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According to a report by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Association, ILGA, sexual and gender diversity is under threat from discriminatory laws in 64 nations. The findings suggest that “consensual relations between people of the same sex” continue to be criminalized in a third of the UN countries.
According to a report entitled ‘Our identities under arrest’ by the International Association of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transsexuals and Intersexuals, ILGA, sexual diversity is threatened in 64 countries around the world by laws that the entity denounces directly attack the groups LGBTIQ.
The ILGA Mundo research coordinator, Lucas Ramón Mendos, highlights that “in societies where non-normative behavior is read as evidence of non-heterosexuality, the way a person looks, dresses and speaks can be taken as an indication of a probable ‘ criminal activity ‘, which may be considered sufficient to justify an arrest. “
The report warns that arbitrary arrests and prosecutions of LGBTIQ people continued in 2021 and that “raids, street detentions, Internet ambushes by security forces and complaints from third parties in hostile environments are among the most common forms these arrests take. “
Confessions, ILGA denounces, are often extracted through torture or forced anal examinations that are used to create evidence of consensual sexual activity.
Luz Elena Aranda and Tuisina Ymania Brown, co-secretaries general of ILGA Mundo, assure that it is necessary to “shed light on how criminalizing laws affect millions of people and give a voice to those hurting ‘masses’ who have been silenced by prejudice and by those who they hold power. “
ILGA’s findings against sexual diversity
The Association denounces “abuse” and “mistreatment” by the police in “almost all documented instances”, it also assures that “the media can play an important role in the way in which States apply criminalizing laws.” Some people, depending on their “economic status”, manage to “evade the application of these laws,” says ILGA.
ILGA highlights that in 2016, in Cameroon “36 criminal investigations had been opened on ‘homosexuality’, resulting in 16 legal proceedings and 14 convictions.” In Morocco, in 2018, “170 people had been accused of” homosexuality “in 147 different cases”. In Sri Lanka there were, in 2016, 17 cases of ‘homosexuality’. Uzbekistan reported that 49 people were “deprived of their release for” sodomy “under article 120 of the Penal Code, and that nine of them had been arrested in 2020.”
In the investigation, at least 22 cases ended in “the imposition of corporal punishment, consisting mainly of whipping.” In Malaysia in 2019, a convicted person was sentenced to six lashes and in Saudi Arabia in 2005, a defendant was sentenced to “14,200 lashes in multiple sessions”.
All of these are officially registered cases, ILGA clarifies, and there are many that remain in the underreporting, since the people involved, on many occasions, “are extorted or forced to pay bribes to police officers in order to be released without being charged.”
“Trans and gender diverse” people are also affected by these discriminatory laws, “they are detained or prosecuted under laws that criminalize consensual sexual acts between adults of the same sex.”
With EFE
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