Bangladesh gay sex
Version 5.0
September 2023
Executive summary
Updated on: 20 June 2023
Same-sex sexual action between consenting males is criminalised under Section 377 of the Bangladesh Penal Code and punishable by imprisonment. Though rarely enforced, it is used to arrest, harass and extort individuals based on their sexual orientation, contributing to a climate of fear and repression for LGBTI individuals.
It is unclear as to whether female same-sex sexual outing is included within the ambit of Section 377 and there is no evidence of cases in which criminal prosecutions have been brought against lesbians in relation to their sexual self. However, this should be viewed in the context of the general lack of societal consciousness or understanding of female same-sex relationships, which may command to social invisibility.
The hijra (a separate community that can fall under the umbrella term trans) were legally recognised as a ‘third gender’ in 2013, but there is no legal framework for recognising other gender-diverse people who do not drop within the hijra community.
In general, a person who identifies as LGBTI is unlikely to deal with treatment by the state, which is sufficiently serious e
Bangladesh arrests 27 men for 'homosexuality'
An elite police unit detained the men preliminary Friday in a raid on a community center at Keraniganj, south of the nation's capital, Dhaka.
"We've arrested 27 people for homosexuality. They are homosexuals. They held a get-together there," an official with the unit told the AFP news agency.
Authorities said the suspects were mostly students aged in their 20s and had traveled from across the country. They were allegedly found with drugs and condoms in their possession.
Police said the 27 may not tackle charges of homosexuality, which is punishable with experience in prison, because they were taken into custody before engaging in sexual activity. But they could still be charged with drug offenses.
Life as an LGBT in Bangladesh
Homosexuality is illegal in Bangladesh under a rarely-enforced British colonial era law, and the country's lesbian, gay, attracted to both genders and transgender (LGBT) community is often targeted by discrimination and rights abuses.
Last year, suspected Islamist militants killed activist Xulhaz Mannan and his friend in Dhaka. The 35-year-old, a USAID official, had founded the country's only LGBT magaz
(Updated November 2015)
The Bigger Picture
A story about gay Bangladesh does not begin with focused community behavior and does not describe LGBT venues, social clubs or bars or discos. The reason is simple: there is virtually no publicly identifiable Bangladesh gay community.
More significantly, such a report is subsumed by the density of life in this overflowing country: vast entrenched poverty along with intense overpopulation (140 million people in an area the size of New York state or England and Wales without Scotland), widespread under-education, bamboo-hut slums, chaotic traffic in the streets, elevated levels of malnutrition (nearly 30%), tangled corruption in the halls of government, frequent electrical failures and subsequent water shortages, and a powerful web of family traditions that allow no place for or knowledge of something so unusual as same-sex romance.
Homosexuality as a viable social issue in 21st century Bangladesh is faceless and invisible with no constituent voice from any chief, activist or politician. It is a much hidden, invisible transparent way of life that is shaped and colored by an intense palette of Islam, low-wage manual labor, unbrea
What was once a fledgling lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka is now destroyed. In 2014 and 2015 the Bangladeshi gay scene was cautiously becoming more open. 'Rainbow Rally' self-acceptance parades were held and a gay magazine calledRoopbaanwas in print. But the LGBT community has since been scared back from the streets, and to be openly gay in Bangladesh is now existence threatening.
Inge Amundsen wrote this op-ed for East Asia Forum, 23 March 2018 (a forum of the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University).
Islam is on the rise in Bangladesh. The number of devout Muslim adherents in the territory hasgrownover the past two decades with 90 per cent of the population now Muslim.
Intolerant andextremistforms of Islam are also on the rise. Bangladeshi Islamist and fundamentalist groups includeinternational offshootsof the so-called Islamic State and al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, as well as home-grown organisations such as Ansar-al-Islam, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Islami Chhatra Shibir, Ansarullah Bangla Team, Hefazat-e-Islam, Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami and Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen.
This rise of political Islam in Ba