Source: Toronto Star and New York Times

Mandeville police officer Michael Hayden seeks asylum in Canada photo: New York Times

Michael Hayden, who has been on the police force for four years, said other officers routinely attacked and abused him after becoming suspicious of his sexual preferences.

A couple of weeks back, a local tabloid, The Jamaica Star, ran a screaming headline when Hayden, disturbed by the attack on the dinner party guests, decided to disclose his sexual orientation to the paper. He said he had been harassed regularly by his colleagues because he is gay. He said the police did not take violence against gays seriously.

But after speaking out publicly in the newspaper this month, the 24-year-old Hayden said he began receiving death threats.

"I want to stay here and fight," Hayden said in a telephone interview from Jamaica yesterday. "But it's not safe for me. My life is in great, great jeopardy."

Human rights groups say Hayden's case is the latest in a series of disturbing anti-gay incidents in the Caribbean tourist destination.

Disapproval of gays is an entrenched part of island life, rooted, Jamaicans say, in the country’s Christian tradition. The Bible condemns homosexuality, they say. But critics say islanders are selective in the verses they cite, and the rage at gay sex contrasts sharply with Jamaicans’ embrace of casual sex among heterosexuals, which is considered part of the Caribbean way.

While some other Caribbean tourist destinations have made a point of marketing to gay travelers, Jamaica has notably not joined the trend. Sodomy remains a criminal offence in Jamaica, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years.

The Jamaican police force declined to comment on Hayden's situation.

Hayden is not the first gay Jamaican to seek asylum out of fear for his life, said Rebecca Schleifer, a researcher with Human Rights Watch in New York and author of Hated to Death, a report on gay bashing and its impact on the fight against HIV/AIDS in Jamaica.

Jamaica lost a key leader in the HIV/AIDS battle, she said, when gay activist Gareth Henry fled the country last month and sought refugee status in Canada. Henry had been co-chair of the Jamaican Forum for Lesbians and Gays and also a volunteer with Jamaican AIDS Support for Life.

Henry, 30, told the Star yesterday that he started thinking about leaving Jamaica after being beaten by police a year ago on Feb. 14 in a drugstore in Kingston, Jamaica. He says police deny beating him.

He said he's lost 13 gay friends since 2004, yet police refuse to acknowledge there's a problem, often blaming the dead victim's lover or other gay men.

Henry said he feels for Hayden. "He's unsafe. They're hunting him daily. It's one of those very sad cases. For him coming out, he didn't want to be another person who died before he got to tell his story."

Hayden is now on a leave of absence from his job and is in hiding while his allegations against his fellow officers are being investigated.

Being gay in Jamaica is not easy. For years, human rights groups have denounced the harassment, beating and even killing of gays here, to little avail. No official statistic has been compiled on the number of attacks. But a recent string of especially violent, high-profile assaults has brought fresh condemnation to an island otherwise known as an easygoing tourist haven.

“One time may be an isolated incident,” said Schleifer, of Human Rights Watch who has studied the issue and regularly gets calls from the island from gays under attack. “When they happen on a repeated basis across the country, it is an urgent problem that deserves attention at the highest levels.”

The double standard on the island is reflected in the antigay lyrics of Jamaican dance hall music, the headlines of more hyperventilating tabloids -- “homo” is the term most often used -- and the fact that homosexuality remains illegal here, with the specific crime called “buggery.”

No place has shown that hostility recently more than Mandeville, a prosperous and quiet town in the South Coast area that rarely makes big news.

Hayden was inspired to come out by his frustration at the way his fellow officers handled a brutal attack earlier this month at a dinner party.

A group of friends were finishing dinner when a mob showed up at the front gate. Yelling antigay slurs and waving machetes, sticks and knives, 15 to 20 men kicked in the front door of the home the group had rented and set upon them.

“I thought I was dead,” Andre, 20, a student, recounted in a faint voice, still scared enough that he was in hiding and did not want his full name to be used.

The mob pummeled him senseless. His right hand, the one he used to shield himself from the blows, is now covered with bandages. His skull has deep cut marks and his ear was sliced in half, horizontally. Doctors managed to sew it back together and he can hear out of it again.

The attack is still under investigation, with no arrests. Next to Andre, huddled in a corner during the attack, was his boyfriend, 22, who goes by the nickname Junior. Deep machete slashes run up and down the arm he held in the air to protect himself. His head was also battered, though he escaped a more vicious beating by running through the mob waving a kitchen knife.

Two other men at the dinner got away, but the fate of one guest remains unknown. He had fled into the yard before the attackers broke in and has not been heard from since. The police found blood at the mouth of a deep hole nearby; they suspect he may have been attacked in the yard, then fallen to his death.

Since the attack, Andre said, he has been trying to undo his gayness, following a common view here that it is an acquired behavior that can be dropped if only one prays more and pays more attention to the opposite sex.

He fled Mandeville after the attack and found refuge at the home of a pastor, who now delivers at-home sermons to him on how he must change.

With the pastor standing over him, Andre said he would try to be attracted to women, if only so he would never be beaten again. But he mentions another option, as well: leaving Jamaica.

The pastor says he has a son who is gay and has been unable to turn him around. But he is intent on converting Andre.

Full article: TheStar.com | Canada | Gay Jamaican officer seeks asylum
Attacks Show Easygoing Jamaica Is Dire Place for Gays | New York Times