Capital punishment for homosexuality

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Capital punishment for homosexuality has been implemented by a number of countries in their history. It currently remains a legal punishment in several countries and regions, all of which is in accordance to the sharia-based criminal laws. Gay people also face extrajudicial killings by state and non-state actors, as in Chechnya in Russia in 2019.

Imposition of the death penalty for homosexuality may be classified as judicial murder of gay people, which has been analyzed as a form of genocide.^[1]

In current state laws[]

  Death penalty for homosexuality

  Death penalty, unenforced

As of July 2020, the following jurisdictions prescribe the death penalty for homosexuality:

• Afghanistan. A new Penal Code enacted in February 2018 explicitly criminalises same-sex sexual conduct.^{[citation needed]} Sources cited by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGBTIA) indicate that there is a "broad consensus amongst scholars that execution was the appropriate punishment if homosexual acts could be proven”.^[2] The sharia category of zina (illicit sexual intercourse), which according to some traditional Islamic legal schools may entail the hadd (sharia-prescribed) punishment of stoning, when strict evidential requirements are met. The Hanafi school, prevalent in Afghanistan, does not regard homosexual acts as a hadd crime, although Afghan judges may potentially apply the death penalty for a number of reasons. No known death sentences for homosexuality have been passed since the end of Taliban rule in 2001.^[3][4] However, following the 2021 Taliban offensive, fears of reprisal including death for those suspected of homosexuality were renewed.^[5]
• Brunei's Sharia Penal Code, implemented in stages since 2014, prescribes death by stoning as punishment for same-sex relations.^[6] After international backlash, in May 2019, the Sultan of Brunei explained that a "de facto" moratorium on the execution of the death penalty has been in force in the country for the last two decades.^[7]
• Iran.^[8] Male-male anal intercourse is declared a capital offense in Iran's Islamic Penal Code, enacted in 1991. Articles 233 through 241 criminalise both female and male same-sex activity; for a first offence, the death penalty only applies to some cases of male-male penile-anal intercourse, with female-female activity and other cases of male-male activity being punished by flogging instead of execution. Under the combination of articles 136 and 238, a woman convicted for the fourth time of the crime of musaheqeh (tribadism) is to be executed; there is no death penalty for non-genital-genital female-female sexual conduct.^[9] Though the grounds for execution in Iran are difficult to track, there is evidence that several gay men were executed in 2005-2006 and in 2016, mostly on charges of rape.^[10][11]
• Iraq. Although homosexuality itself is legal since 2003^[12][13] LGBT can be charged under public indecency law 401.^[12] People face execution by vigilantes and Sharia courts.^[14]
• Mauritania.^[8] According to a 1984 law, Muslim men can be stoned for engaging in homosexual sex, though no executions have occurred so far.^[15] The country has observed a moratorium on the execution of the death penalty since 1987.^[16]
• Nigeria, where several northern states have adopted sharia-based criminal laws, though no executions are known.^[17]
• Saudi Arabia, which does not have codified criminal laws.^[8] According to the country's interpretation of sharia, a married man who commits sodomy, or a non-Muslim who engages in sodomy with a Muslim, can be stoned to death.^[15] There are unconfirmed reports that two cross-dressing Pakistani nationals were killed by Saudi authorities in 2017, which Saudi officials have denied.^[8] No other executions are known.^{[citation needed]}
• Somalia ( Jubaland), where insurgents and Somali officials have imposed sharia-based death penalties in some regions.^[8][15]
• United Arab Emirates Article 354 of the Federal Penal Code states: "shall be sentenced to the death penalty, whoever used coercion in having sexual intercourse with a female or sodomy with a male."^[18] In addition, same-sex relations fall under the traditional Sharia category of Zina, which encompasses any sexual intercourse outside of marriage, all of which are banned in the UAE. Some courts have gone beyond codified laws and passed sentences of stoning or flogging, thus making same-sex relationships liable to the death penalty.^[19] Some legal experts argue that the death penalty is only for rape.^[15] However, the laws contradict this and the death penalty is used for homosexuality.
• Yemen Punishment for homosexuality in Yemen can originate from the codified penal code, or from people seeking to enforce traditional Islamic morality. Article 264 of the national penal code prohibits private consensual homosexual acts between adult men. The stipulated punishment in the law for unmarried men is 100 lashes and up to a year in prison. The law stipulates that married men convicted of homosexuality are to be put to death.^[20] Article 268 of the national penal code prohibits private consensual homosexual acts between adult women. The law stipulates that premeditated acts of lesbianism are punished with up to three years in prison.^[20] In addition to the penal code, punishment for homosexuality can originate from people seeking to enforce traditional Islamic morality within their own family or for the broader society. In vigilante cases such as this, the punishment for homosexuality is oftentimes death.^[21]

Extrajudicial killings[]

In some regions, gay people have been murdered by Islamist militias, such as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in parts of Iraq and Syria and the Houthi movement in Yemen.^[8][22]

Anti-gay purges in the Chechen Republic, a predominantly Muslim region of Russia, have included forced disappearances — secret abductions, imprisonment, and torture — by local Chechen authorities targeting persons based on their perceived sexual orientation.^[23] An unknown number of men, who authorities detained on suspicion of being gay or bisexual, have reportedly died after being held in what human rights groups and eyewitnesses have called concentration camps.^[24][25]

Report of vigilante executions, beatings, and torture^{[26][27][28][29]} have been reported in heavily Christian and Muslim regions of Africa, in countries such as Uganda,^[30] South Africa,^[31] Kenya,^[32] Liberia, Ghana, Cameroon, and Senegal. In these countries, police turn a blind eye^[27][33] or even are complicit in the anti-gay violence.^[34]

History[]

Australia[]

Australian states and territories first passed laws against homosexuality during the colonial era, and nineteenth-century colonial parliaments retained provisions which made homosexual activity a capital offence until 1861.^[35] Most jurisdictions removed capital punishment as a sentence for homosexual activity, although in Victoria it remained as such when committed while also inflicting bodily harm or to a person younger than the age of fourteen until 1949.^[35] The last person arrested for homosexual sex in Australia was a man in 1984 in Tasmania.^[36] The last part of Australia to legalise consensual homosexual sex between adults was Tasmania in 1997. In 2017, same-sex marriage was legalised by the Australian government.^{[citation needed]}

Seven men are known in Australian history to have been executed for sodomy; however, six of those seven cases involved the sexual abuse of minors.^[37][38] In the remaining case, Alexander Browne was hanged at Sydney on 22 December 1828 for sodomy with his shipmate William Lyster on the whaler Royal Sovereign; Lyster was also convicted and sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted before execution.^[39] Additionally, Joseph Fogg was hanged at Hobart on 26 February 1830 for an "unnatural crime", but the nature of the crime is unclear.^[40]

Germany[]

During the period of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, homosexual men were persecuted with thousands being imprisoned in concentration camps (and eventually extermination camps) by the Nazi regime. Roughly 5,000–15,000 were sent to the concentration camps, with the death rate being estimated to be as high as 60%. Homosexuals in the camps suffered an unusual degree of cruelty by their captors, including being used as target practice on shooting ranges.^[41][42][43]

Sudan[]

In July 2020, the sodomy law that previously punished gay men with up to 100 lashes for the first offence, five years in jail for the second and the death penalty the third time around was abolished, with new legislation reducing the penalty to prison terms ranging from five years to life. Sudanese LGBT+ activists hailed the reform as a 'great first step', but said it was not enough yet, and the end goal should be the decriminalisation of gay sexual activity altogether.^[44]

United Kingdom[]

From 1533, under the Buggery Act 1533, capital felony for any person to "commit the detestable and abominable vice of buggery with mankind or beast", was enacted, repealed and re-enacted several times by the Crown, until it was reinstated permanently in 1563. Homosexual activity remained a capital offence until 1861.^[45] The last execution took place on 27 November 1835 when James Pratt and John Smith were hanged outside Newgate Prison in London.

United States[]

During the colonial era of American history, the various European nations which established colonies in the Americas brought their pre-existing laws against homosexuality (which included capital punishment) with them. The establishment of the United States after their victory in the Revolutionary War did not bring about any changes in the status of capital punishment as a sentence for being convicted of homosexual behavior. Beginning in the 19th century, the various state legislatures passed legislation which ended the status of capital punishment being used for those who were convicted of homosexual behavior. South Carolina was the last state, in 1873, to repeal the death penalty for homosexual behaviour from its statute books. The number of times the penalty was carried out is unknown. Records show there were at least two executions, and a number of more convictions with vague labels, such as "crimes against nature".^[45]

Notes[]

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