Gay Issues, News, Legislation
GAYS IN INDIA BEING VICTIMIZED
The re-criminalization of homosexuality by the Indian Supreme Court has brought more than usual problems for gays in India. Anything that is classified as “unnatural sexual acts” are now punishable offenses. There is the constant fear of the police and, in many cases, the moral police and vigilantes in orthodox neighbourhoods.
Now a new problem has surfaced among gay people in India. Criminals prey on gay men, usually through online dates, to humiliate, rob and harass gay men. The threat is always the same – that the sexuality of the victim would be revealed to the police and also, shamefully, to the family. Most men who have suffered in the hands of these criminals have no option but to remain silent about the outrage.
In Asia, these are the countries that have made homosexuality criminal:
AGAINST THE LAW
Asian countries where homosexual acts are illegal:
Afghanistan
Bangladesh
Bhutan
Brunei
India
Malaysia
Maldives
Myanmar
Pakistan
Singapore
Sri Lanka
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan
Source: International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association.
The Wall Street Journal carried this article on the issue:
Online Dating Fuels New Danger for Gays in India
Fearing arrest, activists say gay men fall prey to robbery, extortion gangs
By
GABRIELE PARUSSINI
July 8, 2015 5:46 p.m. ET
MUMBAI—A gay Indian maritime engineer says he was lured into a trap during a visit to Mumbai last year.
When the 33-year-old was with a man he met through an online dating service, two others burst into his hotel room. One whipped and punched him. They took his laptop, a gold chain, camera and his ATM card, which they used to empty his bank account, he says.
The men also made a threat: If he went to the police, the robbers said, they would press criminal charges against him for having sex with a man and tell his colleagues and family that he is gay.
“I was dead scared,” said Rohit, who asked that his surname not be used because he feared the consequences of being publicly identified as homosexual.
Since India’s Supreme Court recriminalized gay sex more than a year ago, homosexuals have increasingly become targets of robbery and extortion, gay men and activists say. The trend has been fueled by the rise of Internet dating, which has become an easy way for urban, middle-class gay men to meet, but also exposed them to online predators.
Such cases underline the deep disconnect between more liberal and cosmopolitan parts of urban India and conservative norms that condemn homosexuality and leave gay people vulnerable to discrimination and blackmail.
India, the world’s largest democracy, is one of more than a dozen Asian countries that outlaw what in India’s case is defined as sex “against the order of nature.”
In December 2013, India’s Supreme Court found the law, which dates to the British colonial era, wasn’t unconstitutional and could be changed or repealed only by Parliament, effectively overturning a 2009 lower-court ruling that made consensual gay sex legal.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, which has Hindu nationalist roots, hasn’t taken any steps to change the law, known as Section 377 after its place in the Indian penal code. Home Minister Rajnath Singh, a leading party member, has called homosexuality unnatural and said “it cannot be supported.”
The left-leaning Congress party, now in opposition, called the law outdated after the latest court ruling.
“It’s an issue that pits the liberals against the conservatives, across party lines,” said Subir Sinha, a senior lecturer in Indian politics at the School of Oriental and Asian Studies in London.
Gay-rights groups say there is little risk that a gay man will be convicted under the law.
Last year, there were 778 cases registered and 587 people arrested under Section 377, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. However, activists say most cases involve wives suing for divorce, in which other grounds are also cited.
Ashok Row Kavi, an activist who in 1990 founded Bombay Dost, India’s first gay magazine, said there hasn’t been a single case of a prosecution solely under Section 377. Still, he said, “the law has created an atmosphere of fear. It’s a powerful tool in the hands of extortionists.”
Gay-dating apps and websites, including Grindr LLC and PlanetRomeo BV, have been steadily expanding in India. In the six months through the end of April, Grindr said its users had grown by nearly 50% from the year-earlier period.
Sonal Giani, a Mumbai-based gay activist, said the Internet gave many men a false sense of security. “Online spaces are deemed to be oh-so-safe” compared with the limited options otherwise, since connections are made in private, Ms. Giani said. “But we’ve been seeing gangs operating online.”
“It’s more and more frequent,” said one 26-year-old engineer who lives in Mumbai. He said he was robbed in January after inviting a man he met on PlanetRomeo to his apartment.
After the two had sex, the visitor threatened to tell the engineer’s neighbors he was gay unless he handed over 10,000 rupees, or about $157.
The engineer said he didn’t notify police. “If I file a complaint because a man I had sex with robbed me, I’m denouncing myself under Section 377,” he said. “It’s a lose-lose situation.”
Rohit, the man mugged in Mumbai last year, felt the same until a friend showed him a newspaper report about a similar case. With it was a photo of four alleged assailants. Three of them, he said, were the ones who had attacked him.
Rohit said he was indignant. Despite his fears that his parents would find out he is gay, he went to the police station where the suspects were being held and filed a complaint in March 2014. (Police haven’t contacted the parents, although they have done so in other cases.)
In connection with Rohit, the men have been charged with robbery. “This is a fake case,” Avdhoot Hatankar, 28, one of the three people charged, said on behalf of the group after a hearing Friday. “We’re not criminals.”
One year on, as the case moves toward trial, Rohit’s lawyer is working to persuade the magistrate to add a new charge of extortion based on sexual practices.
It turns out that another section of India’s 150-year-old penal code says that if a person is convicted of blackmailing another for violating Section 377, the blackmailer can be sentenced to life in prison. “We hope we’ve found an antidote as powerful as the poison,” said Suraj Sanap, Rohit’s lawyer.
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