Capital punishment for homosexuality

  Death penalty for homosexuality

  Death penalty on books but not applied

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”.[2] The sharia category of zina (illicit sexual intercourse), which according to some traditional Islamic legal schools may entail the hadd (sharia-prescribed) 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.[3][4]
• Brunei's Sharia Penal Code, implemented in stages since 2014, prescribes death by stoning as punishment for same-sex relations.[5] 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.[6]
• Iran.[7] 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.[8] 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.[9][10]
• Mauritania.[7] According to a 1984 law, Muslim men can be stoned for engaging in homosexual sex, though no executions have occurred so far.[11] The country has observed a moratorium on the execution of the death penalty since 1987.[12]
• Nigeria, where several northern states have adopted sharia-based criminal laws, though no executions are known.[13]
• Saudi Arabia, which does not have codified criminal laws.[7] 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.[11] There are unconfirmed reports that two cross-dressing Pakistani nationals were killed by Saudi authorities in 2017, which Saudi officials have denied.[7]
• Somalia ( Jubaland), where Islamic courts have imposed sharia-based death penalties in some southern regions.[7][11]
•  United Arab Emirates: 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.[11] 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."[14] 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.[15] A recent Amnesty International report states that they are not aware of any death sentences for homosexual acts.[11]

In some regions, gay people have been murdered by Islamist militias, such as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in parts of Iraq and Syria and the Houthi movement in Yemen.[7][16]

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.[17] 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.[18][19]

Report of vigilante executions, beatings, and torture[20][21][22][23] have been reported in highly religious regions of Africa, in countries such as Uganda,[24] South Africa,[25] Kenya,[26] Liberia, Ghana, Cameroon, and Senegal. In these countries, police turn a blind eye[21][27] or even are complicit in the anti-gay violence.[28]