Jamaica is a third world country too, right? What a senseless killing.
Read the story of how this 16 year old transgender teen (pictured above)
was beaten, stabbed and shot dead by a mob in Jamaica
From
Associated Press
Dwayne Jones was relentlessly teased in high school for being
effeminate until he dropped out. His father not only kicked him out of
the house at the age of 14 but also helped jeering neighbors push the
youngster from the rough Jamaican slum where he grew up.
By age
16, the teenager was dead - beaten, stabbed, shot and run over by a car
when he showed up at a street party dressed as a woman. His mistake:
confiding to a friend that he was attending a "straight" party as a girl
for the first time in his life.
"When I saw Dwayne's body, I
started shaking and crying," said Khloe, one of three transgender
friends who shared a derelict house with the teenager in the hills above
the north coast city of Montego Bay. Like many transgender and gay
people in Jamaica, Khloe wouldn't give a full name out of fear.
"It was horrible. It was so, so painful to see him like that."
Police spokesman Steve Brown said detectives working the case are
struggling to overcome a chronic problem: a strong anti-informant
culture that makes eyewitnesses to murders and other crimes too afraid
or simply unwilling to come forward.
Even though some 300 people
were at the dance party in the small riverside community of Irwin,
police have yet to make a single arrest in Dwayne's murder. Police say
witnesses have said they couldn't see the attackers' faces.
Dwayne
was the center of attraction shortly after arriving in a taxi at 2am
with his two 23-year-old housemates, Khloe and Keke. Dwayne's expert
dance moves, long legs and high cheekbones quickly made him the one that
all the guys were trying to get next to.
Like most Jamaican
homosexuals, Dwayne was careful about confiding in others about his
sexual orientation. But when he saw a girl he had known from church, he
told her he was attending the party in drag.
Minutes later,
according to Khloe and Keke, the girl's male friends gathered around
Dwayne in the dimly-lit street asking: "Are you a woman or a man?" One
man waved a lighter's flame near Dwayne's sneakers, asking whether a
girl could have such big feet.
Then, his friends said, another man
grabbed a lantern from an outdoor bar and walked over to Dwayne,
shining the bright light over him from head to toe. "It's a man," he
concluded, while the others hissed "batty boy" and other anti-gay
epithets.
Khloe says she tried to steer him away from the crowd,
whispering in Dwayne's ear: "Walk with me, walk with me." But Dwayne
pulled away, loudly insisting to partygoers that he was a girl. When
someone behind him snapped his bra strap, the teen panicked and raced
down the street.
But he couldn't run fast enough to escape the mob.
The
teenager was viciously assaulted and apparently half-conscious for some
two hours before another sustained attack finished him off, according
to Khloe, who was also beaten and nearly raped. She hid in a nearby
church and then the surrounding woods, unable to call for help because
she didn't have her cellphone.
Dwayne's father in the Montego Bay
slum of North Gully didn't want to talk about his son's life or death.
The teen's family wouldn't even claim the body, according to Dwayne's
friends.
 |
| Dwayne's friend, Keke |
They remembered him as a spirited boy with a contagious
laugh who dreamt of becoming a performer like Lady Gaga. He was also a
street-smart hustler who resorted to sleeping in the bushes or on
beaches when he became homeless. He won a local dancing competition
during his time on the streets and was affectionately nicknamed "Gully
Queen."
"He was the youngest of us but he was a diva," Khloe said. "He was always very feisty and joking around."
Inside their squatter house, Khloe and Keke said, they still talk to their dead friend.
"I'll
be cooking in the kitchen and I'll say, 'Dwayne, you hungry?' or
something like that," said Keke while sitting on the old mattress in her
bedroom, flinching as neighborhood dogs barked outside. "We just miss
him all the time. Sometimes I think I see him."
But down the hall, Dwayne's room is empty except for pink window curtains decorated with roses, his favorite flower.
International
advocacy groups often portray this Caribbean island as the most hostile
country in the Western Hemisphere for gay and transgender people. After
two prominent gay rights activists were murdered, a researcher with the
U.S.-based Human Rights Watch in 2006 called the environment in Jamaica
for such groups "the worst any of us has ever seen."
Local activists have since
disputed that label, but still say homophobia is pervasive. Dwayne's
horrific July 22 murder has made headlines in newspapers on the island
and stirred calls in some quarters for doing more to protect Jamaica's
gay community, especially those who live on the streets and resort to
sex work.
Advocates say much of the homophobia is fueled by a
nearly 150-year-old anti-sodomy law that bans anal sex as well as by
dancehall reggae performers who flaunt anti-gay themes. The island's
main gay rights group estimated that two homosexual men were killed for
their sexual orientation last year, and 36 were the victims of mob
violence.
For years, Jamaica's
gay community has lived so far underground that their parties and church
services were held in secret locations. Many gays have stuck to a
"don't ask, don't tell" policy of keeping their sexual orientation
hidden to avoid scrutiny or protect loved ones.
"Judging by
comments made on social media, most Jamaicans think Dwayne Jones brought
his death on himself for wearing a dress and dancing in a society that
has made it abundantly clear that homosexuals are neither to be seen nor
heard," said Annie Paul, a blogger and publications officer at
Jamaica's campus of the University of the West Indies.
Some say
the hostility partly stems from the legacy of slavery when black men
were sometimes sodomized as punishment or humiliation. Some historians
believe that practice carried over into a general dread of
homosexuality.
But in recent years, emboldened
young people such as Dwayne have helped bring the island's gay and
transgender community out of the shadows. A small group of gay runaways
now rowdily congregates on the streets of Kingston's financial district.
Prime
Minister Portia Simpson Miller's government has also vowed to put the
anti-sodomy law to a "conscience vote" in Parliament, and she said
during her 2011 campaign that only merit would decide who got a Cabinet
position in her government. By contrast, former Prime Minister Bruce
Golding said in 2008 that he would never allow homosexuals in his
Cabinet.
Dane Lewis, executive director of the Jamaica Forum for
Lesbians, All-Sexuals & Gays, said there were increasing "pockets of
tolerance" on the island.
"We can say that we are becoming more
tolerant. And thankfully that's because of people like Dwayne who have
helped push the envelope," said Lewis, one of the few Jamaican gays who
will publicly disclose his full name.
Yet rights groups still
complain of the slow pace of the investigation into Jones' murder,
despite the justice minister calling for a full probe.
some traditional dancers
