Those deaths include the 2005 murder of Lenford “Steve” Harvey, a former leader of the group Jamaica AIDS Support for Life. The attackers dragged mattresses, clothing and personal documents into the front yard and burned them to a crisp.Ĭontents of the home firebombed by anti-gay attackersĪT LEAST 20 OTHER GAYS in Jamaica have been killed in the past 15 years. Not quite three months after Jones’ death, attackers firebombed the home where he had lived, and where four roommates still lived. Moreover, little has been done to ensure protection for Khloe Kouture and his other roommates,who all lived with Jones in an abandoned house in Montego Bay’s middle-class Porto Bello neighborhood. The Jamaican government should be protecting everyone’s rights and safety, and that includes people who do not conform to society’s expectations of how each gender should behave.”Ī year after Jones’ murder, no arrests have been made. Graeme Reid, director for gay issues at Human Rights Watch, urged Jamaican authorities “to send an unequivocal message that there will be zero tolerance for violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Jamaica is famous for its Caribbean beaches, waterfalls and mountains, a nation that promotes its relaxed attitudes with tourism ads basking in a soundtrack of Bob Marley’s lilting “One Love.” Now it has also gained a reputation as a hostile home for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people.įor that reason, international gay-rights groups have targeted the country. The violence has caused some Jamaicans to flee their homeland and seek asylum elsewhere, including in the United States. State Department’s most recent report on Jamaican human rights, issued in 2013, cited “serious human rights abuses,” including lesbians subjected to “corrective” rapes, and deaths of gays against a backdrop of general police indifference. In weeks to come, Jones’ death in July 2013 became a new symbol of violence against homosexuals in Jamaica. The attackers chased him down, beat him, stabbed and shot him, then drove over him in a car. The mob had caught his 16-year-old friend, Dwayne Jones. Kouture, 23, emerged onto a narrow road dressed as a man, and began the long walk to the abandoned house that he and his friends had called home for the last month and a half.Įxhausted, he made his way past police officers who had gathered there. Naked – except for the three pairs of panties he had put on that night to mask his male genitalia – he found a man’s red sleeveless T-shirt and a pair of boy’s denim shorts hanging on a clothesline. He rubbed at his makeup and tore off his shiny black wig, hot pink blouse and printed leggings as he ran through the darkness of the Montego Bay woods. Khloe Kouture behind cover after the ordeal