Fear
and Loathing in Jamaica
by Anja Tranovich
Jamaica is a land of contrasts. Tourists from around the
world fly to tranquil, opulent resorts offering sugar
white sand and all you can eat and drink getaways, while
Jamaicans struggle in a flailing economy and increasing
public instability. Jamaica has also had one of the highest
murder rates in the world for many years and the LGBT
community gets hit hard with this violence. The simple
reality is that the vast majority of LGBT Jamaicans cannot
be publicly out and physically safe.
Jamaican police don’t compile statistics
on attacks against gays and lesbians, but leaders of
J-FLAG, the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals,
and Gays, www.jflag.org,
the only gay organization in the country, say that they
know of 30 gay men who were murdered in Jamaica between
1997 and 2000. J-FLAG cannot publish its address and
its staff uses pseudonyms for fear of attacks and killings.
“Verbal and physical violence [against LGBT members]
ranging from beatings to brutal armed attacks to murder,
are widespread,” wrote Rebecca Schleifer, a Human
Rights Watch researcher in a report on HIV and LGBT
life in Jamaica. “For many, there is no sanctuary
from such abuse.”
When Schleifer visited Jamaica in 2004,
Brian Williamson, the country’s leading gay activist,
was violently chopped to death with a machete in his
apartment in Kingston. Schleifer walked to his street
shortly after the murder and found a crowd of people
gathered outside Williamson’s apartment singing
and celebrating his murder and shouting the chorus of
“Boom Bye Bye” a popular Buju Banton dancehall
hit about shooting gay men: “Boom bye bye, in a
faggot’s head. Rude boys don’t promote nasty
men, they have to die.” Others were laughing and
yelling, “Let’s get them one at a time,”
and, “That’s what you get for sin.”
Schleifer said, “Without a doubt
it absolutely was a homophobic killing.” Williamson
was the only publicly out gay man speaking for LGBT
rights in Jamaica. Since his death no one has come out
publicly on a national scale.
There have been more attacks in the
past year, including a mob that attacked gay men who
were attending a funeral on Easter Sunday. Gay men and
women are sometimes forced out of their homes and shootings
and murders continue to occur. The violence has prompted
hundreds of LGBT Jamaicans to seek asylum in other countries.
“The government’s failure to take strong measures
to protect gay people has made life hell for many in
Jamaica. Its failure to educate the broader public has
endangered many lives,” wrote Schleifer in her
report. The homophobia and rejection of gays and lesbians
is prevalent at many levels in Jamaican society. The
Prime Minister recently told a BBC reporter that he
would never allow an out LGBT member to be in his cabinet.
Thomas Glave, a Jamaican professor and
writer now living in the US, was a co-founder of J-FLAG
along with Brian Williamson. “When we came out
to the public, we were facing an enormous amount of
opposition,” he said. “There was a ferocity
we encountered, scathing is not enough to describe it—more
like horror. Yet, we had a powerful and growing micro-community.
From that core we did an enormous amount of work.”
Glave did not speak out publicly as a gay man in Jamaica
like Williamson did, so he was not widely known as gay.
Still, he experienced homophobic violence. Glave was
attacked by a group of men on the streets of Kingston
and pinned to the wall with a knife against his throat
by a man who thought he was gay. “I’d never
seen that hatred before in black men.”
Glave says homophobia and homophobic
violence in Jamaica is driven by the church, dancehall
music, rigid ideas about gender, and the vigilante justice
pervasive in the country. Jason MacFarlane, the current
director of J-FLAG (his name is a pseudonym) agrees
with Glave. “Homosexuality challenges gender roles
and ideas. If you don’t conform, you don’t
appear to be everything that man should be, you are
other than a man, less than a man, which is seen as
against the natural order of gender,” he said.
He also attributes the widespread homophobia to some
dancehall lyrics that promote violence against gays,
which he calls murder music. Artists such as Buju Banton,
Beenie Man, Elephant Man, T.O.K., and Shabba Ranks,
write and perform songs that advocate attacking or killing
gays and lesbians. “‘Boom Bye Bye’ is
an anthem to some people,” he said. Many Jamaicans
who come to J-FLAG for help after attacks say that assailants
sang the lyrics to homophobic dancehall songs as they
beat or attacked them.
According to Glave, “The music
exacerbates public homophobia. We don’t need this
kind of advocacy of violence in Jamaica, which is already
very violent.”
 Groups
such as Outrage! a UK-based LGBT activist organization,
and J-FLAG have led protests and awareness campaigns
targeting record companies and concert sponsors in a
Stop The Murder Music Campaign. Some of their efforts
have been successful, Beenie Man had to cancel a number
of concerts because of protests and a concert sponsor
dropped out thanks to Outrage! complaints. A few statements
and promises not to promote homophobic violence have
been signed by artists, but these have generally not
been abided by. Homophobic dancehall is still being
made and distributed, played and performed. J-FLAG advocates
against the music but spends most of its limited resources
counseling and aiding LGBT Jamaicans who are victims
of anti-gay violence. It is a small organization, with
a staff of two and a country-wide case-load. “We
are funded through the goodwill of friends overseas,”
said Jason MacFarlane, noting that information on how
to make donations is on the J-FLAG website.
Jamaican officials largely ignore homophobic
attacks. The Senior Superintendent of Police in Jamaica
rejected the idea that members of the LGBT community
face violence. He said, “We haven’t had any
reports about violence against homosexuals. Most of
the violence against homosexuals is internal. We never
have any cases of gay men being beaten up. I know that
there is a sort of revulsion against homosexuals and
lesbians, but evidence does not substantiate that there
is any level of violence perpetrated against them.”
Activists in Jamaica say that there is some inter-class
violence within the LGBT community but the majority
of the beatings, attacks, and murders are perpetuated
on the LGBT community by others.
Jamaica is not exceptional. The US still
has homophobic violence, as do many other countries,
especially in the Caribbean. In fact the Jamaican laws
outlawing sodomy are about as authentically Jamaican
as the British lilt with which many Jamaicans speak,
which is to say, not Jamaican at all. The laws began
in Victorian England and were inherited by Jamaica from
colonial rule.
The LGBT community in Jamaica exists
in spite of the laws against them and prevalent homophobia.
“Even when you are there you find ways to negotiate
the space, and ways you can live that you think are
safe,” said Deann Fontaine, a filmmaker creating
a film on LGBT life in Jamaica. “You live with
what you have.”
Young people in Jamaica are increasingly
willing to come forward and make spaces where they can
be out, even in the face of violence. They can’t
be out safely in their own communities but they travel
for parties and to meet together, often armed with knives
in case they encounter fights.
“Some of the kids feel like, ‘enough
is enough,’ but they don’t have the time to
wait for change, and they can’t leave,” said
Glave. As the LGBT community becomes more visible, it
faces increased violence, but visibility also brings
hope for awareness and change. “There is more talk
about gay people in communities in Jamaica. And the
reality is, people have to deal with it,” remarked
Glave. “You can only maintain so much hatred for
so long.”
[Published:
January, 2009]
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