Gay teens tortured and killed at bootcamp

[Zostrianos]

In South Africa. Supposedly the abuse was meant to "cure" them

http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/gay-teens-starved-tortured-killed-camp-turn-them-%E2%80%98men%E2%80%99290413

Three ‘gay and effeminate’ teens have died after being starved, tortured and killed at a camp that promised to turn them into 'men'.
A picture of Raymond Buys, 15, taken in April 2011 showed a skeletal, emaciated figure fighting for his life.
Just 10 weeks before, the teen’s parents signed him up to the Echo Wild Game Rangers training course in South Africa in perfect health.
In hospital, Buys was severely malnourished, dehydrated, his arm was broken in two places and there were burns and wounds all over his body. He lay in intensive care for four weeks until he died.
And now, the course ‘general’ Alex De Koker, 49, and employee Michael Erasmus, 20, are on trial for charges of murder, child abuse and neglect, along with two cases of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm in relation to Buys' death.
The teen’s death is alleged to have been the third among the Afrikaans children who attended the R22,000 ($2,400, €1,900) courses, which have been advertized since 2006.
‘I sent my son on this course to make him a better man, to give him a better future,’ Buys’ mother told The Daily Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/10015978/Teen-dies-after-being-beaten-at-camp-that-makes-men-out-of-boys.html). ‘I trusted Alex De Koker with his life.’
Last week, the Vereeniging District Court heard the testimony of a boy who had shared a tent with Buys, the Daily Maverick reports. (http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-04-29-raymond-buys-15-years-old-dead-for-not-being-manly/#.UX40s4JgNPN)
Gerhard Oostuizen, 19, claims Buys was chained to his bed every night, was refused permission to visit the toilet and on one occasion was forced to eat his own faeces.
He also said he would be beaten with planks, hosepipes and sticks when he failed to carry out manual labor tasks.
Oostuizen alleged further he saw De Koker tied Buys to a chair naked with his head covered in a pillowcase, and would electrocute him with a stun gun.
Gender activist Melanie Nathan has said the three young men were all perceived as ‘gay and clearly effeminate’.
In reference to ‘gay conversion camps’, Nathan writes: (http://oblogdeeoblogda.me/2013/04/25/man-up-or-die-murders-of-effeminate-teens-at-south-african-ranger-training-camp/) ‘With a little bit of digging [into the story], the gay reparative undertones start to emerge.’
Eric Calitz, 18, and Nicolaas Van Der Walt, 19, had both died after being enrolled at the Echo Wild Game Rangers camp four years earlier.
When Calitz requested to leave, De Koker reportedly told him he ‘wasn’t a moffie [gay] and he would make a man out of him’.
Calitz’s family was informed of his death via text message, saying he had died of a heart attack.
Afterwards, doctors said the cause of death was from a seizure, dehydration and found bleeding from the brain.
Van Der Walt was also claimed to have died from a heart attack, but doctors said he had appeared to have been choked with a seatbelt.
In 2009, De Koker was handed a suspended sentence over Calitz but escaped charges for the death of Van Der Walt, and the camp was allowed to continue.
Both De Koker and Erasmus have pleaded not guilty to the charges. The case continues.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Such events is the natural course homophobia evolves into; hate takes many forms and the "ex-gay/conversion therapy/religious re-orientation" nonsense is merely the latest (though not particularly recent) expression of this prejudice. This is a rather extreme case but I have heard similar horror stories originating in other parts of the world as well. Truly is abhorrent.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Why the fuck was the camp allowed to continue?

[Dropdead]

In South Africa. Supposedly the abuse was meant to "cure" them

Three ‘gay and effeminate’ teens have died after being starved, tortured and killed at a camp that promised to turn them into 'men'.
A picture of Raymond Buys, 15, taken in April 2011 showed a skeletal, emaciated figure fighting for his life.
Just 10 weeks before, the teen’s parents signed him up to the Echo Wild Game Rangers training course in South Africa in perfect health.
In hospital, Buys was severely malnourished, dehydrated, his arm was broken in two places and there were burns and wounds all over his body. He lay in intensive care for four weeks until he died.
And now, the course ‘general’ Alex De Koker, 49, and employee Michael Erasmus, 20, are on trial for charges of murder, child abuse and neglect, along with two cases of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm in relation to Buys' death.
The teen’s death is alleged to have been the third among the Afrikaans children who attended the R22,000 ($2,400, €1,900) courses, which have been advertized since 2006.
‘I sent my son on this course to make him a better man, to give him a better future,’ Buys’ mother told The Daily Telegraph. ‘I trusted Alex De Koker with his life.’
Last week, the Vereeniging District Court heard the testimony of a boy who had shared a tent with Buys, the Daily Maverick reports.
[I] Gerhard Oostuizen, 19, claims Buys was chained to his bed every night, was refused permission to visit the toilet and on one occasion was forced to eat his own faeces.
He also said he would be beaten with planks, hosepipes and sticks when he failed to carry out manual labor tasks.
Oostuizen alleged further he saw De Koker tied Buys to a chair naked with his head covered in a pillowcase, and would electrocute him with a stun gun.
Gender activist Melanie Nathan has said the three young men were all perceived as ‘gay and clearly effeminate’.
In reference to ‘gay conversion camps’, Nathan writes: ‘With a little bit of digging [into the story], the gay reparative undertones start to emerge.’
Eric Calitz, 18, and Nicolaas Van Der Walt, 19, had both died after being enrolled at the Echo Wild Game Rangers camp four years earlier.
When Calitz requested to leave, De Koker reportedly told him he ‘wasn’t a moffie [gay] and he would make a man out of him’.
Calitz’s family was informed of his death via text message, saying he had died of a heart attack.
Afterwards, doctors said the cause of death was from a seizure, dehydration and found bleeding from the brain.
Van Der Walt was also claimed to have died from a heart attack, but doctors said he had appeared to have been choked with a seatbelt.
In 2009, De Koker was handed a suspended sentence over Calitz but escaped charges for the death of Van Der Walt, and the camp was allowed to continue.
Both De Koker and Erasmus have pleaded not guilty to the charges. The case continues.
Why the fuck? This is just sick.

[dez]

O south africa

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The parents should have been charged with murder as well, even though the liberals would cry and whine about their "right" to raise "their" children in a fascist manner. Actually, the parents, the camp staff, and everyone who tolerated the existence of the camps should have been summarily hanged from the nearest lamppost, to instill a lively terror among the homophobes.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

The parents should have been charged with murder as well, even though the liberals would cry and whine about their "right" to raise "their" children in a fascist manner. Actually, the parents, the camp staff, and everyone who tolerated the existence of the camps should have been summarily hanged from the nearest lamppost, to instill a lively terror among the homophobes.

Generally speaking it is the liberals at the forefront of the campaign to pass bans on institutions like these while the conservatives are whining about "rights". However I am not sure you could charge the parents with anything as it is my understanding they sent "their" children to this camp with the reassurance it would make them into "men". If anyone will be charged with manslaughter it should be the camp operators (which they are).



Why the fuck was the camp allowed to continue?

...because even despite the horrors of the camp the public thinks that such treatment is not intrinsic within these camps themselves and it was simply the wrong leadership; in otherwords the momentum of ignorance which stresses that it is possible to change one's sexual orientation still exists and until it is completely eliminated these kinds of camps will linger around in one form or another.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Generally speaking it is the liberals at the forefront of the campaign to pass bans on institutions like these while the conservatives are whining about "rights".

Fair enough; my previous post assumes a fairly broad notion of "liberalism" that includes most conservatives and excludes some who are commonly called "liberals" in America (that I would classify as petite-bourgeois democrats). But this ideology of "rights" is a bourgeois-liberal one and, as always, the liberals who oppose these camps manage to avoid being utter reactionary scum only by - being inconsistent.


However I am not sure you could charge the parents with anything as it is my understanding they sent "their" children to this camp with the reassurance it would make them into "men". If anyone will be charged with manslaughter it should be the camp operators (which they are).

They sent "their" children to the camps to be tortured. Of course, the bourgeois legal system will not punish them, but in any revolutionary situation, I think my point stands: they should be smashed as a general warning to others.

Or the camps should remain open, and the homophobes should be locked in them.

Oh, me terrorist tendencies are showing.

[Nevsky]

Is the purpose of these camps precisely to turn homosexuals into "men" or is it simply meant to turn young males in general into "men"? The idea is stupid in any case but not banning the former version would be outright barbaric.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

They sent "their" children to the camps to be tortured. Of course, the bourgeois legal system will not punish them, but in any revolutionary situation, I think my point stands: they should be smashed as a general warning to others.

The discourse of what constitutes torture, however, is a slippery slope and relies heavily on what the parents in this event thought was going to happen to their kids: did they know this would happen or did they think that through some tame process the "sinful" nature of the kids would be eliminated? This is the question which the bourgeois courts become hung up on and which impede justice from being delivered to all responsible parties.

Clearly any kind of conversation pseudo-therapy is torture and within socialist society it is something to be combated yet I am not sure locking up the parents for their misguided bigotry is going to help much else then the prison industrial complex; more progressive of an option would be for the youth to Emancipate themselves and live on their own(1).


Is the purpose of these camps precisely to turn homosexuals into "men" or is it simply meant to turn young males in general into "men"? The idea is stupid in any case but not banning the former version would be outright barbaric.

Men as in heterosexual men. Be careful of the gender discourse here in what Religionists mean by it.

In any case they usually mean young males. These reactionary theists have this youthful male fetish; they constantly spout about "outside" (re: sinful foreigners) forces corrupting their young boys (because children are somehow more susceptible to an imaginary construct?) and so they have devised this whole series of feel-good exercises to "protect" such people from. This is what all that Russian homophobia is about (banning gay pride parades for a hundred years, preventing any images of homosexuality being "promoted" in a certain distance in regards to the placement of schools, etc): such conservatives have taken the Chauvinistic angle(2) present in their theology and taken it to the logical extreme when combined with their paranoia and bigotry in regards to homosexuals. In this sense there are usually separate encampments for adults as one must remember there is still a powerful current within such movements that preaches all adult homosexuals are pedophiles, hence the need for separate encampments and why kids need to be "protected" from adult homosexuals, ergo the different camps.
- - -
(1) Assuming such legal constructions exist in South Africa.
(2) This is not to say these people aren't still concerned with Females but that there is a different level of treatment in regards to intensity: often I have found the primary propaganda campaign is always focused on Male couples (particularly sex) while with Female couples it deals more with breaking "moral boundaries" thus "violating" God's law and the natural order (this ties into their whole other nonsense about child-rearing).

[Fionnagáin]

Fair enough; my previous post assumes a fairly broad notion of "liberalism" that includes most conservatives and excludes some who are commonly called "liberals" in America (that I would classify as petite-bourgeois democrats).
Sourcing your terminology from 1848 is generally a bad idea.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Sourcing your terminology from 1848 is generally a bad idea.

Most liberal parties outside America are exactly how Semendayev described, though. Even I was confounded when I first started getting into politics and found people denouncing liberal party members as 'lefties'.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The discourse of what constitutes torture, however, is a slippery slope and relies heavily on what the parents in this event thought was going to happen to their kids: did they know this would happen or did they think that through some tame process the "sinful" nature of the kids would be eliminated? This is the question which the bourgeois courts become hung up on and which impede justice from being delivered to all responsible parties.

Clearly any kind of conversation pseudo-therapy is torture and within socialist society it is something to be combated yet I am not sure locking up the parents for their misguided bigotry is going to help much else then the prison industrial complex; more progressive of an option would be for the youth to Emancipate themselves and live on their own(1).

Even then, they would face financial difficulties etc. etc. - punishing the parents, which I realise is all but impossible in the context of the bourgeois legal system, would hopefully make parents reconsider acting on their bigotry, or even mentioning it. But like I said, this is all quite fanciful. Nothing even remotely similar is going to happen.


Sourcing your terminology from 1848 is generally a bad idea.

Right, because liberals and conservatives are so incredibly different on this question - one section of the bourgeoisie is openly homophobic, while the other one tries to hide their attitude while allowing homophobia in society to flourish due to, ostensibly, a pious belief in "free speech". And what incredibly different economic policies these two sections espouse - why, one of them sometimes puts on airs of "preserving the social state". Sometimes.

Conservatives and liberals share the same class basis and the same ideological standpoint - their differences, while of supreme importance to them, are no concern of ours, and anyone who has managed to convince themselves that, say, the LibDems in the UK are somehow "closer" to us than the Tories, needs to stop and consider the actual situation.

[Wings Of Redemption]

I'm interested to find out what will happen to the parents. They probably thought they were ''helping'' their child too. Shit like this just pisses me off because I feel like there is nothing I can do about it:( Sometimes I think the world is too fucked up to make a change for the better...

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Good ol' gender policing.
Yeah, this is a particularly vile example, but I'd say "homophobia" is a consequence of the way gender is constructed generally.
The making of "men" needs to be ended altogether.

[Comrade Nasser]

Wtf man the parents are fucking nazis.

I am removing the meme image from this post as it is completely inappropriate. Consider this a verbal warning - Sam_b

[Yuppie Grinder]

Gender roles are for squares. I mix articles of feminine clothing with more dudely ones and rarely do people notice.

[melvin]

this makes me want to cry:(

[Crixus]

Fuck the South African state. Anyone remember them slaughtering over 30 striking miners recently?

UxpArGI83fY

[L1NKS]

Now that I call disgusting.