The Abominable Crime documentary is having an increasingly significant impact on discussions of homophobia in Jamaica, helped in part by the strong cultural tailwinds created by the recent legalization of gay marriage by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Three years after being released, the documentary continues to be requested for film festival and community screenings. It is also being widely used as a community engagement tool by LBGTI activists and educators in Jamaica and around the world.
Read the blog post by Pulitzer Center grantee Micah Fink about his film The Abominable Crime here.
In December 2013 and early 2014, writer Kwame Dawes and photographer Andre Lambertson traveled to Jamaica to investigate the experience of people living with HIV/AIDS there, including how they endure homophobia and shame in the largely Christian culture. This multimedia presentation incorporates the documentary “To Disclose or Not?” as well as eight video poems produced in response to that trip.
Watch the full documentary and video poems by Pulitzer Center grantees Kwame Dawes and Andre Lambertson for VQR.
Over the years, we’ve supported a number of projects on the problem of homophobia in Jamaica. The work has been highly praised in the U.S., but we also hope that it will have impact in the place where it matters most: Jamaica. For that reason we were surprised and pleased when Pulitzer Center grantee Micah Fink’s documentary “The Abominable Crime” received favorable notice in The Jamaica Gleaner, the country’s oldest newspaper.
Discrimination against the LGBT community in Jamaica is sanctioned by the country’s legal code, endorsed from the pulpits of its churches and deeply embedded in popular culture. Micah’s film follows the story of two Jamaicans, a man and a woman, who were forced to leave Jamaica because of their sexual orientation.
“This is a film that gives voice to gay Jamaicans forced to flee their homeland due to endemic anti-gay violence,” Micah told the newspaper. “I am hoping that people will come to understand the damage that has been done by Jamaica’s culture of homophobia.”
It’s not just the Russian flags fluttering from atop public buildings. Everything has changed in Crimea, writes Pulitzer Center grantee Dimiter Kenarov.
“Nearly a year after Putin’s annexation, the Crimean Peninsula—unrecognized as Russian by the vast majority of U.N. countries, and facing severe international isolation—is virtually an island. The place feels sad and forlorn—like an abandoned amusement park. Gone are the bustling days of tourism, of boisterous vacationers. Foreigners have become as rare a sight here as they were during the Soviet era.”
Crimean residents had legitimate complaints about Ukrainian rule when they voted overwhelmingly last March to rejoin Russia, but Moscow, with its supposedly more dynamic economy, has hardly offered a better alternative, reports Dimiter in this dispatch for Foreign Policy.
“Most understood that moving from one country to another would not be easy, but the real hardships still appeared distant and abstract back then, obscured by a patriotic carnival of flags and songs. But with the holidays over, the reality of the new Crimea has reasserted itself. For better or worse, Crimea is Russian now and there is no turning back.”
AN AGE OLD PROBLEM
Pulitzer Center student fellow Michelle Ferng, a Johns Hopkins Global Health Scholar, sheds light on an underreported epidemic: “Older adults worldwide suffering from abuse and abandonment, often by those closest to them. The majority of victims remain hidden from public view. Only rarely do extreme cases command attention.”
In her feature story for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health magazine, Michelle writes that “one of the most tragic facets of the coming demographic shift is elder abuse, which can take various forms: physical, psychological/ emotional, financial/material and sexual, as well as abandonment or neglect.”
Examining the crisis in Peru, Michelle documents the cases of several older adults who have been left to fend for themselves. It is a surprising problem that appears to be growing across the region. “In many ways, time is running out,” says Michelle. “Between 2000 and 2050, the proportion of the world’s population over 60 years old is projected to double from about 11 to 22 percent, according to the WHO. One million people turn 60 every month, and 80 percent of these are in the developing world.”
Discrimination against the LGBT community in Jamaica is sanctioned by the country’s legal code, endorsed from the pulpits of its churches and deeply embedded in popular culture. Micah’s film follows the story of two Jamaicans, a man and a woman, who were forced to leave Jamaica because of their sexual orientation.
“This is a film that gives voice to gay Jamaicans forced to flee their homeland due to endemic anti-gay violence,” Micah told the newspaper. “I am hoping that people will come to understand the damage that has been done by Jamaica’s culture of homophobia.”
I call this roofless enclosure My safe house, my shelter—
on this slab of concrete I learn to soften my bones to sleep.
This is my bed, this is my shelter
I call the murmur of people in the lane my assurance, my living
I call my clothes washed and folded my security, my superiority
this is my assurance, my dignity
I call the day coming up again, the water cupped in my hands to cleanse me
my anointing, my blessing, at seven each morning, I walk, my feet, my bruised
carriage moving throng this city of fallen men and women, my treasure
this is my anointing, my treasure.
You ask me how I live through this, I say that my sin of pride is my hope,
I say that my bitter condescension is my strength I say my perfect English—I am better than them, better.
You may not like me—this does not burden me. Come seven in the morning I am stubbornly here,
filled with secrets I will keep inside me, head held above the teeming mob.
Every encounter is a transaction for food, I know how to ask, not to beg,
I know how to negotiate my need, I train people to do mercy for me—it is a gift;
this is the art of the survivor I have mastered this art,
I have pawned my license for a bowl of rice, I have calculated and I have lost.
My pride, my bed, my shelter, my anointing, my hope, my dignity, my reason, my reason.
Pulitzer Center grantees Kwame Dawes and Andre Lamberson are exploring the shame culture that isolates homosexuals and persons with HIV/AIDS in Jamaica in their project: Shame: HIV/AIDS and the Church in Jamaica.
I call this roofless enclosure My safe house, my shelter—
on this slab of concrete I learn to soften my bones to sleep.
This is my bed, this is my shelter
I call the murmur of people in the lane my assurance, my living
I call my clothes washed and folded my security, my superiority
this is my assurance, my dignity
I call the day coming up again, the water cupped in my hands to cleanse me
my anointing, my blessing, at seven each morning, I walk, my feet, my bruised
carriage moving throng this city of fallen men and women, my treasure
this is my anointing, my treasure.
You ask me how I live through this, I say that my sin of pride is my hope,
I say that my bitter condescension is my strength I say my perfect English—I am better than them, better.
You may not like me—this does not burden me. Come seven in the morning I am stubbornly here,
filled with secrets I will keep inside me, head held above the teeming mob.
Every encounter is a transaction for food, I know how to ask, not to beg,
I know how to negotiate my need, I train people to do mercy for me—it is a gift;
this is the art of the survivor I have mastered this art,
I have pawned my license for a bowl of rice, I have calculated and I have lost.
My pride, my bed, my shelter, my anointing, my hope, my dignity, my reason, my reason.
Pulitzer Center grantees Kwame Dawes and Andre Lamberson are exploring the shame culture that isolates homosexuals and persons with HIV/AIDS in Jamaica in their project: Shame: HIV/AIDS and the Church in Jamaica.
On October 21, prominent human rights group Human Rights Watch released a report detailing “intolerable levels of violence” against sexual and gender minorities in Jamaica.
Framed by the story of Dwayne Jones, a teenage transgender woman who was brutally murdered last year, and whose killers have not been arrested or charged, the report documents dozens of incidents of violence against LGBT people.
Simone Edwards shown here walking with her daughter Khayla. Edwards, one of the characters in “The Abominable Crime” documentary, was attacked and shot in Jamaica because she is a lesbian. Image by Common Good Productions. Jamaica, 2013.
I call this roofless enclosure My safe house, my shelter—
on this slab of concrete I learn to soften my bones to sleep.
This is my bed, this is my shelter
I call the murmur of people in the lane my assurance, my living
I call my clothes washed and folded my security, my superiority
this is my assurance, my dignity
I call the day coming up again, the water cupped in my hands to cleanse me
my anointing, my blessing, at seven each morning, I walk, my feet, my bruised
carriage moving throng this city of fallen men and women, my treasure
this is my anointing, my treasure.
You ask me how I live through this, I say that my sin of pride is my hope,
I say that my bitter condescension is my strength I say my perfect English—I am better than them, better.
You may not like me—this does not burden me. Come seven in the morning I am stubbornly here,
filled with secrets I will keep inside me, head held above the teeming mob.
Every encounter is a transaction for food, I know how to ask, not to beg,
I know how to negotiate my need, I train people to do mercy for me—it is a gift;
this is the art of the survivor I have mastered this art,
I have pawned my license for a bowl of rice, I have calculated and I have lost.
My pride, my bed, my shelter, my anointing, my hope, my dignity, my reason, my reason.
Pulitzer Center grantees Kwame Dawes and Andre Lamberson are exploring the shame culture that isolates homosexuals and persons with HIV/AIDS in Jamaica in their project: Shame: HIV/AIDS and the Church in Jamaica.
“The Abominable Crime” Wins Audience Award for Best Documentary
“The Abominable Crime” received the Audience Award for Best Documentary and a special mention in the juried awards at ’Roze Filmdagen,’ Amsterdam’s Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
The full-length documentary explores homophobia in Jamaica through the lives of Simone Edwards, who survives a hate crime shooting and flees the country to the Netherlands to protect herself and her daughter, and Maurice Tomlinson, a human rights lawyer whose marriage exposes him to personal danger. The documentary was supported by the Pulitzer Center from its earliest stages. The documentary grew out of a grant in 2009 from the Pulitzer Center to director Micah Fink to cover HIV in Jamaica, which resulted in the “Glass Closet” series for WNET's World Focusprogram.
Financial Times correspondent Robin Wigglesworth has been writing about capital markets for nine years. In 2013 he traveled across the Caribbean with producer-reporter Veronica Kan-Dapaah and video journalist Steve Ager to report on how the fallout from the financial crisis of 2008 has withered the economic hopes of some island nations. In this clip, Robin talks about what he found.
As Pulitzer Center grantee Micah Fink has documented in his film, “The Abominable Crime,” Jamaica is a place that has become dangerous for homosexuals, owing in part to an anti-sodomy law that gives official sanction to vicious hate crimes.
Micah and Maurice Tomlinson, a lawyer and activist featured in the film, attended a screening with nearly 600 public high school students in northeast Philadelphia recently. The viewing capped a day-long exploration of social justice at the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush, with discussions and student performances that brought the school together in one of the more gratifying engagements with Pulitzer Center journalism that we’ve seen in a school setting.
Micah and Maurice will continue their outreach around the film in Europe next month, with appearances at film festivals in Amsterdam and London, and talks at our partner schools and universities on the continent.
Text by Education Director Mark Schulte. Image by Education Coordinator Amanda Ottaway. To learn how you can get involved with the Pulitzer Center’s education department or how you can set up your own Day of Social Justice, visit our website or email Mark and Amanda at globalgateway@pulitzercenter.org.
THE PATH TO WIDOWHOOD In India and many other parts of the world, widowhood is not merely a tragic personal sorrow, it is a devastating state of diminishment that can trigger economic ruin and cruel social consequences that are often felt for generations. Pulitzer Center grantees Jessica Benko and Amy Toensing tell the story of 8-year-old Gunjan, whose chances in life are already narrowing. Gunjan’s mother, who was widowed at an early age, is illiterate and can only get occasional work as a day laborer. Her older sister, age 13, is considered too old to safely leave the house for work; her two other siblings, ages 3 and 5, are too young. So it is Gunjan who has assumed responsibility for supporting the family of five. She sells marigolds to pilgrims along the banks of the Yamuna, the second most sacred river in Hinduism. She earns about two dollars a day and she hasn’t been to school in a year or two. Writing in National Geographic’s “Proof” blog, Jessica says that Gunjan and her sisters are headed down the same path as their unfortunate mother. “[B]ecause of their poverty, they are likely to be married to much older men, who may leave them as unskilled, illiterate widows with young children, as their mother is now.” SHOWTIME IN SOCHI The Winter Olympics are now underway in Sochi, with a massive cordon of security surrounding the Black Sea resort city to protect against possible terror attacks from Chechnya and the troubled Caucasus region. But as Pulitzer Center senior adviser Marvin Kalb notes on his Brookings Institution blog, the unrest bubbling up in Ukraine may pose a more serious threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s big show. “Clearly Putin does not want to strike against Ukraine as the Winter Olympics open in nearby Sochi,” writes Marvin. “He has invested massively in the success of the Olympics—more than $50 billion. A Russian move against Ukraine, similar to the Russian move against Georgia six years ago, would shift the world’s attention from what Putin wants the world to see as the splendor of Russia; a golden opportunity for investment, proof on the winter slopes of the Olympics that Russia remains a great power and worthy of global respect and admiration.” But neither can Putin afford to “lose” Ukraine, writes Marvin. “As a student of Russian history, Putin must know that Peter the Great once said of a Swedish threat to conquer the Ukrainian part of the Russian empire that if Russia loses Ukraine, it is no longer Russia.”
AN ABOMINABLE CRIME
The Sochi games have also focused international attention on Putin’s open contempt for gay rights. As Pulitzer Center grantee Micah Fink has documented in his film, “The Abominable Crime,” Jamaica is another place that has become dangerous for homosexuals, owing in part to an anti-sodomy law that gives official sanction to vicious hate crimes.
Micah and Maurice Tomlinson, a lawyer and activist featured in the film, attended a screening with nearly 600 public high school students in northeast Philadelphia recently. The viewing capped a day-long exploration of social justice at the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush, with discussions and student performances that brought the school together in one of the more gratifying engagements with Pulitzer Center journalism that we’ve seen in a school setting.
Micah and Maurice will continue their outreach around the film in Europe next month, with appearances at film festivals in Amsterdam and London, and talks at our partner schools and universities on the continent.
This Week: Dear Taliban: We Know What You’re Trying to Do
UNFINISHED BUSINESS IN AFGHANISTAN For journalists who have spent time in Afghanistan, the combined assault by two gunmen and a suicide bomber on a popular Kabul restaurant cuts close to home. Twenty-one people were killed in the Jan. 17 attack on La Taverna du Liban, including the restaurant’s well-liked owner, Kamel Hamade. Pulitzer Center grantee Jeff Stern, who is in Afghanistan now, was a regular at La Taverna, a place that some journalists have described as the Rick’s Café of Kabul, a place where secrets and gossip flowed as freely as the wine—served in cups and discreetly referred to as “white tea” or “red tea.” Above all, it was a safe place, a place to step away from the war that has lingered for more than a decade. For many foreigners in Kabul, the intended message was clear: Time to leave Afghanistan. Jeff, in a dispatch for Foreign Policy, takes a different view. “For a while there — the past two months in particular — it felt like we were on our way out. The agreement was going to fail, America was going to leave wholesale. Most of my friends say this weekend’s attack will accelerate that process. But I don’t think so. To me, it’s the opposite. To me, the Taliban just reminded us all that our work here isn’t finished. They’ve reminded us that we owe it to the Afghans, who keep risking their lives helping us rebuild their country, to stay.” TROUBLE IN PARADISE Financial Times correspondent and Pulitzer Center grantee Robin Wigglesworth wraps up his brightly reported and thoroughly engaging project on the Caribbean with two dispatches on the region’s difficulties in recovering from the global financial crisis. Writing from Trinidad and Tobago, Robin notes that one of the wealthiest of the Caribbean statelets is plagued by one of the highest murder rates in the world. He also looks into how the region’s lingering economic distress is forcing some politicians to revive the idea of the West Indies Federation, an ambitious political union of British colonies and protectorates in the Caribbean, which collapsed more than half a century ago.
HUMAN TRAFFICKING
Boston University student fellow Lusha Chen traveled to Burma and China to produce a revealing documentary on victims and survivors of human trafficking. In “Burma: Human Trafficking in Kachin," Lusha shows us women who have been trafficked, some who have escaped, and one who helps them re-adjust to a new life.
Richard Thomas, a dreadlocked Jamaican sound engineer and musician, is still livid over the last time he was arrested and briefly jailed for smoking marijuana. While his country is plagued by one of the world’s worst homicide rates, the “jailhouses are filled with people that have just smoked a spliff,” he fumes.
Thomas, who performs under the name of Jah Pinks, said he now prefers to drink marijuana tea; it’s better for his lungs and can be done discretely without the police hassling him over something many Jamaicans see as an integral part of their culture.
Paradoxically, while marijuana use is prevalent across the Caribbean the drug remains illegal in every single country – something that has often puzzled and frustrated both locals and visitors. That, however, may be about to change.
Some countries are now debating whether to legalize the growth and sale of marijuana – or at least decriminalizing the possession of modest amounts of “ganja” – as they search for ways to revive economies stricken by a tourism downturn and improve the health of government budgets. While there are no formal plans toward legalization, some regional politicians say the time is right to revisit the debate at a minimum.
“No question, the time has come for a serious discussion, based not on the opinion of the international community but on reality,” says Mia Mottley, head of the opposition Barbados Labour Party. “We have to take a decision based on the wishes of our people.”
“What will he say? What will Mandela say after 27 years in prison?”
That was the question on everyone’s mind as the multitudes gathered in the center of Cape Town on the day when the leader of the African National Congress walked to freedom, recalls Pulitzer Center grantee Roger Thurow. Roger, who was then the South African-based correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, was in the crowd that February afternoon nearly a quarter of a century ago.
With crisp eloquence, Mandela delivered his message of tolerance, dignity and freedom from oppression—a message that would guide not only his native South Africa along the path to democracy, but would inspire oppressed people in every corner of the world.
“When I’m asked what Nelson Mandela was like then, I answer with one word: ‘Serene,’” says Roger. “Not the serenity of a man leaning back in a chair with his feet on the desk, good heavens no. When he left prison, he developed the habit of frequently checking the time; he was a man in a hurry, for too much time had already been wasted in building a new country. Rather, it was the serenity of a man resolute in his convictions, confident in the correctness of his ideas, his words and his works.”
At the Pulitzer Center, we join the rest of the world in mourning the passing of this towering figure of our time.
A STEP FORWARD IN JAMAICA
In a small but significant step forward in the struggle against discrimination based on sexual orientation, Pulitzer Center grantee Micah Fink’s powerful documentary, “The Abominable Crime,” had its first public screening in Jamaica last week. As the title implies, homosexuality is still a crime in Jamaica and harassment of gays is widespread and occasionally deadly. Micah’s film tells the story of two Jamaicans forced to flee their homeland fearing for their lives.
Despite opposition from some church leaders and public officials, the screening at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies drew about 50 people.
A NICE CABERNET AND THE PEACE PROCESS
The best journalists have a knack for spotting the unexpected story. Pulitzer Center grantee and Foreign Policy national security correspondent Yochi Dreazen always seems to discover something out of the ordinary. Earlier this year, while reporting a story for The Atlantic on northern Mali’s worrying slide into the hands of jihadists, Yochi also brought back a marvelous tale about how a fast-thinking band of locals managed to rescue the medieval manuscripts of Timbuktu from almost certain destruction by Islamic fundamentalists.
This time, fresh from a reporting project in Israel on the spread of drone technology, Yochi returns with a fascinating story on how a nice, crowd-pleasing cabernet sauvignon may turn out to be the latest obstacle to peace in the Middle East. In a dispatch for Smithsonian, Yochi reports that the West Bank’s high altitude, dry air and sandy soil are ideal for producing grapes. This has given a determined group of Jewish settlers near the ancient town of Shiloh an opportunity to sink their own roots ever deeper into Palestinian territory. Until next week,
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