She has survived two murder attempts, her house was burnt down, she has received countless death threats, but nothing has stopped Susana Trimarco from looking for her missing daughter for the last 10 years.
An anti-gay group in Liberia distributed fliers over the weekend with a hit list of people who support gay rights, and one member of the group threatened to “get to them one by one.”
The fliers mark the latest development in an increasingly hostile national debate about gay rights in this country on Africa’s western coast.
Imagine — if you will, for a moment, hard as it may be — that you are under a collapsed building, fighting for your life. Think of the chaos, the pain and suffering, the confusion, the yearning to get out from under the heaps, the visceral need to break free. To survive. Imagine that you can hear the muffled voices of neighbors and rescue teams. Their voices are a balm, a relief, a sign from above that the immediate ordeal is ending.
As those people on the outside approach you, their words become clearer. You are nothing but ears now, a single sense honed in, dreaming of deliverance. “Thank you, Jesus,” you hear, and you concur. But the next words that come into focus do not brief relief or freedom or hope: “The president of the pedophiles is dead.” Another voice, cheered on by others: “Death to the masisi!” Death to the faggots.
read full article on HuffPo
Human Rights Watch recently released a report based off of 58 interviews done in detention centers in Afghanistan. Approximately 400 women are imprisoned there for ‘moral crimes’ - in other words, fleeing forced or abusive marriages or sex outside of marriage due to rape.
via HRW
Prosecutors in Chile are asking for murder charges in the death of a young gay man whose attackers brutally beat him and carved swastikas into his body.
Daniel Zamudio died Tuesday night, 25 days after he was attacked. The case has prompted a national debate in Chile over hate crimes, and his death prompted Chilean President Sebastian Pinera to say from Asia that his government won’t rest until a proposed anti-discrimination law is passed.
Four suspects are jailed, some with criminal records of attacks on gays. Prosecutors asked Wednesday for murder charges carrying life sentences. Gay activists want torture charges as well, saying the attackers beat him for hours, burned him with cigarettes and carved Nazi symbols into his body.
Liberian Writer Mae Azango Forced Into Hiding for Story on Female Genital Cutting
Ever since she published a front-page story about female genital cutting within a secret society of women, the Liberian journalist Mae Azango has lived in fear, and threats have sent her into hiding—but she says she will continue to speak out.
The death of a battered two-year-old girl in India has thrust human trafficking in the country into the spotlight. The girl, dubbed Falak by doctors, was taken to a New Delhi hospital in January by a 14-year-old girl who claimed to be her mother. Doctors say Falak had severe head injuries, broken arms, branded cheeks, and bite marks covering her body when she was admitted. Click to read more.
When I was 18, my parents threatened to kill me. And they meant it. If they had their way, I would probably be dead today.
The trouble started when I was 15. At the time, my family was living in the Austrian city of Linz, a world away from our native Pakistan, where I had grown up in a rural village in the shadow of the Kashmir mountains. I loved the freedoms of my new life in Europe—the T-shirts and jeans, the lipstick and eyeliner. My conservative parents didn’t.
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From IGLHRC:
The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission has today received reports from Iraq of a wave of targeted killings of individuals who are perceived to be gay or lesbian. According to Iraqi human rights activists, in early February 2012, an unidentified group posted death threats against “the adulterous individuals” in the predominantly Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad and Basra. The threats gave the individuals, whose names and ages were listed, four days to stop their behavior or else face the wrath of God, and were to be carried out by the Mujahedin. According to sources inside Iraq, as the result of this new surge of anti-gay violence close to 40 people have been kidnapped, brutally tortured and murdered. The Iraqi authorities have neither responded to this targeted violence nor have they publicly denounced it. It is widely believed that these atrocities are being committed by a group of the Shiite militia.
![ACLU cites a “sick culture of deputy-on-inmate violence” in LA County jails
On Wednesday, citing “a sick culture of deputy-on-inmate hyper-violence [that] has been flourishing for decades in the darkness of the L.A. County Jails,” the ACLU sued the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department seeking better training for deputies, and better oversight, investigation, and discipline in cases involving prisoner mistreatment. With 15,000 inmates—a majority of them awaiting trial, yet to be convicted of a crime—LA county hosts the nation’s largest jail system. In recent years, its guards have become known for a level of brutality that exceeds that of most maximum-security prisons—and sometimes crosses the line into torture.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lybge4BjkC1r7dpl7o1_500.png)
On Wednesday, citing “a sick culture of deputy-on-inmate hyper-violence [that] has been flourishing for decades in the darkness of the L.A. County Jails,” the ACLU sued the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department seeking better training for deputies, and better oversight, investigation, and discipline in cases involving prisoner mistreatment. With 15,000 inmates—a majority of them awaiting trial, yet to be convicted of a crime—LA county hosts the nation’s largest jail system. In recent years, its guards have become known for a level of brutality that exceeds that of most maximum-security prisons—and sometimes crosses the line into torture.
via washington post