ST. JAMES, Jamaica — A 17-year-old gay teen was hacked and stabbed to death by a mob in Jamaica on Monday night.
Dwayne Jones of Paradise Rowe was dressed in female attire while dancing with another man in “Henessey Sundays,” a straight street party held at Irwin, St. James, when an unidentified woman recognized him and alerted other party goers who then “held onto the teen, searched him and discovered that he was in fact male,” reported Irie FM.
The crowd then set about stabbing and hacking Jones, whose body was dumped in bushes along a road.
According to reports obtained by Jamaican LGBT rights advocate, Maurice Tomlinson, no one tried to intervene and defend the teen, who occasionally dressed in drag, calling himself “Gully Queen.”
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Police discovered Jones’s body around 5 a.m. Tuesday.
Jamaica Forum of Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG) said they have documented nine cases of killing of LGBT people in Jamaica this year.
The group also reported a 400% rise in homophobic attacks since 2009.
Churches in Jamaica have also increased their anti-gay rhetoric, holding an anti-gay rally in St. James on June 23, 2013, led by Montego Bay Pastor Glendon Powell, a member of the Open Bible Standard Church based in Des Moines, Iowa.
“Despite this on-going slaughter of innocents, many Jamaicans, including attorney-at-law and senior member of the opposition political party, Ernest Smith, categorically deny that gay Jamaicans are under attack,” Tomlinson told LGBTQ Nation on Tuesday.
Tomlinson said that Jamaican officials refused to deal with the homophobic hate attacks, and instead claims that gays are “bringing it onto themselves.”
“This level of self-deception borders on the criminal,” he said.
Same-sex acts between two men is punishable in Jamaica with up to 10 years imprisonment and hard labor.
In 2012, Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller promised to repeal the British colonial anti-gay law, but back down after intense lobbying from religious groups.
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