(Jamaica Observer) Maurice Tomlinson, a Jamaican man who recently married a Canadian policeman, claims lesbians in Jamaica are gang raped. Tomlinson is a leading gay rights activist and according to a report on the website www.trust.org, claims that anti-gay sentiments here lead to attacks on gay men and women. “In Jamaican culture women are generally expected to be quiet about harassment and abuse,” Tomlinson said.
Despite police reports that 99 per cent of gay killings are committed by jilted lovers, Tomlinson said gays are attacked by angry mobs. The report wrongfully claims that under Jamaican law it is legal to punish any act of physical intimacy between men with jail and the possibility of 10-years hard labour. The buggery law outlaws anal penetration but does not specify gender. There is no anti gay law in Jamaica.
Tomlinson was in London this week to receive the inaugural David Kato award for gay human rights activism. “When we find out about these cases (involving gay women), they are usually so horrible that they rise up to the level of having to be reported,” he said. “There was one instance where a gang of four men raped a lesbian because they said she was ‘taking over all good looking women,” Tomlinson said. “They cut her genitals, so she could ‘better take men’ because ‘that is why she was a lesbian’, they said.
Despite reports of an increase in male prostitutes converging on the unofficial red light district of Nw Kingston the reports claims Jamaica is one of the most dangerous places in the world for gay people. The report also made reference to former PM Bruce Golding’s ‘Not in my cabinet’ statement to the British media and praised Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller’s promise to review the buggery law. “I think she (Simpson-Miller) genuinely does not have a problem with LGBT people and does not pry to people’s bedrooms,” Tomlinson said.
The report also claims that ‘homophobia still permeates almost every aspect of the Caribbean island’s society’. “People go to church where they listen to pastors preaching that homophobia causes diseases, then they turn on the radio and hear popular Jamaican musicians Buju Banton and Beenie Man using anti-gay lyrics,” the report stated.
