Dwayne Jones was a Jamaican 16-year-old boy who was killed by a violent mob in Montego Bay in 2013, after he attended a dance party dressed in women's clothing. The incident attracted national and international media attention and brought increased scrutiny to the status of LGBT rights in Jamaica.
Perceived as effeminate, Jones was bullied in school and, at the age of 14, was forced out of his family home by his father. He moved into a derelict house in Montego Bay with transgender friends. On the evening of 21 July 2013, they went to the Irwin area of the city and attended a dance party. When some men at the party discovered that the cross-dressing Jones was not a woman, they confronted and attacked him. Jones was beaten, stabbed, shot, and run over with a car; he died in the early hours of the morning. Police investigated the murder but did not arrest or charge anyone for the crime, which remains unsolved.
The event made newspaper headlines in Jamaica and was also the subject of reporting in both the United Kingdom and the United States. While voices on social media accused Jones of provoking his killers by cross-dressing in public, the murder was condemned by Jamaican educators and the country's Justice Minister. In the wake of the attack, both domestic and international organisations devoted to LGBT rights and human rights – among them Human Rights Watch, Jamaicans for Justice, and the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals & Gays – asked the Jamaican authorities for a proper investigation and legal recognition of LGBT rights on the island.
Background
Jones' biography
Raised in an impoverished slum in Montego Bay, a city in northwest Jamaica, Jones faced bullying at high school from students who perceived his behaviour as effeminate. When Jones was 14, his father ejected him from the family home and encouraged neighbours to chase him out of the neighbourhood. After a period sleeping in bushes and on beaches, he began squatting in a derelict house in the hills above Montego Bay with two transgender friends, Keke and Khloe, both 23 at the time of Jones' death. Jones was known among friends as "Gully Queen", a reference to the storm drainage systems in which many homeless LGBT Jamaicans live. Friends noted that Jones desired to become a teacher or to work in the tourist industry. He also wanted to become a performer like the American pop star Lady Gaga, and had won a local dancing competition. Khloe described him as "a diva" who was "always very feisty and joking around".
Anti-LGBT sentiment in Jamaica
In 2006, Time magazine said that Jamaica may be the most homophobic country in the world. The country's laws criminalising same-sex activity between males were introduced in 1864, during the British colonial administration. According to the Sexual Offences Act of 2009, any man convicted under these laws must register as a sex offender. These laws have been cited as contributing to wider homophobic attitudes among the Jamaican populace, including the view that gay people are criminals regardless of whether or not they have committed any criminal act. Anti-LGBT perspectives have been furthered by the island's conservative Christian churches. Many reggae and dancehall songs, among them Buju Banton's "Boom Bye Bye", call for the killing of gays. Writing for the International Business Times in the summer of 2013, the journalist Palash Gosh noted that while Jamaica was "awash in crime and violence, gays and lesbians are particularly prominent targets of wanton brutality." In the mid-2000s, two of Jamaica's best-known LGBT rights activists, Brian Williamson and Lenford Harvey, were murdered. In the summer of 2013, Human Rights Watch carried out five weeks of fieldwork among Jamaica's LGBT community, reporting that over half of those interviewed had experienced violence as a result of their sexual orientation or gender identity, sometimes on more than one occasion.