Capital punishment for homosexuality
Capital punishment for homosexuality was historically implemented by a number of countries worldwide. It currently remains a legal punishment in several countries and regions, all of which have sharia-based criminal laws. Being prescribed by the law does not necessarily mean that the penalty is carried out in practice. Gay people also face extrajudicial killings by state and non-state actors, as in Chechnya in 2019.
In current state laws
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. Sources cited by ILGA indicate that there is a "broad consensus amongst scholars that execution was the appropriate punishment if homosexual acts could be proven”. The sharia category of zina, which according to some traditional Islamic legal schools may entail the hadd 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.
- Brunei's Sharia Penal Code, implemented in stages since 2014, prescribes death by stoning as punishment for same-sex relations. 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.
- Iran. Homosexual 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; 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. Though the grounds for execution in Iran are difficult to track, there is evidence that several people were hanged for homosexual behaviour in 2005-2006 and in 2016, in some cases on dubious charges of rape.
- Mauritania. According to a 1984 law, Muslim men can be stoned for engaging in homosexual sex, though no executions have occurred so far. The country has observed a moratorium on the execution of the death penalty since 1987.
- Nigeria, where several northern states have adopted sharia-based criminal laws, though no executions are known.
- Saudi Arabia, which does not have codified criminal laws. 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. There are unconfirmed reports that two cross-dressing Pakistani nationals were killed by Saudi authorities in 2017, which Saudi officials have denied.
- Somalia, where Islamic courts have imposed sharia-based death penalties in some southern regions.
- : Legal experts disagree on whether the federal law of the United Arab Emirates prescribes the death penalty for consensual gay sex or only for rape. Article 354 of the Federal Penal Code states: "shall be sentenced to death penalty, whoever used coercion in having sexual intercourse with a female or sodomy with a male." 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. Although application of Zina provisions in the UAE appears to be limited to prosecution of rape, some courts have gone beyond codified laws and passed sentences of stoning or flogging, thus theoretically making same-sex relationship liable to death penalty. A recent Amnesty International report states that they are not aware of any death sentences for homosexual acts.
Extrajudicial killings
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. 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.
Report of vigilante executions, beatings, and torture have been reported in highly religious regions of Africa, in countries such as Uganda, South Africa, Kenya, Liberia, Ghana, Cameroon, and Senegal. In these countries, police turn a blind eye or even are complicit in the anti-gay violence.
History
Australia
Australian states and territories inherited British laws relating to homosexuality, and laws passed in nineteenth century colonial parliaments retained the provisions which made homosexual activity a capital crime until 1861. Most jurisdictions removed capital punishment, although in Victoria it remained a capital crime when committed with violence or to a person younger than the age of fourteen until 1949. The last person arrested for homosexual sex in Australia was a man in 1984 in Tasmania. The last part of Australia to legalise consensual homosexual sex between adults was Tasmania in 1997. In 2017, homosexual marriage was legalised.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. 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. Additionally, Joseph Fogg was hanged at Hobart on 26 February 1830 for an "unnatural crime", but the nature of the crime is unclear.
Nazi Germany
Despite numerous countries in Europe, the Americas and Asia beginning to decriminalise homosexuality by the mid 20th century, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party, with intense far-right nationalist support, outlawed homosexual groups and included homosexuals as one of the minority groups sent to death camps. An estimated 3000-9000 homosexuals died in concentration camps between 1933 and 1945, with another 2000-6000 survivors made to serve the rest of their sentence in prison under Paragraph 175.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.United Kingdom
From 1533 the capital felony for any person to "commit the detestable and abominable vice of buggery with mankind or beast", was repealed and re-enacted several times, until it was reinstated in 1563 remaining unchanged until 1861. The last execution took place on 27 November 1835 when James Pratt and John Smith were hanged at Newgate.One source claims the last execution for sodomy in the British Empire happened in the Colony of Tasmania in 1867.
United States and colonial America
Colonial America had the laws of the United Kingdom, and the revolutionary states took many of those laws as the basis of their own, in some cases verbatim. The last law where the death penalty was on the statute books was South Carolina, the old British law was not repealed until 1873, twelve years after the mother country.The number of times the penalty was carried out is unknown. Records support two executions, and a number of more uncertain convictions, such as "crimes against nature".