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Honduras government institutions ‘are murdering us’

Lack of opportunities, violence prompt LGBTQ people to migrate

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La Ceiba, Honduras, on July 21, 2021. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers was on assignment for the Washington Blade in Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico from July 11-25.

LA CEIBA, Honduras — Leonela and Jerlín, her partner of 11 years, and their school-age daughter live in La Ceiba, a city on Honduras’ Caribbean coast.

Jerlín was a bus driver in San Pedro Sula, the country’s commercial capital, until gang members shot him three times in 2012 because he couldn’t pay the extortion money from which they demanded from him each month. Jerlín, Leonela and their daughter subsequently fled to La Ceiba, which is about three hours east of San Pedro Sula.

“We left,” Jerlín told the Washington Blade on July 20 during an interview at the offices of Organización Pro Unión Ceibeña (Oprouce), a La Ceiba-based advocacy group. “We fled from there.”

Jerlín migrated to Mexico in January 2019, but returned to Honduras less than a month later because Leonela was in the hospital. The couple and their daughter migrated to Mexico a year later. 

Leonela asked for a Mexican humanitarian visa for her and her daughter once they arrived in Ciudad Hidalgo, a Mexican border city that is across the Suchiate River from Tecún Umán, Guatemala.

Leonela told the Blade that she planned to ask for asylum in Mexico and wanted to go to Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of Mexico’s Chiapas state, to find work. Leonela said she and Jerlín instead decided to return to Honduras because they did not want their daughter to further endure the “inhumane” conditions of the migrant detention center in Tapachula, a city that is roughly 20 miles northwest of Ciudad Hidalgo, in which they were living.

“We decided it was better to allow them to deport us,” said Jerlín.

A U.N. Refugee Agency mural in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, that faces the Suchiate River, which marks the border between Mexico and Guatemala, advises migrants of their rights once they enter Mexico. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

Jerlín, Leonela and their daughter returned to Honduras in May 2020. Someone shot at their house on July 10, 2020.

“They couldn’t even do what people wanted them to do, perhaps even buring us alive,” said Leonela.

Leonela and Jerlín are among the many LGBTQ Hondurans who have decided to leave Honduras in order to escape violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Vice President Kamala Harris and other Biden administration officials have acknowledged anti-LGBTQ violence is one of the “root causes” of migration from Honduras and neighboring Guatemala and El Salvador.

Title 42, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rule that closed the Southern border to most asylum seekers and migrants because of the coronavirus pandemic, remains in place. The White House has repeatedly told migrants not to travel to the U.S.

Roxsana Hernández, a trans Honduran woman with HIV, died at a New Mexico hospital on May 25, 2018, while in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. 

Natasha, another trans Honduran woman, arrived in Matamoros, a Mexican border city that is across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, on Oct. 12, 2019. The previous administration forced her to pursue her U.S. asylum case in Mexico under its Migrant Protection Protocols. (The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the Biden administration to reinstate MPP.)

The Blade interviewed Natasha on Feb. 27 at a Matamoros shelter that Rainbow Bridge Asylum Seekers, a program for LGBTQ asylum seekers and migrants that Resource Center Matamoros, a group that provides assistance to asylum seekers and migrants in the Mexican border city, helped create. The U.S. less than two weeks later allowed Natasha to enter the country.

Natasha, a transgender woman from Honduras who asked for asylum in the U.S., in Matamoros, Mexico, on Feb. 27, 2021. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

Oprouce Executive Director Sasha Rodríguez, who is trans, has participated in the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program.

She said a lack of employment and housing associated with the pandemic has prompted more Hondurans to migrate to the U.S., Mexico and Costa Rica. Rodríguez also told the Blade the U.S. and “our countries sell an American dream that doesn’t exist.”

“Why don’t these American organizations say don’t go,” she said, specifically referring to trans people who have decided to leave Honduras. “Here they see it as beautiful. They are already in the United States, but they were raped while trying to get there. They were kidnapped.”

Organización Pro Unión Ceibeña Executive Director Sasha Rodríguez in her office in La Ceiba, Honduras, on July 20, 2021. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

Alexa, a 27-year-old trans woman from La Ceiba, told the Blade she has friends who live in Mexico. Alexa said she would like to leave Honduras, but she doesn’t want to leave her mother alone.

“I don’t want to leave her alone and abandon her because I have always fought for her,” Alexa told the Blade during an interview at Oprouce. “She supports me as a woman.”

Alexa said she served a nearly 3-year prison sentence for attempted murder, even though she was defending herself against a woman who was hitting her in the face with a rock. Alexa began to sob when she started to tell the Blade about the Salvadoran man who raped her in prison. She said the warden then forced her to cut her hair and guards doused her with “ice cold water” in an isolation cell.

“I was a woman,” said Alexa. “They made me a man.”

Alexa told the Blade that other prisoners tried to kill her. She said she also tried to die by suicide several times until her release on Jan. 27.

Alexa said she has not been able to find a job since she left prison. She also told the Blade that gang members continue to threaten her.

“It is sometimes very difficult to lead the lifestyle that we lead as trans women in Honduras,” she said, referring to anti-trans discrimination and a lack of employment opportunities.

Venus, a 30-year-old trans woman who is also from La Ceiba, echoed Alexa.

“To be a trans person is synonymous with teasing, harassment, violence and even death,” Venus told the Blade at Oprouce.

Venus said Honduran soldiers regularly attack trans women. She told the Blade a lack of access to health care, machismo and patriarchal attitudes are among the myriad other issues that she and other trans Hondurans face.

“We don’t have access to education, to health (care), to a job,” said Venus. “Above all we are fighting for a gender-based law that recognizes us as women and men.”

Venus added she, like Alexa, would leave Honduras “if I was given the opportunity to do so.”

Landmark ruling finds Honduras responsible for trans woman’s murder

Red Lésbica Cattrachas, a lesbian feminist human rights group based in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, notes 373 LGBTQ Hondurans were reported killed in the country between 2009-2020.

Statistics indicate 119 of those murdered were trans. Red Lésbica Cattrachas also noted 18 of the LGBTQ Hondurans who were reported killed were in Atlántida department in which La Ceiba is located.

Vicky Hernández was a trans activist and sex worker with HIV who worked with Colectivo Unidad Color Rosa, a San Pedro Sula-based advocacy group.

Hernández’s body was found in a San Pedro Sula street on June 29, 2009, hours after the coup that ousted then-President Manuel Zelaya from power. Hernández and two other trans women the night before ran away from police officers who tried to arrest them because they were violating a curfew.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights in June issued a landmark ruling that found Honduras responsible for Hernández’s murder.

The ruling ordered Honduras to pay reparations to Hernández’s family and enact laws that protect LGBTQ people from violence and discrimination. The government of President Juan Orlando Hernández, whose brother, former Congressman Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, is serving a life sentence in the U.S. after a federal jury convicted him of trafficking tons of cocaine into the country, has not publicly responded to the ruling.

Rodríguez noted to the Blade that Oprouce and other advocacy groups have been fighting for a trans rights law in Honduras for more than a decade.

“We have had failure for 11 years, but I think that with what happened with the Inter-American Court, the recommendations that have come from the Vicky Hernández case could achieve something important,” said Rodríguez. “There are very good human rights recommendations for Honduras and there are good recommendations that Honduras could automatically apply to trans women.”

Rodríguez as she discussed the ruling reiterated trans Hondurans continue to face violence, discrimination and a lack of employment opportunities. Rodríguez also reiterated her sharp criticism of her country’s government and its institutions.

“Societal exclusion forces us to do sex work,” she said. “We are being harmed by our trade: Murder, persecution, hate crimes, torture, beatings.”

“I always say that it is an institutional death because state institutions are murdering us,” added Rodríguez.

‘My fight is here’

In spite of these challenges, Rodríguez said there has been progress.

Oprouce — which works on a variety of issues that include the prevention of gender-based violence and fighting HIV/AIDS — offers workshops to the Public Ministry, the Honduran Armed Forces and judges. Asociación de Prevención y Educación en Salud, Sexualidad, Sida y Derechos Humanos (Aprest), another advocacy group in Tela, a city that is about 60 miles west of La Ceiba, conducts similar trainings with local and national authorities.

Aprest Executive Director Leonel Barahona Medina told the Blade during an interview at a beachfront restaurant in Tela on July 20 that city officials have given him an office from which he and his colleagues can work. Barahona said they also supported activists who raised the Pride flag on June 27 in front of Tela City Hall.

A similar ceremony took place in a park in the center of La Ceiba.

“We have good relations with them,” said Barahona, referring to Tela officials.

Aprest Executive Director Leonel Barahona Medina raises the Pride flag at Tela City Hall in Tela, Honduras, on June 27, 2021. (Photo courtesy of Leonel Barahona Medina)

Both Barahona and Rodríguez said their work will continue.

“My fight is here,” said Rodríguez. “My essence and my dreams are here.”

Abdiel Echevarría-Caban and Reportar sin Miedo contributed to this story.

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Lesotho

LGBTQ activist murdered in Lesotho

Authorities have arrested a suspect in Kabelo Seseli’s death

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Kabelo Seseli (Photo courtesy of Seseli's Facebook page)

Kabelo Seseli, a gay crossdresser and LGBTQ activist in Lesotho, was murdered over the weekend in a suspected homophobic attack.

According to the People’s Matrix Association, a LGBTQ rights organization, Seseli’s body was found with stab wounds on their neck and genitals.

“This was not just a murder, it was a hate-driven, dehumanizing act meant to send a message of fear and rejection to our community,” said the People’s Matrix Association in a statement posted to its Facebook page on April 29. “Kabelo deserved to live. Kabelo deserved dignity, safety, and the freedom to exist without fear, just like every Mosotho.”

The LGBTQ rights group also said it is demanding action, justice, and protection from the government, especially given the fact authorities have arrested a suspect.

“We strongly condemn this act of violence and call on the government of Lesotho and law enforcement authorities to conduct a thorough investigation and ensure that those responsible are held fully accountable,” said the People’s Matrix Association. “We also urge leaders and the public to reflect on the role of hate speech and social stigma, which continue to incite violence against LGBTI individuals across our country. We demand action.”

Victor Mukasa of Trans and History Intersex Africa also condemned Seseli’s murder.

“Death is a fact of life, but murder is criminal,” said Mukasa. “Murder of people because they are LGBTIQA+ or for belonging to a particular social group is a hate crime.”

Thato Motsieloa, a gay crossdresser and LGBTQ activist, said he was “deeply distraught to learn about the brutal murder of Kabelo Seseli.” Motsieloa said he and Seseli met on Facebook.

“Although we never met in person, we had plans to do so,” said Motsieloa. “The manner of his death is particularly heartbreaking, and the fact that his killers desecrated his body by removing his private parts is utterly heinous. I hope justice is served, and those responsible face the consequences of their horrific actions. My sincerest condolences go out to Kabelo’s family, may his soul rest in eternal peace.”

Lesotho in 2012 decriminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations. Marriage, however, remains limited to heterosexual couples. There have also been sporadic reports of anti-LGBTQ hate crimes since 2012.

The International Commission of Jurists, in partnership with Outright International, a New York-based LGBTQ advocacy group, in 2022 held a workshop with the Lesotho judiciary that focused on human rights for the LGBTQ community.

The judiciary noted LGBTQ people exist, but acknowledged there is no local jurisprudence on their rights, even though the country’s constitution guarantees the right to respect private and family life and freedom from discrimination.

Religious and cultural norms, like in many African countries, play a pivotal role in how society perceives the LGBTQ community. Many people in Lesotho disregard the existence of LGBTQ people, even though the government is trying to make room for the acknowledgment of LGBTQ rights.

Outright International Africa Advocacy Officer Khanyo Farise says the judiciary’s active engagement with the LGBTQ community is an important step towards ensuring LGBTQ rights are upheld.

“Judges and judicial officers play an important part in ensuring access to justice for LGBTIQ+ people, but also have an important role in producing judgments which can advance their human rights,” said Farise.

ICJ Africa Communications and Legal Officer Mulesa Lumina said though the ICJ is encouraged by these developments, particularly the willingness of judiciary members to understand the plight of the community, LGBTQ people continue to face harassment, discrimination, abuse and violence because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity.

“We will continue working with partners, such as the People’s Matrix and Outright International, to ensure the enforcement of the country’s obligations under international human rights law, which entitle LGBTIQ persons to the full range of human rights without discrimination,” said Lumina.

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India

LGBTQ Kashmiri students targeted after terrorist attack

26 people killed in Baisaran Valley on April 22

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Baisaran Valley in Kashmir (Photo by SB Stock/Bigstock)

Baisaran Valley, a Kashmiri meadow surrounded by pine trees, was bustling with Hindu tourists on April 22.  

Families were wearing phirans (traditional Kashmiri clothing) for photos, while ponies trotted along the Lidder River. Gunfire shattered this peace when five terrorists opened fire. They targeted Hindu men, checking their religion before shooting them. The terrorists killed 26 people — 25 tourists, including a Navy officer who was on his honeymoon — and Syed Adil Hussain Shah, a pony guide who died protecting others. More than 20 others were wounded.

The Resistance Front, a Pakistan-based group tied to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terrorist organization, initially claimed responsibility for the attack, but retracted the claim three days later, fearing India’s diplomatic and military response that eventually included the tightening of borders and the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty.

The attack sparked outrage across India.

Misdirected anger targeted Kashmiri students in Dehradun, Jalandhar, and other cities in which LGBTQ people face heightened vulnerability. They endured harassment, evictions, and threats of violence. The J&K Students Association reported more than 1,000 distress calls, and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah urged states to protect them.

Activists across India have rallied to help LGBTQ Kashmiri students in their cities.

Harish Iyer, a prominent activist, offered shelter and legal assistance to them in Mumbai, the country’s financial hub.

“Religion is a tool used by terrorists worldwide to ensure that their victims divert their energy towards fighting each other while  they continue to focus on our destruction,” said Iyer. “It is a tried and tested formula designed to divide us while we should all be united against them.”

Iyer told the Washington Blade he saw videos of Kashmiri students being targeted.

“Hate gets compounded when you look at it from several intersectional points,” he said. “To belong to identities like queer, Muslim, and Kashmiri makes one vulnerable. In a moment where hate reveals its fang, it is important that love opens its home too.”

Iyer said he received a couple of phone calls from queer people in northern India who had been attacked. He offered to pay for their travel to Mumbai or any other city, but they eventually told him they found a place where they would be safe.

“It just reinstates our collective faith in humanity and asserts that there are kind people everywhere,” said Iyer. “The community stands united with each other against terror.”

He stressed “intersectional realities make us most vulnerable” and “that’s why we need to rise up and be the best of who we are as queer humans.” Iyer told the Blade that other queer activists in India are trying to do just that, albeit silently, by opening their homes to people who have been targeted. 

“Anish Gawande, the queer spokesperson of the Nationalist Congress Party, has been working hard to restore peace in the valley,” he noted. “He has been doing good work in the Kashmir Valley for several years now. I truly admire his courage and candor. But truly, it’s the everyday queer Indian who advocates for kindness who matter.” 

“They would not be known to all and sundry, may not have a fan following or several followers on social media, but they have it in them to open their homes and their world to those affected,” added Iyer. “Sometimes, love doesn’t cause outpouring visibility, sometimes it silently protects and creates homes with a beating heart.”

Gawande has worked in Kashmir since 2012, running a program for Kashmiri journalism students and an art residency. 

He acknowledged to the Blade the increase in violence against Kashmiri students. Gawande also said LGBTQ Kashmiri students face unique challenges because they are a “minority within a minority.”

“In these difficult times, several activists like Harish Iyer have come forward to offer their support to young Kashmiri LGBTQ students who are afraid for their own safety,” he said. “The intent of the terrorists was to divide us — we cannot let their strategy succeed. I am incredibly grateful to so many members of the queer community and allies who have stepped forward to help all Kashmiris in this difficult time.”

Gawande said he has been supporting the efforts of student leaders, including Nasir Khuehami of the J&K Students Association, who has been leading efforts to ensure Kashmiris across India remain safe and secure. Gawande also said government officials, politicians, and law enforcement are working to protect the students.

“I am grateful to both the central government and state governments across the country for their prompt assistance in this matter,” said Gawande. “In these difficult times, when emotions run high, we remain united against hate.” 

“Today, attempts are being made to create divides between Indians and Kashmiris, between Hindus and muslims,” he added. “We must stand up against such attempts in one voice.” 

Gawande last weekend traveled to Srinagar, the Kashmiri capital, and led multi-faith prayer services in temples, churches, gurdwaras (Sikh places of worship), and dargahs (shrines) “to mourn those who lost their lives in Pahalgam and to send out a message of communal harmony.”

“When attempts are being made to divide us on religious grounds, we must unite through religion,” he said.

Gawande also spoke directly to Kashmiri LGBTQ students, urging them to reach out to the J&K Students Association. He said his New Delhi home and his party’s offices across the country are “also available to those who need a safe space or a place to grieve.”

“In this time of grief, where we are all mourning the dastardly loss of life, it is important to stand up for what is right,” said Gawande. “Queerness has taught me that we have two kinds of families — those of birth and of choice.”

“Kashmir holds a special place in my heart, and when the well being of those who I consider family is under threat, there is no question of even thinking about any potential jeopardizing of my own safety,” he added.

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The Vatican

Potential Pope Francis successor views homosexuality as an ‘abomination’

Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu is archbishop of Kinshasa

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Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu of Kinshasa, Congo. (Screen capture via Vatican News-English/YouTube)

One of the cardinals who is reportedly in the running to succeed Pope Francis has described homosexuality as an “abomination.”

Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, the archbishop of Kinshasa in Congo, made the comment in a Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar statement in response to Francis’s 2023 decision to allow priests to bless same-sex couples.

“Within the church family of God in Africa, this declaration has caused a shockwave, it has sown misconceptions and unrest in the minds of many lay faithful, consecrated persons, and even pastors and has aroused strong reactions,” wrote Ambongo in the Jan. 11, 2024, statement he signed. “The African Bishops’ Conferences emphasize that people with a homosexual tendency must be treated with respect and dignity, while reminding them that unions of persons of the same sex are contrary to the will of God and therefore cannot receive the blessing of the church.”

The statement notes several Biblical passages that “condemn homosexuality, notably Lv. 18:22-23 where homosexuality is explicitly prohibited and considered an abomination.”

“In addition to these biblical reasons, the cultural context in Africa, deeply rooted in the values of the natural law regarding marriage and family, further complicates the acceptance of unions of persons of the same sex, as they are seen as contradictory to cultural norms and intrinsically corrupt,” it reads.

Ambongo, who is president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar, in 2024 said homosexuality “does not exist” in Africa outside of “a few isolated cases.” La Croix, a French Catholic newspaper, reported he made the comment during a rally that took place outside of Kinshasa.

Actualité, an online Congolese newspaper, reported Ambongo reiterated his opposition to homosexuality and same-sex unions in his 2023 Christmas message.

“Same-sex unions are not accepted in our church,” he said. “Although homosexuals should be treated with respect, compassion, and sensitivity, homosexuality remains a moral disorder contrary to natural law and our African culture.”

Jérémie Safari, executive director of Rainbow Sunrise Mapambazuko, a Congolese LGBTQ rights group, criticized Ambongo when he spoke with the Washington Blade.

“This cardinal is very homophobic; very, very homophobic,” said Safari.

Francis died on April 21.

The Vatican’s tone on LGBTQ and intersex issues softened under the Argentine-born pope’s papacy, even though church teachings on homosexuality did not change.

Francis, among other things, described laws that criminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations as “unjust” and supported civil unions for gays and lesbians.

Francis last August met with two African activists — Clare Byarugaba of Chapter Four Uganda and Rightify Ghana Director Ebenezer Peegah — at the Vatican last August. Francis in 2023 visited Congo and South Sudan.

Juan Carlos Cruz, a GLAAD board member who survived clerical sex abuse in Chile, is among the hundreds of thousands of people who attended Francis’s funeral that took place at the Vatican on April 26. Transgender people were among those who greeted Francis’s coffin at Rome’s St. Mary Major Basilica before his burial.

The conclave to select Francis’s successor will begin on May 7.

The Associated Press notes Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin; Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, the former archbishop of Manila in the Philippines; Archbishop of Bologna (Italy) Cardinal Matteo Zuppi; and Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest (Hungary) Cardinal Peter Erdo are among those who are considered potential Francis successors.

“He [Erdo] has been reluctant to take positions on several of the government’s policies that divided society in Hungary, such as public campaigns that villainized migrants and refugees and laws that eroded the rights of LGBTQ+ communities,” said the AP.

New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic organization, in an April 21 statement said it hopes “our loving God, who is a God of justice and equality, will continue to bless us by extending Francis’ welcoming and inclusive message in the next papacy.”

Anti-LGBTQ Catholic figures offered a far different view.

Doug Mainwaring — described as a “marriage, family, and children’s rights activist” — on Monday described Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah as “the only conclave participant to counter LGBT ambiguity and lies of Francis pontificate” in a post that LifeSiteNews, an anti-LGBTQ Canadian Catholic website, published.

“There is just one cardinal about to enter the conclave who is crystal clear, fearless, and uncompromising with the truth when it comes to pastoring those of us who experience same-sex attraction and gender confusion: Cardinal Robert Sarah,” wrote Mainwaring. 

Mainwaring also highlighted anti-LGBTQ comments that Sarah made in his 2019 book.

“I think that the first victims of the LGBT ideology are the persons who experience a homosexual orientation. They are led by its militants to reduce their whole identity to their sexual behavior,” Sarah wrote, according to Mainwaring. “I beg Catholics who are tempted by homosexuality not to let themselves be shut away in this prison of LGBT ideology. You are a child of God by baptism! Your place is in the church, like all Christians. And if sometimes the spiritual combat becomes too hard, fraternal charity will support you.”

Catholic League President Bill Donohue on April 22 urged the cardinals to consider an African counterpart to succeed Francis.

“If the cardinals decide to choose someone who is a traditionalist, they can do no better than to look to Africa. It is home to the most brilliant orthodox clergy in the world,” said Donohue. “If the cardinals want to choose someone more like Francis, they will look to Europe.”

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