CNN International: Black Lesbian Activist Raped & Murdered By Violent Black Heterosexual Men In South Africa!!!
Alleged rape, killing of gay rights campaigner sparks call for action
- She is attacked after dropping off her girlfriend in a township near Johannesburg
- She is raped, stabbed with broken glass several times and hit with rocks, group says
- South Africa sets up a task force to address hate crimes
(CNN) — A 24-year-old who was stabbed to death in South Africa is the victim of “corrective rape,” gay rights activists said Thursday, a crime where men attack lesbians in an attempt to reverse their sexual orientation.
Noxolo Nogwaza was attacked late last month after dropping off her girlfriend in Kwa-Thema township near Johannesburg.
She was raped, stabbed with broken glass several times and her face pummelled with rocks, Human Rights Watch said.
“A beer bottle, a large rock and used condoms were found on and near her body,” the rights group said.
Earlier this week, the nation’s Justice Ministry set up a task force to address hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender South Africans.
The task team was set up after activists worldwide signed an online petition demanding the South African government act to halt the attacks. The call to petition intensified after Nogwaza’s killing.
Police in Gauteng province, where the township is located, said they have not found any evidence of a hate crime and an investigation is under way.
But some gay rights activists disagree.
“Her attack is a case of corrective rape,” said gay rights activist Lydia Kunu. “Neighbors said they heard her attackers telling her, ‘We will take the lesbian out of you. ‘ They were mocking her and asking her why she acts like a man.”
Kunu is a community networking organizer for Ekurhuleni Pride Organizing Committee, where Nogwaza worked as well.
The death has sparked renewed calls for action as rights groups warn of escalated homophobic attacks.
“In these cases, killing is the end of the spectrum,” said Siphokazi Mthathi, the South Africa director for Human Rights Watch. “It follows a trail of other problems — rape, violence, problem accessing health care and violation by police.”
Mthathi said it is hard to get an overall number of the people subjected to violence because attacks go unreported over the distrust for the judicial system.
“There’s a great deal of under-representation because they are going to face secondary victimization,” she said. “We’ve heard of cases where when they report a rape, the police tell them, ‘aren’t you happy that you got a real man for a change.'”
The use of the term “corrective rape” started three years ago after the rape and murder of Eudy Simelane, a well-known soccer player who lived openly as a lesbian.
Nogwaza’s attack is similar to the soccer player’s in some ways: police say they were both raped and stabbed to death. And just like Nogwaza, Simelane’s body was dumped in a public place in the same township .
Two men were found guilty in the soccer star’s death and sentenced to prison terms, but the judges quashed any motions linking her attack to her sexual orientation.
“Nogwaza’s death is the latest in a long series of sadistic crimes against lesbians, gay men, and transgender people in South Africa,” said Dipika Nath, researcher in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights program at Human Rights Watch.
“Police and other South African officials fail to acknowledge that members of the LGBT community are raped, beaten and killed simply because of how they look or identify, and they are attacked by men who then walk freely, boasting of their exploits,” said Nath.
A police spokesman slammed the accusations, and said authorities are working to ensure safety for all.
“It is our responsibility to provide safety, and we take that job seriously,” said Col. Tshisikhawe Ndou, the provincial spokesman for Gauteng.
The spokesman said there have been no arrests in Nogwaza’s killing, but investigations are under way.
“We’re following some leads, and in this specific case, we’d like to ask anyone with information to contact the police,” he said. “They can even do so anonymously if they are scared.”
Outspoken gay rights activists have faced harassment and attacks in the nation, Human Rights Watch said.
Homosexuality is illegal in most African countries, based on rules left over from the British colonial era when sodomy laws were introduced.
However, the post-apartheid constitution bans prejudice against gays in South Africa, the first African nation to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Despite the law, attacks based on sexual orientation are still going on, rights groups said.
The new task force is scheduled to start working in July. It will address issues such as whether police and social workers should undergo sensitivity training, and whether rapists who target sexual minorities should get harsher sentences.
Mthathi said having the anti-prejudicial constitution in place is an indicator that the task force alone won’t resolve underlying problems.
“South Africa is a very misogynist and homophobic society,” she said. “We welcome the task team, but it won’t solve social problems. We need to address the culture of accountability in judicial and social institutions, we need to address the attitudes … disrupt the culture of impunity.”
Al Jazerra Article: Pakistan Told The US Government Osama Bin Laden Hiding In Pakistan Since 2009!!!
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The circumstances and timing of Osama bin Laden’s death can be explained by one word: Politics.
Danny Schechter Last Modified: 06 May 2011 18:04
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The tip on bin Laden’s whereabouts came in back in 2010. You have to assume the house was under surveillance. If they thought they “bagged him” they would be watching closely and choosing the right time to deep six the target (I actually wrote this lead paragraph sentence before reading this “Breaking News” from the Washington Post: “CIA had secret outpost in Abbottabad”). “The CIA maintained a safe house in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad for a small team of spies who conducted extensive surveillance over a period of months on the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed by US special operations forces this week (US officials),” the newspaper reported. Both Afghan agents and Pakistani intelligence now say they told the US about the house as early as 2009. So, they knew he was there. That was a reason drones weren’t used. The CIA wanted a more controlled high profile and dramatic intervention for public consumption, for what, in the end, was a marketing campaign – marketing the centrality of the agency’s role in a war whose main audience is not on the battlefield, but in the homeland. They needed a heroic narrative to revive support for a war they have been losing, and a scalp to sell to a conflict-weary and disillusioned population. It is no surprise that the Seals labelled OBL “Geronimo”, reviving memories of fighting guerrilla-style Indian wars. Muslim renegades are apparently our new “savages”. The Native Americans took their enemy’s head and hair – Donald Trump, beware; we shoot out their eyes and waterboard their brains. The target was not “the terror mastermind” but the American people. It was an exercise in political mobilisation and perception management. It was the ultimate media operation, relying on many of the tactics used in Iraq that I document in my film “WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception”. We are as conscious about what we say as what we do, we always fashion a propaganda storyline demonising the enemy who is often compared to Hitler. Bin Laden lived in a “million dollar mansion” (it cost $48,000 to buy six years ago). He was heavily armed (he wasn’t). He hid behind female human shields (he didn’t). Who cares about facts… this was a TV orchestrated event. The Daily Mail in London complained that their raising questions led to being derided as “cheese eating surrender monkeys”. They could have captured him, but that would lead to the hassle of putting him on trial. Besides, what if he revealed his long connection with the CIA and US officials? Can’t have that. So the kill order was given, along with a quick disposal of the body, mafia-style (as in “sleeping with the fishes”). The legal justification was self-defence, an argument that any government can use to dispatch its enemies. Timing is everything Why was it done, and why now? It was certainly not because al-Qaeda is ascendant. Our experts believe only 100 of them remain in Afghanistan, where their capacity has been diminished. Remember: al-Qaeda is not a centralised top-down machine but a decentralised and sophisticated network. We can only surmise all the factors, but the larger context here has fallen away with the focus on the narrowness of the dirty details, many calculated to inspire enthusiasm for the bravery and heroism of the death squad, but not any reflection of the strategy and larger context of the events. Even as the cover stories about what happened fell away into the foggy soup of covert action and its contradictions, it devolved into to a case of excuses about haste – ‘he said that but didn’t mean it’. Even as the raid inspires mass euphoria and self-righteous blood lust, the full meaning of it is missing in a media that is much better at the how than the why. First of all, this operation reflected the reorganisation of the national security state with the CIA taking over from the soldiers. This operation was Leon Panetta’s last hurrah as Spook-in-Chief before he uses his covert ops portfolio to take over the Pentagon. Second, that most hyped soldier’s soldier, Generalissimo David Petraeus, who has failed to end the insurgency in Afghanistan (and who is now warring on Pakistan) is being moved into Panetta’s job. A Navy Seal Commander has now been promoted to the Central Command. The bottom line: public accountability and open disclosure has become a thing of the past. No wonder the ongoing campaign to ‘get WikiLeaks’ before it exposes more secrets. Creating an image As the military privatises wars, and, in effect, goes underground, there is a recognition that, despite the size of our forces and the power of our technology, we have, in effect, been losing to peasants with suicide belts and unconventional tactics we continually underestimate. Writes former assistant Treasury secretary Paul Craig Roberts:
Like the Canadian Mounties, in the end, Navy Seal Unit 6, armed with lethal weapons and an attack dog, got their man – with not inconsiderable collateral damage – in what the New York Times called an “extremely one-sided encounter”. It was, let’s admit, a liquidation, right out of the KGB playbook. Politically – and yes, there was a political agenda here too – the bin Laden operation was part of a chain of calculated presidential promoting exercises including the announcement of his re-election campaign and massive fund-raising effort, his deals with the Repubs on the budget, the release of his birth certificate, his interview with Oprah, his shakeup of sorts of the Pentagon, his bringing the CEO of GE and William Daley into the White House, on and on. The “new” Obama wants to be seen as a warrior, not a wuss, as long as he is not forced to go after Wall Street. Right now, his victory is viewed widely for what it is; vengeance. Or in the words of the street, “payback.” Nailing bin Laden has to be seen in the context of his Spring offencive grounded in symbolic advances, to get his poll numbers up and his campaign rolling, to make him look invincible, and to “triangulate” by moving to the centre and pre-empting/co-opting the right. He now has Bush and Cheney praising him. Concludes Roberts:
Adds Tom Engelhardt:
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Gayblackcanada 