As LGBTQ+ communities celebrate Pride this June, many journalists continue to face an ugly reality: simply reporting on this community can open them up to prosecution, physical attacks, threats, arrest, exile, and even death.
Avijit Roy
, a Bangladeshi-born American who blogged about LGBTQ+ rights and free expression, was
stabbed to death
alongside his wife after receiving death threats related to his reporting in February 2015. About a year later, Xulhaz Mannan, who founded the
first and only LGBTQ+ magazine in Bangladesh
, was
stabbed to death
in his home.
Camera operator Aleksandre “Lekso” Lashkarava
underwent surgery
after defending a colleague from a group of about 20 anti-LGBTQ+ protesters in Georgia in 2021 who, according to that colleague,
repeatedly kicked
him in the head and left him in a pool of blood. Lashkarava was
found dead
at his home six days later.
Georgian camera operator Aleksandre Lashkarava (right) died after he was beaten by anti-LGBTQ+ demonstrators at a protest. (Photo: Formula News/YouTube)
Although the official concluded the cause of death was heroin intoxication, family members said they
lacked trust
in the autopsy findings because international experts were not allowed to participate. Lashkarava’s family, colleagues, and many members of the media
accused the government
of attempting to shift responsibility for its failure to ensure journalists’ safety, or even cover up its complicity in stoking or condoning violence against the LGBTQ+ community and the press.
These are three among more than 70 journalists CPJ has documented who were attacked for reporting on LGBTQ+ issues over a period of two decades.
“Being a queer journalist and reporting on LGBTQ communities has very different degrees of danger depending on where you are and what you’re doing,” said Kae Petrin, president of the Trans Journalist Association, a mostly U.S.-based organization that has membership in Canada, South America, and Asia.
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