Gay Jamaicans are being murdered – with police and government collusion – and leading reggae singers encourage their fans to join in the killing.
“It is like living in Afghanistan under the Taliban,” says Richard, a 28 year-old gay Jamaican. “I wake up in the morning not knowing whether today I will live or die.”
Richard is lucky. He is still alive. But he bears huge scars from a machete attack by a homophobic mob. Jamaican police stood by and allowed the crowd to chop him up like a piece of butcher’s meat. Amazingly, he survived.
Others are less fortunate. The Gleaner newspaper reported a gay man being chased by vigilantes into a Baptist church. Cornered by the altar, he pleaded for his life. They pumped him full of bullets.
In June, in Montego Bay, a man was beaten to death – with police acquiescence. He was accused of “looking” at another male. There was no proof he was gay or had looked at another man. Mere suspicion was justification enough to kill him.
A few years back, the Jamaican media reported there was going to be a Gay Pride march in the capital, Kingston. Hundreds of people wielding guns, machetes, clubs and knives turned up at the starting point. They had come to kill the “batty men” (patois abuse meaning queers and faggots). The police turned up too – not to protect the gay marchers, but to help murder them.
Under Jamaican law, homosexuality is a crime punishable by 10 years hard labour. Paedophiles are treated more leniently. Men who sexually abuse girls in their early teens face only seven years jail.
Jamaican police view gays as criminals. They refuse to protect them. Queer-bashing victims cannot go to the police for help because officers are likely to abuse, assault and arrest them.
Amnesty International confirms that gays and lesbians have been “beaten, cut, burned, raped and shot on account of their sexuality.” Instead of helping the victims, Amnesty says Jamaican police are often guilty of homophobic “violence and torture.”
Gays taken to hospital after being queer-bashed sometimes have to face the ordeal of hostile doctors and nurses. Badly injured gay-bash victims have been insulted and ridiculed by hospital staff and made to wait nearly 24 hours for medical treatment.
Jamaica’s Prime Minister PJ Patterson refuses to speak out against the murder of gay people. His police chief has failed to crack down on homophobic violence. The killers of gays literally get away with murder.
Homophobic hatred and violence is whipped up by Jamaica’s eight leading reggae singers, including Beenie Man, Vybz Kartel, Buju Banton and Elephant Man. Their hit tunes urge listeners to shoot, burn, stab, hang and drown gay people.
Buju Banton’s song Boom Bye Bye exhorts: shoot queers in the head, pour acid over them and burn them alive. A track by Elephant Man, A Nuh Fi Wi Fault, goes: “Queers must die. Shoot them like birds.” And Beenie Man’s record, Han Up Deh, includes the incitement: “Hang lesbians with a long piece of rope.”
These murderous lyrics get prime-time air-play in a society where real-life homophobic violence is a daily occurrence. They reinforce and sir up anti-gay prejudice. This prejudice fuels queer-bashing attacks. The Jamaican gay rights group, J-Flag, says the popularity of “kill gays” songs often coincides with a rise in homophobic violence.
While people have a right to criticise homosexuality, free speech does not include the right to commit the criminal offence of incitement to murder. Gays are entitled to live their lives without threats to kill them.
Even though incitement to murder is criminal offence in Jamaica, the government and police refuse to prosecute the singers. Likewise, no one appears to have been convicted of any of the many homophobic murders.
Buju Banton doesn’t just sing about bashing gays. He is now wanted by the Jamaican police on gay-bashing charges. This vividly demonstrates the link between homophobic lyrics and homophobic assaults.
Despite the arrest warrant, Britain’s two leading black newspapers, The Voice and New Nation, went ahead and sponsored Buju Banton’s recent London concert.
Jamaica is the most violently homophobic place on earth. Gays in urban ghettos and rural areas are at constant risk of being murdered.
To challenge this blood-thirsty homophobia, Jamaican gays asked the British gay group OutRage! for help. We have no office, no staff and no funding. But hearing their cry for freedom we organised an international solidarity campaign, involving 150 local groups in cities across Europe and the US. The first phase is targeting the murder music singers. Our aim is to challenge lyrics that reinforce and perpetuate homophobic violence. Money talks. By successfully cancelling dozens of concerts across Britain, the US and Europe – which has cost the singers and promoters millions in lost income – we hope to force them to abandon their murderous incitements.
This strategy is working. Two months into the campaign, reggae chiefs held a “crisis” summit. They are now talking about “ridding reggae of homophobia”.
Meanwhile, sections of the British black community and the left (mostly members of the SWP) are undermining our campaign, attacking us as “racists” and “cultural imperialists”. They say we should “engage” with the singers. We’ve tried that for 10 years. It has not worked. These arm-chair critics have never lifted a finger to help gay Jamaicans, but they happily attack our solidarity campaign with their perverse notions of anti-racism. How can it be racist to support black victims of homophobia and oppose violent homophobes in the music industry?
The real racism is not our campaign against murder music, but most people’s indifference to the persecution of gay Jamaicans. No one would tolerate such abuses against white people in Britain; it is racist to allow them to happen to black people in another country – whether in Jamaica, Zimbabwe or anywhere else.
Our critics also accuse us of “hijacking” a black issue. They demand to know why this campaign is not being fronted by black organisations. Good question. Why are black groups in the UK silent about the murder of gay Jamaicans?
I am saddened that some people in the black community actually defend the right of reggae singers to advocate the shooting and burning of “sodomites.” The black human rights group, The1990 Trust, is promoting the idea that “kill gays” lyrics should be defended on the grounds that homophobia is part of Caribbean culture and an expression of resistance to white colonialism.
Sadly, Jamaican queers cannot lead this campaign. If they were identified they would be murdered. Their Kingston office is at a secret location. If its whereabouts became public knowledge the office would be razed to the ground within 24 hours.
Even in Britain, black lesbians and gays are intimidated into silence and invisibility. OutRage! wanted black gays to lead this campaign. Many support what we are doing, but plead they cannot get involved because they fear “retribution” from within the black community. What are black leaders doing to challenge this climate of fear? Nothing, it seems.
The persecution of lesbians and gay men in developing countries like Jamaica is the front-line of the global battle for queer human rights. But fearful of being accused of racism, sections of liberal and left opinion are prepared to abandon gay people in poor countries to their grisly fate. Where’s the morality in that? What happened to the honourable tradition of international solidarity?
* Protest to: Maxine Roberts, High Commissioner, Jamaican High Commission, 1 Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2BZ. Email: [email protected]
A slightly edited version of this article was published under the title: Black and gay and hunted, New Statesman, 4 October 2004.