11 August 2013

Mob Murdered 16 year old Transgender. ,dwayne Jones in Jamica

If some people are called animals ,don't dispute, they merit the name , this is babaric,
animalistic ,weird and uncalled for,are transgenders not human beings,don't they deserve thesame right as females and male genders,read the story below,on her a 16 year old boy was
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.
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.

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