Social cleansing in Bangalore

[Posted by Scott Long, ap-rainbow, 19 November 2008.]

India: Stop ‘Social Cleansing’ in Bangalore
Illegal Mass Evictions Against a Transgender Community

(New York, November 18, 2008) – Police in Bangalore forced about 100 hijras (working-class transgender people) from their homes on November 10, 2008, suggesting a spreading pattern of prejudice-driven violence and abuse in the city, Human Rights Watch said today in letters to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India and local authorities. Following the arrests on October 20 and 21 of more than three dozen hijras and human rights defenders, the incident points to an organized police campaign of social cleansing in Bangalore.

The latest incident came immediately after several national newspapers reported that Bangalore police had captured a “gang” of hijras who kidnapped children, castrated them, and forced them into sex work. Police used these stories to justify the mass evictions of hijras from their homes.

“Of course, all reports of child abuse should be thoroughly investigated,” said Dipika Nath, researcher in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights program at Human Rights Watch. “But authorities are also responsible for sorting out fact from prejudice – and there is no excuse for targeting an entire community for retaliation.”

Accounts of hijras kidnapping children and changing their sex are a common folk myth in many parts of India. These reports came amid an apparent campaign by Bangalore authorities against hijras in the city. The Mumbai-based Daily News and Analysis quoted Bangalore’s Deputy Commissioner of Police (South) on October 20 as calling for a “drive against the city’s eunuch menace.” “Eunuch” is a widely used derogatory term for hijras.

On the same day, police arrested five hijras in Bangalore and charged them with “extortion,” beating and sexually abusing them in the process. They also arrested 41 human rights defenders – including hijras, Dalits, women’s rights and sex worker activists, and trade union activists – who came to their defense. When challenged on their unconstitutional actions, the police told some of the activists that they had orders from higher up to round up hijras in Bangalore.

Next, on November 8 and 9, five major newspapers in India, including two national dailies, carried news items about Bangalore police breaking up a “gang” of hijras. The gang allegedly kidnapped children, performed “sex change” operations on them, and forced them to become sex workers. The reports also claimed that the accused hijras were associated with Sangama, a Bangalore-based organization that works to defend the rights of sexual minorities. Sangama members were among the protesters against police actions on October 20-21. Sangama has denied that the two accused hijras are associated with the organization.

Immediately after these reports appeared, on November 9, the police inspector of Amrutahalli police station in Bangalore issued a notice to about 40 homeowners in the Dasarahalli neighborhood – known for having a substantial hijra population – requiring them to evict all hijras who rented apartments or rooms from them. More than 100 hijras rented rooms there, and most found themselves on the streets. Several lost their security deposits, and some lost all their belongings. One hijra told newspapers and local activists that she could not even find an autorickshaw driver to give her a ride because hijras had been labeled kidnappers.

Police claimed the hijras conducted “immoral activities” in their houses, and the eviction notice was, according to newspaper reports, also accompanied by verbal threats to the homeowners. Some of the homeowners told newspapers that they had never had trouble with their hijra tenants, but they were afraid to disobey the arbitrary command.

Evicted hijras told newspapers and local sexual rights activists that the police accusations that they engaged in “immoral activities” were unfounded, and that the kidnapping case brought against two hijras was being used as a pretext for the mass evictions. Police deny responsibility for the evictions, claiming the homeowners evicted their hijra tenants because of the charges of kidnapping in the press. However, The Hindu, a leading national daily, reported that it had a copy of the notice the police personally served to the homeowners.

Campaign for Sexworkers and Sexual Minorities Rights (CSMR), a coalition of activists and human rights organizations, has protested the police’s arbitrary violation of hijras’ fundamental right to reside in the city. It has also demanded that the eviction notice be withdrawn.

“The near-absolute legal and political disenfranchisement of hijras in most parts of India relies in part on myths about criminal and antisocial behavior as communal characteristics,” said Nath. “Because of prevailing myths that hijras habitually kidnap young boys, reports of the arrest of two hijras on criminal charges are a convenient excuse to target the entire community without arousing public outcry.”

Click HERE to read the letter from Human Rights Watch to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Click HERE for more of Human Rights Watch’s work on India.

For more information, please contact:

• In New York, Dipika Nath (English, Hindi): +1-212-216-1867; or +1-206-605-4865 (mobile)
• In New York, Scott Long (English): +1-212-216-1297; or +1-646-641-5655 (mobile)
• In Mumbai, Meenakshi Ganguly (Bengali, English, Hindi): +91-98-200-36032 (mobile)

Prejudice, the real menace

[Referred from a post by Aditya Bondyopadhyay, ap-rainbow, 12 November 2008.]

Which is the real menace?

People whose bodies and sexualities put them beyond the pale of social norms are without rights in the eyes of Indian police

Dipika Nath

Dipika Nath has a doctoral degree in feminist studies and works as a researcher in the LGBT rights programme at Human Rights Watch.

Under rightwing and leftwing governments alike, India has prided itself on its status as the world's largest democracy. Civic freedoms, an independent judiciary, and basic political rights for citizens are part of that promise. But in India and far too many other democracies, rights that are arguably even more basic – to be who you are, to live freely in your body, even to call yourself a citizen if society despises you – are a different matter.

Early on October 20, Bangalore police arrested five hijras – a traditional cultural identity for working-class transgender people who, born as men, identify as women. Such arrests are sadly routine. Throughout India, many hijras cannot get identity papers: the state will not let them change their legal sex and denies them IDs if their appearance does not match their birth gender. As a result, they often cannot work, go to school, find jobs, vote, or even move around freely. Social prejudice against "men" or "women" who are not "masculine" or "feminine" enough makes them ready victims of violence.

Denied viable opportunities for work, hijras are forced to resort to begging or demanding goodwill funds during marriage or birth celebrations. That way of life has been part of several regional Indian cultures, where blessings of a hijra were considered a good omen. But as these traditions erode, many hijras have had to survive as street beggars or sex workers. In both cases, police slap them with fines, jail them, sometimes physically or sexually abuse them.

But on October 20, the five hijras, who were apparently begging but not soliciting sex, were charged with "extortion" – a crime which, unlike begging, allowed the police to hold them without bail.

In India's vibrant civil society, a growing number of NGOs support the sexually – as well as politically and economically – disenfranchised. A crisis intervention team from the Bangalore-based organisation Sangama, which works to protect and advance the rights of sexual minorities, arrived at the police station to help. The group is trained to assist hijras in fending off barrages of minor charges. But this time, the police jailed the five members of the crisis intervention team as well, beating and sexually abusing some of them.

The situation escalated after about 150 activists from a wide range of social movements – lesbian and gay, hijras, feminists, trade union leaders, Dalit activists – gathered outside the station for a peaceful protest. The police invited six of them into the station, ostensibly for a dialogue, then arrested them. Two women among them were sexually assaulted, one of them kicked and beaten by a police inspector when she demanded he not touch her breasts. However, none of the six were charged.

In conversations with Human Rights Watch, one of the activists said that this points towards the distinct class prejudice at work in such instances of abuse. "The police obviously thought that we were the 'leaders' of the organisation, so they didn't charge us whereas they thought the others were just workers and they could treat them worse."

Meanwhile, police attacked the protesters outside the station, charging them with batons. They rounded up 31 of them, beat them, threw them into a police van, and drove them away. They were held without food or water for almost 18 hours. At the height of the police violence, 60 police personnel stood guard over the 31 activists.

Eventually, the hijras and the human rights defenders were freed, though many still face charges that include "unlawful assembly" and "rioting." The press reported – and police confirmed to the activists they arrested – that this was the start of a drive by local authorities to contain what they called the "eunuch menace", citing public complaints against hijras as justification. A police official told one jailed activist who demanded an end to the violence and the human rights abuses: "Yes, this is human rights violations, so what? Stop us if you can."

The poor and disempowered are no "menace". But prejudice is. Indian democracy is still riven, and endangered, by deep divisions. These shocking arrests show how people whose bodies and sexualities put them beyond the pale of social norms are effectively without rights in the eyes of the police.

The violence also shows, though, how anyone who defends sexual rights can also become a target of abuse, arrest, and, in some cases, sexual violence.

The High Court in Delhi is in the last stages of deciding a challenge to Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. This law, a British colonial invention, criminalises "carnal intercourse against the order of nature". Human rights activists want it reinterpreted to end the criminalisation of adult, consensual homosexual conduct.

Casting off that regressive colonial burden is crucial. But the events in Bangalore – the splashy city that is the showcase of India's capitalist modernisation – reveal other burdens, some modified from the colonial era, that still weigh on the country.

One is the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act of 1956, passed following independent India's ratification of a 1950 international convention, which can be traced back to the colonial-era Contagious Diseases Act. The 1956 law gives police wide leeway to arrest and abuse sex workers, and it has been used against HIV outreach workers and others who behave in ways authorities simply do not like. Contemporary anti-begging laws are a throwback on colonial "vagrancy" laws, which gave colonial officials power to control the "natives". Now they serve to keep an underclass in subjection and fear.

More crucially, though, the divisions of poverty still weigh on the country. And poverty and the effects of prejudice reinforce and intensify each other. People who already face discrimination and hatred, including many sexual minorities, remain shut out from the promise of prosperity from the establishment of call centres and high-tech firms in Bangalore. What prosperity has resulted has not trickled down to the lower classes among the despised and disenfranchised.

The Bangalore violence is a ringing challenge to Indian authorities, a reminder that democratic institutions are no cause for self-congratulation if their doors are closed to many who need them. "Stop us if you can," the police told the human rights defenders they arrested and abused. India's democracy must address all the intersecting forms of economic, political, and prejudicial exclusion that lead to such a slap in its face–otherwise the violence will not stop.

Violence against LGBT in Kyrgyzstan

[Posted by Scott Long on ap-rainbow Yahoo! Group, 06 October 2008]

Kyrgyzstan: Protect Lesbians and Transgender Men From Abuse
European Institutions Should Help End the Violence

(Bishkek, October 6, 2008) – Lesbian and bisexual women and transgender men face violent abuse, including rape, in Kyrgyzstan, both in family settings and from strangers on the street, Human Rights Watch said in a report issued today. The report calls on the Kyrgyz government to acknowledge the problem and protect the victims, and on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and other European institutions to step up their response to violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Based on detailed interviews, the 49-page report, “These Everyday Humiliations: Violence Against Lesbians, Bisexual Women, and Transgender Men in Kyrgyzstan,” tells of beatings, forced marriages, and physical and psychological abuse faced by lesbian and bisexual women and transgender men. The government refuses to protect them or to confront the atmosphere of prejudice in which the attacks take place.

“No one should have to confront brutality or danger because of who they are or whom they love,” said Boris Dittrich, advocacy director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. “It is time for the government to protect these communities instead of denying they exist.”

The report notes that the OSCE, which conducts programs in Kyrgyzstan, works to combat hate crimes and identity-based violence throughout Europe. However, the United States and the Holy See have blocked including sexual orientation in its mandate.

Several people interviewed for the report said they had been raped to punish them for not conforming to gender norms, or to “cure” them of their difference. One lesbian told how, when she was 15, her girlfriend’s brothers raped her brutally, saying: “This is your punishment for being this way and hanging around our sister.”

Another woman told Human Rights Watch that an acquaintance locked her in a room and allowed several men to rape her. The men promised the acquaintance “that they would help her to ‘cure’ me” of being a lesbian, she said.

Pervasive social prejudice in the Central Asian country leaves the victims with little hope of government protection, the report says. The police themselves sometimes abuse lesbian and bisexual women and transgender men. Police have also raided and harassed organizations that defend the basic rights of these groups.

In all of Kyrgyzstan, only one shelter for survivors of domestic violence – run by a nongovernmental organization – offers specific services for lesbians or transgender people.

A sweeping law passed in 2003 should protect all victims of domestic violence. However, the report found that much more needs to be done to carry out the law, including training criminal justice officials to investigate domestic violence and educating the general public about the law’s provisions.

The government has ignored the need to address issues of sexual orientation or gender identity. In some cases, officials have actually endorsed hatred and violence. In 2005, a Ministry of Interior official said of lesbians and gay men at a human rights roundtable: “I would also beat them. Let’s say I walk in a park with my son. And there are two guys walking holding each other’s hands. I would beat them up too.”

While Kyrgyzstan has made efforts to respond to violence against women overall, some groups are still ignored or excluded. Human Rights Watch called on Kyrgyz authorities to improve direct services for lesbians and transgender men; to train state officials in issues of sexual orientation and gender identity; to educate the public about domestic violence and sexual-rights issues, and to create measures for legal identity change to respect and recognize each person’s self-defined gender identity.

Human Rights Watch also urged the OSCE to address human rights issues, including discrimination and violence against lesbians and transgender men, in its trainings for police and other programs in Kyrgyzstan.

“Programs to stop violence will not work unless they reach everyone who is vulnerable,” Dittrich said. “Europe should not join Kyrgyzstan’s government in turning a blind eye.”

“These Everyday Humiliations: Violence Against Lesbians, Bisexual Women, and Transgender Men in Kyrgyzstan” is available here.

For more information, please contact:

In Warsaw, Boris Dittrich (English, Dutch, German): +1-917-535-3863 (mobile)
In New York, Scott Long (English): +1-212-216-1297; or +1-646-641-5655 (mobile)
In the United States, for the Kyrgyzstan lesbian and transgender group Labrys, Anna Kirey (English, Russian, Kyrgyz): +1-212-920-0364

LGBT groups gain consultative status in UN

United Nations: Defeat for Discrimination, Victory for Inclusion
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Groups Gain Consultative Status

(New York, July 23, 2008) – The decision by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) granting consultative status to two groups that work on sexual orientation and gender identity is a victory in the ongoing struggle for inclusion at the UN, a coalition of six human rights organizations said today. The two groups approved on July 21 and 22, 2008 are COC Netherlands and the State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals of Spain (FELGTB), national organizations representing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the Netherlands and Spain.

“COC Netherlands is delighted about obtaining consultative status with the UN,” said Björn van Roozendaal, COC international advocacy officer. “It means we can join the efforts at the UN to address human rights violations against people with an alternative sexual orientation or gender identity.”

“Spanish-speaking LGBT voices will be heard in UN meetings where human rights questions are debated,” said David Montero, FELGTB Spain’s officer for international issues and human rights. “We thank all who have contributed to this exciting outcome, and especially Spain’s UN mission for their support.”

Consultative status is a key means for civil society to access the UN system. It allows nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to deliver oral and written reports at UN meetings, and to organize events on UN premises. With it, these groups can share their information and analysis of the abuses and discrimination LGBT people confront around the world.

ECOSOC, consisting of 54 member states of the UN, grants consultative status to NGOs after reviewing recommendations made by its subsidiary body – the NGO Committee – which screens the applications.

COC Netherlands and FELGTB Spain join approximately 3,000 other NGOs with consultative status at the UN. However, only a handful of LGBT groups have received the status. In recent years, some states have treated LGBT groups’ applications with intense hostility, and ECOSOC has only granted such groups consultative status after first overturning negative recommendations from its NGO Committee. ECOSOC approved the Danish National Association for Gay and Lesbians, the European Region of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA-Europe), and the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany in December 2006. The Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Québec and the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights gained consultative status in July 2007.

The US-based International Wages Due Lesbians and Australian-based Coalition of Activist Lesbians have had consultative status at the UN for more than a decade.

At its January session, the committee tied 7-7 on consultative status for FELGTB Spain, meaning the motion to recommend it failed, but at the following session in June it voted 7-6 to grant the status for COC Netherlands. At the July session in New York, ECOSOC adopted by consensus the recommendation on COC Netherlands and voted to overturn the recommendation not to grant status to FELGTB Spain.

“ECOSOC has recognized the place of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people in the work of the United Nations,” said John Fisher from ARC International, which supported the groups’ advocacy efforts. “In this 60th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is particularly important to affirm the core principle that all human beings are entitled to the full enjoyment of all human rights, without discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Yesterday’s vote sends a clear message that discrimination has no place in the UN system, and that sexual orientation and gender identity issues can, and must, be addressed.”

“Many states that harass or persecute LGBT people at home also try to shut down scrutiny of their records internationally,” said Boris Dittrich, advocacy director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Program at Human Rights Watch. “This vote ensures that two more voices will be raised to defend basic human rights at the UN.”

“States from all five regions voted to overturn the negative recommendation from the NGO Committee in regards to FELGTB Spain,” said Philipp Braun, co-secretary general of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA). “We would like the committee to acknowledge the repeated message sent by ECOSOC that it should recommend LGBT groups. We also congratulate our members COC and FELGTB on their victory.”

“Many states claim that ECOSOC’s votes need to follow the recommendations of its NGO Committee; the view of those who voted in favor of the LGBT groups, however, is that this cannot be done at the price of discriminating against anyone, including LGBT voices,” noted Adrian Coman from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), who participated in monitoring the ECOSOC and NGO Committee meetings.

The NGO Committee is due to review a number of additional applications from LGBT groups at its next two sessions in January and May 2009.

For more of Human Rights Watch’s work on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender rights: http://www.hrw.org/doc/?t=lgbt

For more information, please contact:

• In Amsterdam, Björn van Roozendaal (COC Netherlands): +31-622-55-83-00; or bvanroozendaal@coc.nl
• In Madrid, David Montero (FELGTB Spain): +34-67-452-541; or areainternacional@felgt.org
• In Geneva, John Fisher (ARC International): +41-79-508-3968; or john@arc-international.net
• In New York, Hossein Alizadeh (IGLHRC): +1-212-430-6016; or halizadeh@iglhrc.org
• In Brussels, Stephen Barris (ILGA): +32-2-502-2471; or stephenbarris@ilga.org
• In New York, Boris Dittrich (Human Rights Watch): +1-212-216-1280; or boris.dittrich@hrw.org

11 questions 15 minutes for the future

Dear activists and colleagues,

Here is an important opportunity to tell funders—and a broader public—about the goals, challenges, and opportunities of your movement.

All it will take is 15 minutes of your time to answer 11 questions.

The Arcus Foundation, a US-based funder, is organizing a major meeting of donors in September to discuss new plans and programs for international sexual rights and LGBT funding. They have asked Human Rights Watch to conduct an informal survey of sexual rights and LGBT activists and organizations worldwide to identify in very broad terms

• some of the key goals for change in different regions;
• the challenges as well as future opportunities activists see for making those changes real.

Your answers will help produce a short report that will be distributed to the donor meeting—and will also be made publicly available to you, for comment and response. The idea is not to prioritize some goals or needs over others, but rather to make sure that as many visions as possible reach the donors for discussion.

Please take the time to answer the following questions! Your answers can be as detailed or as short as you like; you can tell us the question is irrelevant, or that another question is more important. What is vital is that you get us your response—so that your voice can be heard.

Please send your answers to lgbt@hrw.org by AUGUST 7, 2008. We are also available to interview you by phone about these issues if you would like to offer more detailed insights. Just let us know.

We hope you’ll take advantage of this important chance to tell major international funders what your priorities are. Take a few minutes to reply!

Thank you,


Scott Long
Director
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program
Human Rights Watch
350 Fifth Avenue, 34th Floor
New York, NY USA 10118
Tel. +01 (212) 216-1297
Fax +01 (212) 216-1876
E-mail: longs@hrw.org


THE QUESTIONS

1. Please give us the name and address of yourself or your organization. This will be kept confidential (unless you tell us otherwise).

2. In a sentence or two, describe your organization’s goals or mandate: the main purposes for which it works.

3. In a sentence or two, describe the main strategies or methods your organization uses to achieve those goals.

Examples could include:

• providing counseling;
• organizing community social events;
• political advocacy/lobbying;
• research and documentation;
• job training.

4. Is your work mainly at the local, national, or international level, or a combination of these?

5. What are the most widespread or important human rights violations or inequalities you or your organization encounter in your work?

6. As you look at the political situation around you, in your country or your region, what do you see as the most important priorities for changing or introducing laws or policies? That is: based on the problems you encounter, what do you think should be the next major goal?

Examples could include

• getting rid of sodomy laws or dress code laws;
• introducing anti-discrimination legislation;
• ensuring everyone can get an ID card in the gender they live in;
• marriage or relationship recognition or adoption;
• asylum and immigration;
• discrimination in health services, or medical abuses;
• rights to education;
• ensuring access to reproductive technologies.

These are only examples. If you list more than one, try to give them a ranking (1 = most important)

7. What are the biggest challenges to your work, and to legal or political change? These can obviously include internal challenges for your organization or movement, such as lack of money or people. But think too about external challenges in the society or region—now, or ones you can see in the near future.

Examples could include:

• Religious fundamentalism;
• Patriarchal attitudes;
• A new and unfriendly government;
• Traditions of police power and impunity;
• and many others.

8. Not everything that needs to change can be reduced just to a matter of law or policy. What are some of the important targets for activism in your country or region that do not fall simply into law and policy fields, and how can you imagine addressing them?

Examples could include:

• Violence within families;
• Loneliness and isolation among LGBT people;
• Pervasive economic disempowerment;
• and many others.

9. When you look at the political and social situation in the foreseeable future, what are the opportunities that you think your movement can take advantage of?

Examples could include:

• A change of government;
• A shift in popular attitudes;
• A planned revision of the laws;
• Changes in the health care system;
• New international alliances or international aid;
• New opportunities for training the police;
• and many others.

10. What would you or your organization need to take full advantage of those opportunities?

11. Dream for a moment: name one success you would like to see your organization or movement achieve in the next five years. What would you need to achieve it?