Leading Gay Activist Found Murdered in Jamaica
The
Advocate, June 11, 2004
The mutilated body of Jamaica’s best-known gay rights
activist was found Wednesday at his home in what the Caribbean island’s sole
gay rights group is calling a possible hate crime. A friend discovered Brian
Williamson, 59, lying in a pool of blood with several chop wounds, hours after
he was seen meeting with two men at his Kingston home, police corporal Dahlia
Garrick said. Williamson was a founding member of the Jamaica Forum for
Lesbians, All-Sexuals, and Gays, or J-FLAG, the country’s only gay rights
group. Among other work, the group provided counseling to gays and lesbians
who had suffered physical abuse and harassment, a common occurrence on an
island where homophobia is widespread.
In a statement, J-FLAG mourned Williamson’s death and
called for a full investigation by police. “The condition of his body...and
his visibility as a gay man lead us to suspect this is a hate-related
crime,” the group said. Police, however, were investigating Williamson’s
murder as a robbery, not a hate crime, Garrick said, adding that a safe
belonging to Williamson was missing and that his room had been ransacked.
“The evidence here suggests that it seems to have been just a robbery,”
Garrick said. She said police were searching for the two men, who according to
one witness had asked for money when Williamson met them at the door.
Williamson helped found J-FLAG in 1998 in a failed
attempt to pressure the government to repeal Jamaica’s 140-year-old sodomy
law, which prohibits sexual acts between men but not women. Similar sodomy
laws are on the books in the Caribbean countries of Barbados, Trinidad, and
the Bahamas. Williamson was among the first Jamaicans to speak out against
discrimination against gays and people with HIV/AIDS, regularly giving
television and radio interviews without using a pseudonym or masking his
identity. He was also known for providing safe meeting spaces for gays and
lesbians. “He was so courageous,” J-FLAG volunteer Tony Hron said. “He
never stopped to think, Oh, I might get in trouble for this, so in that sense
he was very selfless.” Hron said Williamson had not reported receiving any
threats. “He would always say, ‘You know, I’ve lived here for years, and
I’ve never had a problem, so I don’t feel targeted,’” Hron said.
Nevertheless, reported attacks and harassment against
gays persist in Jamaica, particularly in Kingston’s gritty inner city. At
least 30 gay men are believed to have been murdered since 1997, according to
published reports. Popular “dancehall” songs often advocate violence
against gays, and Jamaican governor general Sir Howard Cooke has suggested
barring gays from the Boy Scouts. The human rights group Amnesty International
has expressed concern, saying that in January singers at a concert before an
audience of 30,000 called for violence against gay men, telling the audience
to “kill them.” In recent years, dozens of gay men and women have fled the
island for the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States to avoid
persecution, according to J-FLAG, whose Web site contains the notice: “Due
to the potential for violent retribution, we cannot publish the exact location
of our office.” In a statement last week, Amnesty International urged
Jamaican prime minister P.J. Patterson to publicly denounce violence against
gays and repeal the sodomy law. Patterson has said he will not press to change
the law.
[Home] [World] [Jamaica]
