Fiji killings highlight homophobia

BNews, 5 July 2001

The motive for this week's gruesome murder of the head of the Fiji Red Cross, 
John Scott, and his partner Greg Scrivener, has not yet been established. Given that 
Fiji has a corrupt and inefficient police force and no legally recognised 
government, it may never be. But it seems likely that hatred of gay men played a 
major role, even if political or other factors also played a part.

The two men were hacked to death with a cane knife at their home at Tamavua. 
Scott was born in Fiji of British parents, Scrivener was a New Zealander. They had 
been together for 22 years. Scrivener's sister, Janice Giles, has accused the Fiji 
police of covering up the real motive behind the killings.She said there was 
extreme homophobia in Fiji, particularly in the police force.

Sex between men is illegal in Fiji, the laws originally introduced in British colonial 
times still in force nearly 40 years after they were repealed in Britain itself. The 
same is true in India, Malaysia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Jamaica and many other ex-
colonial countries. These laws are of course sporadically enforced, but the fact that 
post-colonial governments, of varying political complexions, have refused to 
abolish them highlights the strange phenomenon of third-world homophobia.

The most extreme examples at present are in Africa, where leaders like Robert 
Mugabe in Zimbabwe are whipping up anti-gay sentiment. They do this 
presumably because they think it will be popular and divert attention from their 
countries' economic problems. But the same pattern can be seen in the Anwar 
Ibrahim affair in Malaysia, in the antics of Hindu fundamentalist politicians in 
India, and also in the Caribbean, where gay cruiseships from the US have been 
banned from some islands.

Third-world homophobia seems to have several sources. In the Pacific and the 
Caribbean, one legacy of colonialism has been fundamentalist Christianity. This is 
reinforced by economic resentment. Gay men are usually seen as rich, white and 
foreign, using their dollars and deutschmarks to corrupt the local youth - 
sometimes with good reason. The advent of AIDS has also given gay men a bad 
name, although in most of these countries AIDS is overwhelmingly heterosexual.

The most curious aspect of this is that many of these countries have an indigenous 
culture of homosexuality - India and Sri Lanka do, all Muslim countries do, and 
most Pacific societies do. This is conveniently ignored by western-educated 
politicians like Mugabe or Mahathir Mahommed, who associate homosexuality 
exclusively with the western "gay" stereotype. While prominent white gay men 
like John Scott are sometimes the victims of this culture of homophobia, it is 
presumably the unseen and unknown homosexual men of developing countries 
who pay the heaviest price.