Murder of Dwayne Jones
While voices on social media accused Jones of provoking his killers by cross-dressing in public, the murder was condemned by Jamaican educators and the country's Justice Minister.
Raised in an impoverished slum in Montego Bay, a city in northwest Jamaica, Jones faced bullying at high school from students who perceived his behaviour as effeminate.
[2][5] After a period sleeping in bushes and on beaches, he began squatting in a derelict house in the hills above Montego Bay with two transgender friends, Keke and Khloe, both 23 at the time of Jones' death.
[9] Writing for the International Business Times in the summer of 2013, the journalist Palash Gosh noted that while Jamaica was "awash in crime and violence, gays and lesbians are particularly prominent targets of wanton brutality.
[9] In the summer of 2013, Human Rights Watch carried out five weeks of fieldwork among Jamaica's LGBT community, reporting that over half of those interviewed had experienced violence as a result of their sexual orientation or gender identity, sometimes on more than one occasion.
[10] On the evening of 21 July 2013 – when Jones was 16 – she dressed in female clothing and attended a dance party called Henessey Sundays, held at a bar in the Irwin area with Keke and Khloe.
[15] In October 2013, a group of men set fire to the place in which Jones had lived as a squatter, forcing its four occupants to flee, in what was also believed to be an anti-LGBT hate crime.
[16] Everald Morgan, an officer at the St James Public Health Department, requested that police provide protection for the four youths made homeless by the arson attack, but they declined to do so.
[15] He added that "all well-thinking Jamaicans" should embrace "the principle of respect for the basic human rights of all persons" and express tolerance towards minority groups such as the LGBT community.
[2][20] Newton D. Duncan, the UWI Professor of Paediatric Surgery, similarly noted that the "overwhelming majority" of Jamaicans believed that cross-dressers are homosexuals and deserve punishment.
[21] Writing in the Jamaican broadsheet The Gleaner, Carolyn Cooper, Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at UWI, condemned the group who committed Jones' murder.
He called on Jamaicans to be tolerant of LGBT individuals, and to focus on "rebuilding this great nation on the principles of inclusivity, love, equality and respect with no distinctions whatsoever".
[25] Also in The Gleaner, Sheila Veléz Martínez, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, condemned the murder as "alarming evidence" of the high rates of homophobia in Jamaican society.
[26] On 25 July, the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals & Gays (J-FLAG), an LGBT rights organisation, issued a public statement expressing their "deep concern" regarding the case, and offering their condolences to Jones' friends and family.
[28] Quality of Citizenship Jamaica organised a silent protest on July 31, 2013 to honour his memory and call on the government to lead a proper investigation and protect LGBT Jamaicans.
Human rights organisation Jamaicans for Justice called on Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller and religious leaders to condemn the murder, also commenting on what they saw as a lack of media coverage and public outrage about the incident, adding that "we must ask ourselves what this says about us as a people.
Nevertheless, the circumstances of [Jones'] murder provide a snapshot of the current situation facing many LGBT people in Jamaica: a high risk of violence, vulnerability heightened by poverty and family rejection, and mixed responses from both the authorities and the public."
