans, a traditionally conservative region where anti-gay violence has been on the rise. Assaults and harassment have coincided with the strengthening of right-wing groups amid persistent economic problems.

Conservative groups in Croatia, backed by the Roman Catholic Church, forced a referendum in December to define marriage as a union of a man and a woman only. Voters overwhelmingly supported the measure, dealing a blow to the liberal government and triggering criticism from the European Union, which had just admitted Croatia.

In Serbia, a gay pride march in 2010 resulted in daylong violence, with more than 100 people injured. Planned marches in subsequent years were canceled because of extremist threats.

Montenegro held its first pride event last year in the coastal town of Budva. Hundreds of police officers fought right-wing extremists who sought to disrupt the gathering, and participants were eventually evacuated in boats.

___


MIDDLE EAST:

Across most of the Middle East, homosexual relations are taboo, though not all nations choose to prosecute homosexuals and punishments vary.

The pervasiveness of religion in everyday life, along with strict cultural norms, plays a major factor in how Middle Eastern societies view homosexuality. The common Arabic word used to refer to gays is derogatory and its actual meaning translates as "abnormal" or "queer."

Same-sex relations are punishable by death in the Muslim-majority nations of Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen.

In Yemen, more than 30 people suspected of being of gay were killed by unidentified assailants in the past two years, many in southern provinces where al-Qaida is active. Iraq also has experienced a surge of killings of gays.

In Egypt, consensual same-sex relations are not explicitly prohibited, but other laws — those prohibiting "debauchery" or "shameless public acts" — have been used to imprison gay men.

Public acceptance of gays in Israel and Lebanon is higher than the rest of the region, according to a Pew Research Center study released last year. Lebanon and Israel promote gay tourism, and publisher Nabil Mroueh says his company in Beirut, Lebanon's capital, has translated nearly a dozen English books about homosexuality into Arabic.

Among most Palestinians, homosexuality is generally disdained, and gays tend to be secretive about their social lives. In the West Bank, a 1951 Jordanian law banning homosexual acts remains in effect, as does a ban in Gaza passed by British authorities in 1936.

In Israel, by contrast, gays serve openly in the military and in parliament, and many popular artists and entertainers are gay.

Assessing the region as a whole, activists take heart from modest changes — even it's simply the inclusion of gay rights in broader discussions about human rights in the Middle East.

"The situation doesn't look good," said Hossein Alizadeh, a Middle East specialist with the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. "But that doesn't mean we stop working."

___

[*Anya*]

The Huffington Post | By Cavan Sieczkowski
Posted: 01/27/2014 9:37 am EST | Updated: 01/27/2014 1:59 pm EST

The mayor of Sochi is under the impression that there are no gay people in his city.

Anatoly Pakhomov spoke with the BBC ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics and discussed how gay people would be treated in the Russian region with the country's "homosexual propaganda" law in place. Pakhomov said gays are welcome at the Games in spite of this, so long as they "respect the laws of the Russian Federation and [don't] impose their habits on others."

He claimed gay people do not have to hide their sexuality in Sochi.

"No, we just say that it is your business, it's your life. But it's not accepted here in the Caucasus where we live. We do not have them in our city," he said. He later admitted that he isn't absolutely certain there are no gay people in Sochi. "I am not sure, but I don't bloody know them."

There are at least two gay clubs in the city, Russia's RT noted. Russian social networks also point to multiple lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities in the area.

Nikolay Alekseyev, a Russian gay rights activist, compared Pakhomov's comments to those of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who once reportedly said, "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals." Alekseyev said, per RT, gay people are present “in any city, any country, any culture and any historical epoch."

Russia's anti-gay law makes it illegal to disseminate information about "nontraditional sexual relations" or "relations not conducive to procreation" to minors, the Associated Press reported. Individuals found in violation of the law could face fines up to 5,000 rubles ($156) or up to 1 million rubles ($31,000) for media organizations. Tourists have already reportedly been detained under this law.

Various celebrities and political figures have in turn backed a boycott of the Sochi Games.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...ef=mostpopular

[Kobi]

Child prostitution has been defined by the UN as "the act of engaging or offering the services of a child to perform sexual acts for money or other consideration with that person or any other person".

By 1990, international awareness of the commercial sexual exploitation and the sale of children had grown to such a level that the United Nations Commission on Human Rights decided to appoint a Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.

Here is a list of the five countries with the highest rates of child prostitution.

Sri Lanka

The number of crimes against children in Sri Lanka increased by 64% in 2012 , compared to the previous year, a Unicef report said.

"According to Unicef and ILO [International Labour Organisation] there are 40,000 child prostitutes in Sri Lanka and 6.4% of the country's child population gets pregnant," said United National Party MP Rosy Senanayake.

Although girls are sexually exploited both in the sex industry and by sex tourists, many NGOs believe that it is boys who face greater abuse by foreign sex offenders, NGO Ecpact (Ending Child Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking) said.

In Sri Lanka, the plantation sector has been identified as a notorious area for trafficking of children into the worst forms of child labour, particularly child domestic work and commercial sexual exploitation, according to ILO.

The National Child Protection Authority issued a warning in 2011 of an increase in child sexual exploitation, related to the rapid growth of tourism.



Thailand

Child prostitution in Thailand involved 800,000 children under the age of sixteen in 2004.

According to Ecpat, due to the hidden nature of child sexual abuse reliable figures are hard to compile and cases difficult to document. Available figures estimate that currently some 30,000 to 40,000 children, not including foreign children, are exploited as prostitutes.

Sexual exploitation of children in Thailand, as in many other countries, is tremendously influenced by tourism.

"In Pattaya [ Thailand], if there were fewer foreign people coming in to buy sex, then the problem would be easier to manage," Palissorn Noja, who runs Pattaya's Anti-Human Trafficking and Child Abuse Centre, told the Huffington Post.

"They [pedophiles] have an entire worldwide network of people looking for children through human trafficking. And sex tourism makes it harder to stop."

The photographic documentary, "Underage" by photographer Ohm Phanphiroj shows the life of thousands of underage male prostitutes in Thailand.

"The film aims at exposing the rotten problem about sexual exploitation against minors and mistreatment towards children," the photographer said in a statement.
Child Prostitution Brazil
Underage prostitutes in Brazil

Brazil

Sex trafficking is an appalling truth to many young people in Brazil, where there are half-a-million child sex workers, according to the National Forum for the Prevention of Child Labour.

Children as young as 12 are selling themselves for sex for as little as 80p in Brazil, according to an investigation by Sky News.

The shocking revelation comes as international footballers join a campaign warning fans travelling to Brazil for the World Cup to exploit children.

According to the documentary "Brazil- Children for sale", hundreds of children who live in the slums leave their homes in search of tourists, who are "eager for easy and cheap bodies", to earn money and escape poverty.

Unemployment and poverty is extremely high in Brazil and children are sometimes encouraged by their parents to start prostituting.
Child Prostitution
FBI agent leading away a suspect arrested in the "Operation Cross Country II" in 2008.

United States

According to Crimes Against Children research Centre (CCRC), the numbers of juvenile prostitutes within the United States range from 1,400 to 2.4 million, although most fall between 300,000 and 600,000.

16 children as young as 13 were rescued from the sex trade in a law enforcement operation that targeted suspected pimps who brought the victims to New Jersey for Super Bowl weekend, in February 2014.

"Prostituted children remain the orphans of America's justice system. They are either ignored or, when they do come in contact with law enforcement, harassed, arrested, and incarcerated while the adults who exploit them - the pimp and their customers - largely escape punishment," said Julian Sher, author of the book Somebody's Daughter: The Hidden Story of America's Prostituted Children and the Battle to Save Them.



Canada

Inuit babies and children are being sold by their families and are "prostituted out by a parent, family member or domestic partner", according to a recent report by Canadian Department of Justice.

The sexual exploitation of children is a deeply–rooted reality in too many Canadian homes, families and communities, according to a 2011 report by a Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights.

The committee, which started the investigation in 2009, heard that in one year there were almost 9,000 reported sexual assaults against children
(many of whom belong to aboriginal communities) in Canada. The overwhelming majority of sexual abuse goes unreported.

Social service organisations have estimated the number of trafficked Canadians to be as high as 16,000 a year, but the number of children trafficked within Canada from place to place remains uncertain due to the clandestine nature of the activity, Unicef Canada said in a statement in 2009.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/top-five-co...tution-1435448

[LeftWriteFemme]

[MsTinkerbelly]

Lord have mercy

A Maylasian Airlines flight has crashed near the Russian border, presumably killing all 290+ people on board.

They are being careful to not say (at least on CNN) that it was a rocket, or a malfunction, but several planes have gone down in that area in the last few weeks via rocket fire.

[MsTinkerbelly]

The anti-gay bill signed into law earlier this year was ruled illegal and was invalidated yesterday.

I'm on my ipad and have trouble copying and posting, so if someone wants to find it, go to LBGTQ nation for the story.

[*Anya*]

By James Gallagher

Health editor, BBC News website

9/5/14

William Pooley, 29, has been treated in a special isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London.

Mr Pooley was given the experimental drug ZMapp and has praised the "world class" care at the hospital.

About half of the 3,000 people infected in the outbreak, which started in Guinea, have died.

The pace of the outbreak has been accelerating with more than 40% of cases in the past three weeks.

Mr Pooley was working as a volunteer nurse in one of the worst affected countries, Sierra Leone, when he contracted the virus.

He is unsure when he became infected, but started feeling sick and needed a blood test.

He recalled the moment his fears were confirmed: "I was woken early that evening by one of the World Health Organization doctors and immediately I knew it was bad news.

"I was worried that I was going to die, I was worried about my family and I was scared."

'Very lucky'

Mr Pooley has been treated at a specialist isolation unit at London's Royal Free Hospital
He was flown back to the UK by the RAF on Sunday 24 August.

Mr Pooley was in the earlier stages of the disease. He had a high temperature but was not bleeding.

He said: "I was very lucky in several ways; firstly in the standard of care I received, which is a world apart from what people are receiving in West Africa at the moment.

"And my symptoms never progressed to the worst stage of the disease, I've seen people dying horrible deaths, I had some unpleasant symptoms, but nothing compared to the worst of the disease."

He was treated with the experimental Ebola drug ZMapp, a 12-hour infusion of antibodies, that has been given to only six other patients.

It is not clear if the infusion helped, but levels of the virus in his bloodstream did fall significantly after the treatment.

The global response to the disease has been "lethally inadequate", according to the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Estimates suggest up to 20,000 people will be infected during this outbreak.

Overall, 51% of those infected have died - ranging from 41% in Sierra Leone to 66% in Guinea.

Mr Pooley praised the efforts of other people working on the ground.

"It's just heroic what they're doing, they know what might be facing them," he said.

"In the face of quite likely a horrible death, they're continuing to work all day, every day helping sick people, it's amazing."

He said it had felt "natural" to go and help in West Africa, that he had no regrets and was "more committed than ever to nursing".

Mr Pooley is heading back to Eyke in Suffolk with his family this afternoon.

"They incinerated my passport, so my mum will be pleased to know I can't go anywhere," he added.