8.7 Blackmail of LGBTI persons Displacement 4% Blackmail 13% TOTAL DISTRIBUTION OF VIOLATIONS Unfair Labour Practice 2% Hate Speech 1% Assault 18% Blackmail Transgender 8% Intersex 0% 2017 2016 Bi-Sexual 0% Discrimination 7% 2015 Threat 15% Detention 7% Police Harrassment 8% Blackmail Lesbian 4% Disownment 7% Outed 11% Invasion of Privacy 7% Blackmail 2014 2013 Gay 88% 2012 0 2 4 6 8 10 Blackmail registered as the third highest in the number of violations recorded (13%). Blackmailers took advantage of the fact that LGBTI persons are often reluctant to resist blackmail requests, for fear of being outed or reported to the police. In a number of cases, poor knowledge of their rights as LGBTI persons was also a pre-disposing factor to blackmail. A large number of cases of blackmail where perpetrated by individuals close to the complainants and in some instances, the complainants’ partners. The trend across all of the blackmail cases is that once an initial payment is honoured in the blackmail instance, the requests would continue to come, until the matter is reported to the police or the complainant moves away from the reach of the blackmailer, either by changing contact numbers or physically relocating. In one incident the complaint fell victim to blackmail until they made a counter threat to falsely accuse and expose the blackmailer to his church as their sexual partner. Clearly compliance to one blackmail request inevitably leads to others. The key recommendation made to LBGTI persons in previous reports, was to never give in to blackmail. In an unusual case, a lesbian police officer gave in to blackmail, as she feared that being outed would instantly destroy her career. The police officer received counselling from GALZ, but refused legal assistance as she knew it would involve the law enforcement agents. An analysis of the state of human rights violations against LGBTI persons in Zimbabwe (2011-2017) 30