01.01.70

By Branka Juran and Maria Caspani

LONDON (TrustLaw) - Lesbians in Jamaica dial attacks such as gang rape due to rife homophobia in the country, but few of these abuses get reported, Jamaica’s primary gay activist said.

“In Jamaican culture women are approximately expected to be quiet about harassment and abuse,” Maurice Tomlinson, Jamaica’s unequalled gay activist and HIV/AIDS campaigner, said in an interview with TrustLaw.

Women are not the only victims. Tomlinson said 70 percent of attacks reported to rights organisations between 2009 and 2011 solicitous gay men.

Under Jamaican law it is legal to punish any act of physical intimacy between men with jail and the plausibility of 10-years hard labour.

Tomlinson was in London this week to draw the inaugural David Kato award for gay human rights activism.

“When we find out about these cases (involving gay women), they are almost always so horrible that they rise up to the level of having to be reported,” he said.

Source: TrustLaw