Fear and Loathing

UK: Reports Big Rise in Hate Crime, Citing Brexit and Terrorist Attacks

The referendum on British membership in the European Union and several terrorist attacks, including a suicide bombing after a concert in Manchester, England, have helped drive hate crimes in Britain to record levels, official figures showed on Tuesday.

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Egypt: Human Rights and solidarity in Egypt’s LGBTQ crisis

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It’s a sick and repellent paradox that the Egyptian state media smears Egyptian LGBTQ people as tools of foreign influences, while they’ve been largely abandoned by their absentee, self-styled friends in northern LGBTQ groups. 

Azerbaijani: Gay men and trans women were suddenly rounded up in Azerbaijan. Here’s why.

Early in September, an investigative journalism coalition called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) released a report on something called the Azerbaijani Laundromat, apparently a slush fund that for two years laundered $2.9 billion in cash that helped Azerbaijani elites and officials buy luxury goods and that paid European lobbyists and politicians to support Azerbaijan. 

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U.N. Officials Condemn Arrests of Gays in Azerbaijan, Egypt and Indonesia

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United Nations officials on Friday condemned the recent mass arrests of gay and transgender people in Azerbaijan, Egypt and Indonesia, saying that the authorities in those countries had violated international law by detaining, mistreating and torturing them.