IN an 81-page report published yesterday, the New York-based Human Rights Watch ripped into Jamaica for its treatment of its homosexuals and called for sweeping legal reform, and even constitutional changes, to address the problem.

One significant downside from Jamaica's homophobia, Human Rights Watch claimed, was its prevention of a broad assault on HIV/AIDS, which is estimated to affect 1.5 per cent of the population or 22,000 people, the third highest in the Caribbean after Haiti and Dominican Republic.

Among the group's suggestions are that the government:

. repeal laws against buggery;

. that the anti-discrimination clause in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Jamaican Constitution be amended to include 'sexual orientation and gender identity' and 'sex'; and

. that government opens itself up to international scrutiny by ratifying conventions against torture.

In explaining how homophobic tendencies in Jamaica impacted negatively on the treatment of people with HIV/AIDS, Human Rights Watch said Jamaicans still believe that AIDS is largely a homosexual disease although official statistics indicate that 68 per cent of the cases here are transmitted between heterosexual partners and only 5.4 per cent are cases of 'men having sex with men' (and bisexuals combined).

Consequently, persons with HIV/AIDS continue to be stigmatised as 'battymen' - a derogatory Jamaican term for male homosexuals - and even the intervention groups working with HIV/AIDS cases are stigmatised and even threatened with violence, the report claimed.

The report is titled 'Hated to Death', with the sub-title 'Homophobia, Violence and Jamaica's HIV/AIDS Epidemic'.
It is likely to stir a new round of debate on the treatment of homosexuals in Jamaica and focus more attention on the island by international gay-rights groups that have been leading an international campaign against dancehall artistes, whose music they claim promote violence against gays.

But the Human Rights Watch report hits not only at popular artistes, but sharply attacked the Jamaican government's positions on the issue as anti-progressive, specifically naming Prime Minister P J Patterson and health minister John Junor for refusing to endorse recommendations by their own technocrats to repeal anti-gay laws.

The report does give some credit to the health ministry for its interventions in dealing with the HIV/AIDS problem, but charged that "other parts of Jamaica's Government undermine these important efforts by condoning or committing serious human rights abuses".

Consequently, it said, abuses against MSS occur in "a climate of impunity fostered by Jamaica's sodomy laws and are promoted at the highest levels of government".

The report also claimed that the police were often the instigators of beatings, and verbal abuse of the AIDS-afflicted, citing a case in Montego Bay on June 18 this year when a suspected gay man was 'chopped, stabbed and stoned to death', ostensibly at the instigation of the police who started the process by beating the man with batons.

Whereas gay-rights lobbyists such as OutRage! have targeted specific interest groups for their attacks, Human Rights Watch directly labelled the Patterson administration as a facilitator of abuse and told the government to act 'forcefully and quickly' to change course.

In fact, the group even urged ministers to use their platforms and contacts with the media to promote acceptance of the gay community.

Human Rights Watch warns that to maintain the present policy course is to consign thousands of Jamaicans "to lives of horrific abuse and premature and preventable death".

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