Activists call on Jamaica to repeal anti-sodomy laws amid violence

On Tuesday, activists demanded that Jamaica repeal a colonial-era law criminalizing same-sex sex, noting the government still hasn’t heeded a regional human rights group’s recommendation two years ago to do so.

The call comes as a growing number of islands in the conservative Caribbean region are repealing similar but rarely enforced life imprisonment and hard labor laws. Jamaica has resisted such a repeal and is considered the most anti-gay Caribbean nation.

“Jamaica is really an exception,” said Devon Matthews of Rainbow Railroad, a Canadian group that helps LGBT people avoid violence. “The situation has deteriorated significantly over the past few years.”

On Tuesday, Rainbow Railroad, along with the Human Dignity Trust, a UK-based non-profit legal organization, released a report saying the LGBTQ community in Jamaica faces “horrifying violence, discrimination and harassment and is denied the most basic protections under the law.”

Matthews said in a phone interview that the Rainbow Railroad has seen an increase in calls for help from gay people in Jamaica since 2019, with 411 violent incidents reported last year, up from 377 the previous year.

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“The data doesn’t even reflect the extent of the violence we’re seeing,” she said. “It’s really terrible.”

In February 2021, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found that the Jamaican government was violating the right to privacy, equal protection, humane treatment and freedom of movement involving two members of the island’s LGBTQ community who were forced to flee Jamaica.

One defendant, Gareth Henry, a gay man who was repeatedly beaten by Jamaican police in front of angry mobs, now lives as a refugee in Canada with his mother, sister and other relatives. Another defendant, Simone Edwards, a lesbian, was granted asylum in the Netherlands after she was shot twice over anti-gay violence, according to the Human Dignity Trust.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which is part of the Organization of American States, at the time recommended that Jamaica repeal the so-called anti-fraud law. This hasn’t happened yet.

“The many beautiful people who died in this violence could have been protected if the state had stepped up,” Matthews said.

The Jamaican government claims it does not enforce its 1864 anti-sodomy laws, but activists say keeping them in books encourages homophobia and violent action against the gay community in the religious country of about 2.8 million.

Matthews said that laws are sometimes enforced by communities and families, even if they are not enforced at the state level.

A spokesman for the Jamaican Prime Minister’s office did not immediately respond to the message for comment.

And while women in Jamaica are allowed to have same-sex relationships, Rainbow Railroad reported that it is not uncommon for their families to organize so-called “corrective rapes” of them or their partners.

Activists also point out that gay Jamaicans are struggling to access jobs, health care, education and housing.

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Similar discrimination has been reported in other Caribbean islands that have since repealed same-sex laws, with Barbados doing so in December, following the example of Antigua and Barbuda and Saint Kitts and Nevis. But such laws remain in place in six other countries in the Americas: Jamaica, Guyana, Grenada, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines.