Stoning to death of gay youth captured on video (graphic)

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jamaica_stoning_of_young_gay_captured_on_videoJamaica continues to live up to its reputation as one of the world’s most homophobic countries.

A video has been posted of what appears to be a young gay man being stoned to death by a mob.

The horrific clip was published by the blog Minority-Insight last week and shows the youth lying on the ground as rocks are thrown at his bloody head.

The killers are heard making anti-gay comments during the attack, including, “batty-man yuh fi dead” (“gay, you should die”).

The blog noted that the identity of the victim and other details of the murder are being investigated.

In a damning report last year, Human Rights Watch stated that “LGBT people in Jamaica face intolerable levels of violence.”

It said that they are taunted, threatened, fired from their jobs, thrown out of their homes, or worse: beaten, stoned, raped, or killed.

Human Rights Watch found that police investigations are often inadequate or lacking altogether, in some cases due to homophobia within the police force, and that discriminatory laws contribute to the specific vulnerability of LGBT people.

In 2013, Jamaica’s LGBT community was rocked a number of violent attacks. In one of the most shocking, 17-year-old Dwayne Jones was attacked by revellers at a party after they “discovered” that she was not biologically female. She was stabbed, shot and chopped to death by the mob.

According to Section 76 of the Jamaican Offences Against the Person Act of 1864, a maximum sentence of 10 years can be issued for committing the crime of “buggery”.

In 2011, before she took office, Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller said that she opposed discrimination against LGBT people and indicated a willingness to review the country’s criminalisation of homosexuality, but has since taken no action.

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