{"id":15037,"date":"2020-08-12T09:01:39","date_gmt":"2020-08-12T09:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/?p=15037"},"modified":"2020-09-01T11:48:13","modified_gmt":"2020-09-01T11:48:13","slug":"tunisia-court-of-appeal-confirms-sodomy-ruling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/tunisia-court-of-appeal-confirms-sodomy-ruling\/","title":{"rendered":"Tunisia: Court of Appeal confirms sodomy ruling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Tunisian court of appeal upheld the conviction of two men found guilty of sodomy in June. The court only reduced the sentence from two to one year in prison.<\/p>\n<p>The two 26-year-old men had been arrested in June after one of the men filed a complaint against the other for an outstanding loan. Based on suspicion of homosexual behaviour, the police tried to get the men to confess &#8220;that they are gay&#8221; by threatening and insulting them, Hassina Darraji, the men&#8217;s lawyer, told Human Rights Watch.<\/p>\n<p>Based on these alleged &#8220;confessions&#8221; made by the defendants during the police investigation, a court in Le Kef, a town 175 kilometers southwest of Tunis, sentenced the two men to two years in prison on July 6. On July 28, the court of appeal followed the first-instance decision and upheld the charge of sodomy, but reduced the prison sentence to one year.<\/p>\n<p>Under Article 230 of the Tunisian Criminal Code, homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment for up to three years. Even the method of anal examination for &#8216;detection of homosexuality\u02bb, which is internationally outlawed as torture, is still practiced in Tunisia.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"video-wrap\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"de\" dir=\"ltr\">Wieder Verurteilung wegen Homosexualit\u00e4t in <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Tunesien?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Tunesien<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/3YzeInzeYg\">https:\/\/t.co\/3YzeInzeYg<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Human Rights Watch (@hrw_de) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hrw_de\/status\/1290948583815086080?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 5, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In 2017, Tunisia declared at the 27th session of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) that it would refrain from forced anal examinations and would only carry them out &#8220;with the consent of the person and in the presence of a medical expert&#8221;. The fact that refusing to undergo this examination is tantamount to an admission of guilt in court has apparently been confirmed in this case too &#8211; the two men&#8217;s lawyer stated that the defendants had informed her that they had refused the police&#8217;s demand to undergo anal testing.<\/p>\n<p>Human rights organisations complain that the conviction violates fundamental human rights principles, including the rights to privacy and non-discrimination protected by the Tunisian Constitution of 2014. &#8220;The court&#8217;s insistence on upholding the sodomy charge against the defendants and imprisoning them for one year is a grave injustice,&#8221; said Rasha Younes, LGBTIQ* rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. Tunisia should<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;send a strong message against arbitrary convictions under archaic sodomy laws and release the two men immediately&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Tunisian court of appeal upheld the conviction of two men found guilty of sodomy in June. The court only reduced the sentence from two to one year in prison.<br \/>\n <a href=\"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/tunisia-court-of-appeal-confirms-sodomy-ruling\/\"><\/p>\n<p><i class=\"showAllLink\">more&#8230;<\/i><\/p>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":15041,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":""},"categories":[1,401,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15037"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15037"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15285,"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15037\/revisions\/15285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartacus.gayguide.travel\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}