Gay Iraq News & Reports 2009

Baghdad(IRIN) – Wife and now widow Hana’a Khalil (a pseudonym she uses to disguise her identity) fainted when a doctor at one of Baghdad’s hospitals told her in the late 1990s she had contracted HIV. When she came to she could not take in what the doctor was telling her. “I was physically at his office but my mind was elsewhere, fixated on the health and social consequences I could face,” she said. To be HIV-positive in Iraq means social isolation – and even death at the hands of religious extremists who believe the virus is proof that an HIV-positive person must have engaged in indecent acts.

Iraq has a very low HIV prevalence rate: only 44 people are HIV-positive, according to Ihsan Jaafar, who heads the Health Ministry’s public health directorate, responsible for combating HIV/AIDS. He said the directorate encouraged people to get tested and monitored the health of HIV-positive persons and their families, providing them with “free-of-charge treatment in addition to financial aid”. Hana’a’s husband became infected two years after their marriage in the early 1990s. At that time the couple had one child and decided not to tell anyone, for fear of being stigmatised. But when she was diagnosed HIV-positive, the couple decided to reveal their secret.

Shunned
“We panicked and needed support,” Hana’a told IRIN. “We told my husband’s parents, with whom we were sharing a house, but unfortunately they didn’t understand, telling us to leave because they felt ashamed of us,” she said. Her parents did not welcome them, so the three-member family decided to rent a house, telling other relatives they were travelling abroad. In the early 2000s her husband died of tuberculosis, the most frequently occurring opportunistic infection in people living with HIV. After the US-led invasion in 2003, the widow’s plight entered a new phase with Muslim extremists saying HIV-positive persons were “sinners” who should be killed. “I became like a Bedouin, moving from place to place looking for food and water, but in reality I was looking for safety,” she said.

First detected in 1986
The virus first came to Iraq in 1985 via contaminated blood imported from a French company. It was detected the following year in scores of people suffering from haemophilia, a hereditary blood disorder, said Wadah Hamed, the head of Iraq’s AIDS Research Centre. “Treatment at that time was tough and arbitrary. Those found to be infected were placed in segregated medical facilities,” said Hamed, who also heads Iraq’s national AIDS prevention programme. Some 482 cases have been detected since 1986. Of these, 272 were Iraqis and the rest foreigners. Today only 44 are still alive, he said.

Patients get the equivalent of about US$85 per month from the government, as well as a clothing allowance. Those infected in 1985 are paid an extra $200 monthly. They get free monthly check-ups; their partners are examined every three months, and other family members are checked every six months. Baghdad has at least 11 medical centres for this purpose and there is also one such centre in each province.

Low-key awareness campaign
“Give yourself a chance and have a medical check-up in one of the HIV/AIDS centres, free of charge. Your name and any personal information are not needed,” says a poster in Hamed’s office. Tentatively, the ministry is launching a campaign to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS, coordinating with local media outlets, distributing posters and holding workshops. Awareness programmes have also been included in the curricula of secondary schools, and a hotline has been set up to enable people to get advice.

“We believe the campaign should be low-key because our country is still not open to such subjects. We don’t want to trigger panic and anxiety among the public when they see these posters everywhere,” Hamed told IRIN. In cooperation with the World Health Organization (WHO), the ministry prescribes combination therapy involving three antiretroviral drugs free of charge.

Keeping a low profile
Each time Ammar Mohammed (not his real name) goes for his monthly assessment or draws his monthly payment, he dreads being seen by someone who knows him. “I feel as if I’m a thief hiding from people,” said Mohammed who was shocked in late 2006 to learn of the murder of an HIV-positive person being treated at a medical centre. “Since then I’ve started to change the medical centre from time to time in order not to be spotted at the same centre each month,” he said. The Iraqi health and security authorities have no data on HIV-positive persons killed by gunmen.

25 February 2009 – guardian.co.uk

1a
Iraq’s queer underground railroad: A secret network of safe houses and escape routes is saving gay Iraqis from execution by Islamist death squads

byPeter Tatchell
In the bad old days of slavery in the United States, there was the "Underground Railroad" – a clandestine network of secret routes and safe houses – which spirited thousands of southern slaves to freedom in the north. Today, 200 years later in Iraq, a modern version of the underground railroad is saving the lives of gay people who are fleeing Islamist death squads. It is providing safe houses in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, and is smuggling lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people to neighbouring countries, where it helps them apply for United Nations humanitarian protection. This secret network, coordinated by Iraqi LGBT exiles in London, is saving dozens of lives.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, homophobia and the terrorisation of LGBT people has got much worse. The western invasion of Iraq in 2003 ended the tyrannical Baathist dictatorship. But it also destroyed a secular state, created chaos and lawlessness and allowed the flourishing of religious fundamentalism. The result has been an Islamist-inspired homophobic terror campaign against LGBT Iraqis. You can watch two short videos, which show the terror of queer life in "democratic" Iraq here and here. This campaign of terror is sanctioned by Iraq’s leading Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. In 2005, he issued a fatwa urging the killing of LGBT people in the "worst, most severe way" possible.

This is the same Sistani who was praised by President Bush as a "leading moderate". The British government concurred. We hosted him in Britain for medical treatment. He was anti-Saddam, so the west backed him, even after he issued his murderous religious edicts. Although the general security situation has improved in Iraq, for LGBT people it has deteriorated sharply. Systematic assassinations of queers are being orchestrated by police and security agents in the interior ministry, many of whom are former members of the Iranian-backed Badr Corps militia.

The interior ministry is, of course, a key ministry in the UK-backed and US-backed government of Iraq. Some democracy! In fact, there is no democracy or human rights at all for Iraqi queers. If the government in Baghdad is not actively encouraging the mass killing of LGBT people, it is definitely allowing rogue police and Islamists to do so. To protect against this terror and save lives, the Iraqi LGBT organisation has created its underground queer railroad, complete with safe houses and escape routes.

"Since establishing the safe houses project in 2006 we have provided refuge for dozens of gay people who were being hunted by death squads," reports Ali Hili, coordinator of Iraqi LGBT. "We have also assisted people to escape from Iraq to neighbouring countries, where we have established resettlement projects. Our efforts have got gay refugees registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and we’ve already moved some of them a third safer country, in Europe or North America. These lucky ones are now beginning to rebuild their lives," Mr Hili said

K is a 33-year-old architect who escaped to Amman in Jordan. He now helps run the Iraqi LGBT support group there, aiding other LGBT refugees from Iraq. So far, seven out of 23 Iraqi LGBT refugees who have been smuggled to Jordan have had their applications for asylum approved by the UNHCR and been able to secure asylum in countries such as the United States, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany. This heroic work is not without its risks and sacrifices. Many of the underground activists have been assassinated, in a series of grisly homophobic and transphobic murders.

Two lesbians who ran the safe house in the city of Najaf were butchered, together with a young boy they had rescued from the sex industry. Last summer, the coordinator of a Baghdad safe house, Bashar, was gunned to death in his local barber’s shop by an Islamist hit squad. Previously, five gay activists who organised another Baghdad safe house were massacred. The lack of funds is a perpetual problem. Three of the five safe houses in Baghdad had to close last year because of a lack of donations to keep them running. Two have since been reopened but it is a constant struggle to fund them. Money is needed to pay rent, electricity and food bills for the 10-12 LGBT refugees who are crammed into each house. Many more LGBT Iraqis still need a place to hide.

Iraqi LGBT can be contacted through its website

February 26, 2009 – PinkNews

1b
Comment: Iraq’s gays go underground to survive

by Peter Tatchell
In the bad old days of slavery in the United States, there was the "Underground Railroad" – a clandestine network of secret routes and safe houses – which spirited thousands of southern slaves to freedom in the north. Today, 200 years later in Iraq, a modern version of the underground railroad is saving the lives of gay people who are fleeing Islamist death squads. It is providing safe houses in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, and is smuggling lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people to neighbouring countries, where it helps them apply for United Nations humanitarian protection. This secret network, coordinated by Iraqi LGBT exiles in London, is saving dozens of lives.

This campaign of terror is sanctioned by Iraq’s leading Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. In 2005, he issued a fatwa urging the killing of LGBT people in the "worst, most severe way" possible. This is the same Sistani who was praised by President Bush as a "leading moderate". The British government concurred. We hosted him in Britain for medical treatment. He was anti-Saddam, so the west backed him, even after he issued his murderous religious edicts. Although the general security situation has improved in Iraq, for LGBT people it has deteriorated sharply. Systematic assassinations of queers are being orchestrated by police and security agents in the interior ministry, many of whom are former members of the Iranian-backed Badr Corps militia.

Queers are being shot dead in their homes, streets and workplaces. Even suspected gay children are being murdered. They killers claim to be doing these assassinations at the behest of the "democratic" Iraqi government, in order to eradicate what they see as immoral, un-Islamic behaviour. This programme of targeted murders has one aim, according to the death squads: the total eradication of all queers from Iraq. It is, in effect, a form of sexual cleansing. The killers boast that most "sodomites" have already been eliminated. The interior ministry is, of course, a key ministry in the UK-backed and US-backed government of Iraq. Some democracy! In fact, there is no democracy or human rights at all for Iraqi queers. If the government in Baghdad is not actively encouraging the mass killing of LGBT people, it is definitely allowing rogue police and Islamists to do so.

To protect against this terror and save lives, the Iraqi LGBT organisation has created its underground queer railroad, complete with safe houses and escape routes. "Since establishing the safe houses project in 2006 we have provided refuge for dozens of gay people who were being hunted by death squads," reports Ali Hili, coordinator of Iraqi LGBT. "We have also assisted people to escape from Iraq to neighbouring countries, where we have established resettlement projects. Our efforts have got gay refugees registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and we’ve already moved some of them a third safer country, in Europe or North America. These lucky ones are now beginning to rebuild their lives," Mr Hili said

Iraqi LGBT can be contacted through its website

This article was first published on The Guardian’s website.

April 4, 2009 – The Associated Press.

2
Iraqi police: Six Gay Men Killed for Honor in Baghdad Slum

by Sameer N. Yacoub, Baghdad
Iraqi police say the bodies of two gay men have been found in Baghdad’s Shiite slum of Sadr City after a leading cleric repeatedly condemned homosexuality. The shootings came after a tribal meeting was held and the members decided to go after the victims. On March 26, four additional men were fatally shot in the same city, the official said, adding that the victims had also been disowned by their relatives.

Witnesses said that a Sadr City cafe, which was a popular gathering spot for gays, was also set on fire. The killings come after Shiite cleric Sattar al-Battat repeatedly condemned homosexuality during prayers, saying Islam prohibits homosexuality. The official says no family members have claimed the bodies or demanded an investigation. The killings come weeks after Iraqi police found four bodies near Sadr City with the word pervert written on their chests.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

April 5, 2009 – DailyQueerNews.com

3
State Dept.: Reports of Iraqi Gay Executions Completely Bogus

by Kilian Melloy, EDGE Contributor, EDGE New England

A group called Iraqi LGBT, run out of London by exiled self-identified gay Iraqi Ali Hili, has alleged that the Iraqi government is set to execute more than 100 men for the “crime” of homosexuality, according to a March 31 article posted at UK Gay News. A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department who works at the Iraqi Desk and spent a year in the war-torn country told EDGE that the story has no merit. “Homosexuality is not a crime in Iraq,” said John Fleming, the public affairs officer for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.

“The individuals condemned to death in Iraq have been convicted of violent crimes, including murder, terrorism, insurgency and kidnapping.” There have been no executions of criminals since 2007, added Fleming, who also noted that any criminals now awaiting possible execution are there for crimes such as “terrorism, insurgency and kidnapping.” Their sexual identity is irrelevant to the charges, he said.

“None were convicted of the ’crime’ of being homosexual,” Fleming told EDGE. “In fact, it’s immaterial to Iraqis. “Frankly, there are other issues they’re concerned about like basic survival, getting food and water. It’s a luxury for the average Iraqi to worry about homosexuality.”

April 8, 2009 – The New York Times

4
Iraq’s Newly Open Gays Face Scorn and Murder

by Timothy Williams and Tareq Maher
Baghdad — The relative freedom of a newly democratic Iraq and the recent improvement in security have allowed a gay subculture to flourish here. The response has been swift and deadly. In the past two months, the bodies of as many as 25 boys and men suspected of being gay have turned up in the huge Shiite enclave of Sadr City, the police and friends of the dead say. Most have been shot, some multiple times. Several have been found with the word “pervert” in Arabic on notes attached to their bodies, the police said.

“Three of my closest friends have been killed during the past two weeks alone,” said Basim, 23, a hairdresser. “They had been planning to go to a cafe away from Sadr City because we don’t feel safe here, but they killed them on the way. I had planned to go with them, but fortunately I didn’t.” Basim, who preferred to be called “Basima” — the feminine version of his name — wears his hair long for Iraq. It falls to just below the ear. His ears are pierced, uncommon for Iraqi males. White makeup covers his face, a popular look for gay men in Sadr City who say they prefer light skin.

Though risky, his look is one result of the overall calm here that has allowed Iraqis to enjoy freedoms unthinkable two years ago: A growing number of women walk the streets unveiled, a few even daring to wear dresses above the knee. Families gather in parks for cookouts, and more people have begun to venture out at night. But that has not changed the reality that Iraq remains religious, conservative — and still violent. The killers, the police say, are not just Shiite death squads, but also tribal and family members shamed by their gay relatives. (And the recent spate of violence has seemed aimed at more openly gay men, rather than homosexuality generally.)

Clerics in Sadr City have urged followers to help root out homosexuality in Iraqi society, and the police have begun their own crackdown on gay men. “Homosexuality is against the law,” said Lt. Muthana Shaad, at a police station in the Karada district, a neighborhood that has become popular with gay men. “And it’s disgusting.” For the past four months, he said, officers have been engaged in a “campaign to clean up the streets and get the beggars and homosexuals off them.”

Gay men, he said, can be arrested only if they are seen engaging in sex, but the police try to drive them away. “These people, we make sure they can’t get together in a coffee shop or walk together in the street — we make them break up,” he said. Gay men and lesbians in Iraq have long been among the targets of both Shiite and Sunni death squads, but their murders have been overshadowed by the hundreds of overall weekly casualties during the height of sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007. In 2005, the country’s most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a religious decree that said gay men and lesbians should be “punished, in fact, killed.” He added, “The people should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.” The language has since been removed from his Web site.

In recent months, groups of gay men have been taking greater chances, gathering in cafes and other public places in Baghdad, Basra, Najaf and other cities. On a recent night in Sadr City, several, their hair parted down the middle, talked as they quietly sipped tea at a garishly lighted cafe, oblivious to the stares of passers-by. Basim, who would not give his last name out of fear for his safety, said he knew at least 20 young men from Sadr City’s large but hidden gay community who had disappeared during the past two months. He said he had learned later that each was found dead. After three of his friends were killed, he stayed inside his house for a week. Recently he has begun to go out again.

“I can’t stay at home all day,” he said. “I need to see my friends.” Publicly, the Iraqi police have acknowledged only the deaths of six gay men in the neighborhood. But privately, police officials say the figure is far higher. The chief of a Sadr City police station, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak to reporters, said family members had probably committed most of the Sadr City killings. He played down the role of death squads that had once been associated with the Mahdi Army, the militia that controlled Sadr City until American and Iraqi forces dislodged them last spring.

“Our investigation has found that these incidents are being committed by relatives of the gays — not just because of the militias,” he said. “They are killing them because it is a shame on the family.” He said families typically refused to cooperate with the investigation or even to claim the bodies. No arrests have been made in the killings. At the same time, though, clerics associated with Moktada al-Sadr, an anti-American cleric with significant influence in Sadr City, have devoted a portion of Friday Prayer services to inveighing against homosexuality.

“The community should be purified from such delinquent behavior like stealing, lying and the effeminacy phenomenon among men,” Sheik Jassem al-Mutairi said during his sermon last Friday. Homosexuality, he said, was “far from manhood and honesty.” Abu Muhaned al-Diraji, a Sadrist official in Sadr City, said the clerics were in no way encouraging people to kill gay men. “All we are doing is giving advice to people to take care of their sons,” Mr. Diraji said. He acknowledged, however, that some of the killing had been committed by members of “special groups,” or death squads.

“In general, it is the families that are killing the gay son, but I know that there are gunmen involved in this, too,” he said. “But we disavow anybody committing this kind of crime and we encourage the people to follow the law.”

In addition to the killings, a Sadr City cafe frequented by gay men recently burned down under mysterious circumstances. Some young gay men in Sadr City have become nihilistic about the ever present threat. “I don’t care about the militias anymore, because they’re going to kill me anyway — today, tomorrow or the day after,” said a man named Sa’ad, who has been taking estrogen and has developed small breasts. “I hate my community and my relatives. If they had their way, the result would be one gunshot.”

Reporting was contributed by Sam Dagher, Rod Nordland, Steven Lee Myers, Anwar J. Ali, Riyadh Mohammed and Campbell Robertson.

18 April 2009 – BBC News

5
Iraqi gay men face ‘lives of hell’

by Jim Muir, BBC News, Baghdad
Grainy footage taken on a mobile phone and widely distributed around Baghdad shows a terrified young Iraqi boy cowering and whimpering as men with a stick force him to strip, revealing women’s underwear beneath his dishdasha (Arab robe). "Why are you dressed as a girl?" roars one of the men, brandishing his stick as the youth removes his brassiere. The sobbing boy, who appears to be about 12, tries to explain that his family made him do it to earn money, as they have no other source of income.

The scene, apparently filmed in a police post, reinforced reports of a campaign against gay men in Iraq which activists say has claimed the lives of more than 60 since December. In the latest manifestation of the campaign, posters have appeared on walls in the poor Shia suburb of Sadr City in eastern Baghdad, listing alleged homosexuals by name and threatening to kill them. Those named have gone underground, while gay men throughout the city and in some other parts of the country also live in fear.

Molestation
The phenomenon seems mainly to be affecting Shia neighbourhoods, where a number of clerics have given sermons seen as homophobic incitement. In Sadr City, Sheikh Jassem al-Mutairi used his Friday sermon to attack what he called "new private practices by some men who dress like women, and are effeminate". He called on families to prevent their youngsters from following such a lifestyle.

Police sources say that in the past month alone, the bodies of six young men have been found in Sadr City, some with placards labelling them "perverts" or "puppies", the derogatory Iraqi term for gays.

"The campaign started in 2004, but now it’s very much worse," said a Baghdad homosexual who goes by the name of Surour. He talked to the BBC on condition of anonymity. "They kill the gays, they beat them up… I have a lot of friends that have been killed – 15 or 16, something like that, too much. Life has become like hell, believe me, like hell. Whenever I go anywhere, there are checkpoints, and when they see us, they know about us, they detain us and question us, and they want to touch me, yes, to molest me."

As though to underline the accusation, another piece of mobile phone footage circulating in Baghdad shows a group of uniformed police harassing a hermaphrodite they have caught at a checkpoint, obliging him to expose his well-developed breasts which are then gleefully manhandled and kissed. One Iraqi homosexual who fled the country last week said he was detained for three weeks and beaten until a bribe of $5,000 (£3,380) raised by friends bought his release.

Clerical cue
Gay activists believe the campaign emerged as police, militias and tribes took their cue from the clerics. “ It’s a phenomenon which has to be fought, but through treatment ” Shaikh Sadeq al-Zair Shia cleric. But officials in all categories deny that they support the persecution or killing of homosexuals. "The Interior Ministry has no policy of arresting gays just for being gay," said Brigadier Diah Sahi, head of the Iraqi police’s Criminal Investigation Department. "There’s no law to justify it, unless they commit indecent acts in public. It’s a psychological problem in any case. Arresting people and putting them in jail isn’t going to change anything," he added.

A Shia cleric in central Baghdad’s Kerrada district, Shaikh Sadeq al-Zair, said he saw many young men dressing more effeminately than women. "It’s a phenomenon which has to be fought, but through treatment," he said. "If these people are sick, they should be given therapy. But violence is rejected by all religions, especially by Islam, which is a religion of mercy."

A spokesman of the Sadrist movement – followers of the militant young cleric Moqtada Sadr whose Mehdi Army militia used to rule Sadr City – also said that there was nothing in Islam to say that homosexuals should be killed. But they are being killed, and the Shia militias are among the most oft-cited suspects.

Family honour
In some cases, it is believed that their own families are killing homosexuals, out of shame for their behaviour. "In Sadr City, four of those who died were killed by their own families, because they think it is better for their name, for their honour," said Surour. Homosexuals admit that their problem is as much with their own society and families as with the authorities, police or militias. But the Iraqi government appears to be slow to take the lead in discouraging the homophobic campaign.

Amnesty International, which believes at least 25 alleged gay men have been killed in Baghdad in the last few weeks, wrote to the Iraqi government last week seeking "urgent and concerted action" to bring the culprits to justice and protect the gay community. The appeal has so far brought no response, and the government has yet to comment on the killings or take any visible action to combat them.

View Video

April 23, 2009 – PinkNews

6
Claims of anal torture of gay Iraqis "consistent" with human rights violations

by PinkNews.co.uk Staff Writer
A leading LGBT human rights organisation has said that reports of horrific torture of gay Iraqis by militias "are consistent with patterns of human rights violations being reported from within the country." The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission was commenting on reports published by Al-Arabiya, a media network based in the United Arab Emirates.

They reported on Monday that they had been told by Iraqi human rights activist Yanar Mohammad: "Iraqi militias have deployed an unprecedented form of torture against homosexuals by using a very strong glue that will close their anus … an Iranian-manufactured glue that if applied to the skin, sticks to it and can only be removed by surgery. After they glue the anuses of homosexuals, they give them a drink that causes diarrhea. Since the anus is closed, the diarrhea causes death. Videos of this form of torture are being distributed on mobile cellphones in Iraq."

IGLHRC said it has not verified all of the allegations. Last week the group sent a letter to the Iraqi Minister of Human Rights, asking her to take specific measures to protect LGBT Iraqis. IGLHRC and Human Rights Watch have submitted an urgent appeal to the Special Procedures of the United Nations to ask for an investigation.

Earlier this month, two gay men were found dead in the Baghdad Shiite slum of Sadr City following condemnations of homosexuality by a leading local cleric. Reports suggest a further four were murdered in March after the Shiite cleric Sattar al-Battat allegedly repeatedly condemned homosexuality in Friday prayers.

April 22, 2009 – Advocate.Com

7
I’m Gay and Iraqi: Please Help Me!

The situation for gay Iraqis has never been more dire: With reports of torture, "anal gluing," and murder coming out of the Middle East, is the U.S. surge to blame for this sudden explosion of antigay violence?

by Michael Luongo
Commentary: “I am gay and I am Iraqi, please help me.” A contact of mine told me he came across this comment in an e-mail. The only thing more extraordinary than the message was the location. He was sitting in the U.S. embassy in Baghdad when he read it.

My contact said he was reaching out to me because things were “heating up” for gay men in Iraq. Over the years, he said he’d received several e-mails from gay Iraqis that came through the U.S. embassy’s website — they are a “single source of frustration, because I feel completely helpless and heartbroken reading stories about an Iraqi that is sending an e-mail probably just a few miles from where I am sitting in the embassy, and telling me that there is a militia coming just down the block and they have a list.” I traveled to Baghdad in the summer of 2007, during the height of the U.S. surge, to get a better handle on the situation for gays in Iraq. During my visit I met with a few gay Americans who worked at the embassy, all of whom spoke off-the-record when giving me quotes and providing information.

In recent months, things have certainly been "heating up" — articles from The New York Times, the BBC, and the Los Angeles Times, as well as many other mainstream and gay publications, point to the horrors of what is happening in Iraq. Each article seems more harrowing than the last, attempting to make sense of something that’s hard to fathom for the readers who digest these articles from the comfort and safety of an America where "dont ask, don’t tell" and same-sex marriage make up the bulk of news coverage.

Some outlets — particularly in the gay press — point to reports by Iraqi LGBT, a London-based activist group reporting that gay men in Iraq are on death row and that they’ve received a letter from a gay Iraqi pleading for help, all of which has been next to impossible to verify. Others point to the reassertion of power by militias, particularly in Sadr City, a Shia slum within Baghdad where the Mahdi Army has for years engaged in a reign of terror against locals and the U.S. military.

In addition to the direct killings of gay men by the militia was the report of a fire-bombing of a neighborhood café popular among gay men. Still more articles look to the influence of militias in combination with family honor killings — gay men who have been thrown out into the streets to fend for their safety, or Iraqis who have killed gay family members.

The most disturbing report comes from the Arab-language news source Alarabiya, describing the torture and killing of at least seven gay men who have had their anuses closed using a special glue, with Iraqi officers having forced them to take a medicine inducing diarrhea and death. While the English-language media has conflicting reports on what is happening in Iraq, this report, created by those who speak the language and have the best resources to interview local political and religious officials, gives perhaps the best indication of how terrible the situation has become for LGBT Iraqis.

In the course of my work, I often come across horrific stories like these. I am a journalist, not an activist, so the priority is to cover them — still, people often ask what they can do. The answer is to put the pressure on Washington — to show our leaders this is a serious topic — one that needs their attention now.

As a child, I grew up in a neighborhood where many of my friends were the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. Because of the direct connection to this historical event, it always baffled me when we would learn in school of American indifference to the 1930s buildup to that era. Certainly, reading about overseas suffering can seem an abstraction, whether 70 years ago or today. Yet, whether today or then, how many people could have been saved by writing letters, contacting politicians, or by directly sending money to organizations which aid refugees?

Though what is going on in Iraq with gay persecution is not at the same level of the Holocaust, the major difference is that the reign of terror is the direct result of the U.S. invasion, which completely changed the balance of power, unleashing the situation that exists today. In addition to the impact on the LGBT community, the refugee situation in Iraq impacts literally millions of people who have had to flee their homes since 2003.

My visit in 2007 lasted a month, with interviews in both the safer Kurdish region as well as Baghdad. Even with a direct visit trying to look at facts on the ground, it was hard to parse what exactly was going on. Iraq is a place wracked by violence, where even gathering information can be deadly. Killings of gay men are often random — seen as a side effect of living in Baghdad. Signs someone is gay — long hair and stylish clothes — are often the signs one is Westernized, an excuse for murder by those bent on overthrowing the occupation. It is also apparent that men who are stereotypically gay are targets for abduction and murder, even at military checkpoints our own government has established throughout the city.

Scott Long , who heads the LGBT division of Human Rights Watch, is currently in Iraq aiding gay men seeking refuge. He told me via e-mail that “I spoke today to a gay man who escaped Baghdad after multiple attempts by armed men to abduct him off the street. He was almost speechless with terror.”

Long added, “There’s obviously an enormous moral burden upon the U.S. for creating a climate in which violence against all kinds of vulnerable groups could metastasize with impunity. That doesn’t detract from the responsibility of the government of an independent Iraq to institute rule of law and protect all its own population.”

As Americans looking into this issue from the relative safety of our own lives, we must ask what responsibility the United States bears and what can be done to put pressure on the Iraqi government. Baghdad under Saddam was a cosmopolitan city with a relative tolerance toward gays as part of the fabric of society. Saddam even kept a network of gay spies to sleep with gay foreign diplomats and extract secrets, perhaps the strongest acknowledgement of gay culture before the occupation. But the invasion changed all of that, wiping out the cosmopolitan society, with gay culture, music, art, women in the workforce, and other factors under attack as militias and religious leaders asserted power in the chaos.

Openly gay U.S. congressman Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat, visited Iraq in early April and found in his discussions by phone with gay Iraqi men that “many fondly reminisced about life under Saddam.” He said most gay people are closeted, as they are in places like Jordan and Syria, where many gay Iraqis, among other refugees, have fled to escape violence and, in many cases, await asylum. These countries do not have perfect LGBT rights records, Polis commented, but “at the very least, [gay citizens] don’t live in constant fear for their lives.”

Polis’s findings mirror the comments made by the gay men I met in Iraq. It is not hard to argue that the locus of responsibility for the deaths of gay men in Iraq lies squarely with the U.S. decision to invade the country. The occupation changed the political structure of the country, creating a power vacuum that led to the rise of a militant insurgency, using Islamic fundamentalism as a cover for its horrific deeds.

No matter one’s opinion of the war, the question is what to do now. According to Polis, there are “some friendly elements in the Iraqi government,” but the “problem is the breakdown of the chain of command and the failure of duty to protect their lesbian, gay, and transgendered citizens.” His visit was a way “to make sure our government is aware of the issue and raise the issue with our counterparts in Iraq.”

The recent killings reflect a dilemma in U.S. policy. The situation in Iraq is overall significantly safer than it was during my 2007 visit. By suppressing the militant and religious elements, the surge created a more vibrant Baghdad, more akin to the cosmopolitan society that once existed. Shops have reopened, artists are displaying in galleries again, women are returning to work, and young couples have begun to hold hands again in parks that dot the city. But the safety induced by the surge has also allowed for a more visible presence of Baghdad’s gay community, and with this has come the resurgence of the once-discredited militant groups, particularly the Mahdi Army based out of Sadr City.

According to my contact at the embassy, “our local staff, some of whom live in Sadr City, have told us that word on the streets is that this is the work of JAM,” referring to the Mahdi Army. He emphasized these are “not tribal and not familial disputes.” My contact explained that since the surge, the security situation has improved and militant groups have been suppressed, leading to the Mahdi Army saying they are not “there protecting the virtues of the community; this is why guys are coming out now — they’re starting to act more Western, they’re acting more effeminate.”

"The impression is that these incidents are a way for these JAM elements to reassert their presence in a way that is culturally acceptable.” As the surge has discredited them, “they have to take issues overall that make them look legitimate, and the culture being what it is in this part of the world, Iraq in this case, in their minds, this is a legitimate cause, rooting out homosexuality.”

Under the Obama administration, a similar surge will be conducted in Afghanistan, diverting resources from one occupied country to another. Ultimately, the United States will leave Iraq. While a new government exists within the country, how long it will hold up without the U.S. presence remains to be seen. Perhaps we can look at gays in Iraq as canaries in a coal mine, an indication of what is to come in a future Iraq. The absence of American and other international forces may lead again to the deadly chaos that existed just after the invasion.

The question now for gay Americans is, What can we do? Myriad organizations are focused on the issue, from Iraqi LGBT to Human Rights Watch to the San Francisco–based Organization for Refuge, Asylum, and Migration, whose executive director Neil Grungras said, “Even if the West is helpless to stop the antigay terror in Iraq, the U.S. and other enlightened nations can save the lives of thousands of gays who will otherwise be returned to certain death. In 2008 the U.S. accepted over 12,000 Iraqi refugees. In 2009 it intends to take in 17,000. We are urging the U.S. and other traditional resettlement countries to set aside sufficient slots to save these vulnerable refugees’ lives.”

My contact in Baghdad told me that “arguments have been made for expanding the refugee program, to allow for processing of minority groups such as LGBT Iraqis at the American embassy in Baghdad. But there are other minority groups — Christians, women, Sunnis who live in and are surrounded by Shiite communities, Shiites surrounded by Sunnis — that face just as great a threat and danger.”

He added, “Requests for help that come our way do not go unnoticed or unheard. But making public any effort to assist gay Iraqis is precarious because we are operating in what remains — relative to the rest of the world — a very conservative society. It is suspected that the Sadr City murders carried out earlier this month were by militias and conservative elements within Iraqi society, which tend to be anti-American to begin with. If the U.S. government is publicly seen by these groups as putting pressure on the government of Iraq, that will, quite possibly, make things worse for gay Iraqis.”

It is clear though that in another occupied country, Afghanistan, outside international pressure can change things. Afghanistan recently approved what has come to be called the "marriage rape law," interpreted to mean that men can force their wives to have sex with them and deny them the right to leave the home without permission. It seemed something that the Taliban would pass, not an elected U.S.–backed government. An international uproar ensued, along with the implicit threat that billions of dollars in aid would be denied Afghanistan if the law were not reexamined.

Polis suggests using those “friendly elements in the Iraqi government” to work on gay issues. The importance of this ultimately will be similar to what was experienced in Afghanistan on women’s issues, and he said, “The eyes of the international human rights community will judge Iraq by how they treat those who face discrimination in their society.”

My contact at the embassy told me to let readers of The Advocate know that “if there is any piece of advice I can give our community and those who care about the plight of gay Iraqis, it is this: Put pressure on Washington to do more, put pressure on your government. The only way our leaders ever know something is serious is when we stand up and show just how serious we are about it.” He added, “If these killings in what remains a war zone don’t show the world that people do not choose at their leisure to be persecuted, I don’t know what will.”

May 3, 2009 – The Huffington Post

8
The Pink Army

by Meris Lutz
The first time he said it, his face was so passive I didn’t register what he was saying. "Did you get that?" Georges asked me. "They raped him." We were sitting in the courtyard of Helem, the Lebanese gay rights organization located in a beautiful French colonial building not far from downtown Beirut. Helem’s director, Georges Azzi, was helping me interview a young arrival from Baghdad.

I looked back at the slender 21-year-old with the confident voice and tried to determine what invisible force was holding him upright, helping him to speak. Three weeks of rape and torture at the hands of the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, followed by a month of living as a fugitive before fleeing to Lebanon would surely destroy a person, I thought. Then again, Iraq seems to have become a laboratory for testing the limits of human endurance, and the results are always sickeningly surprising.

"What happened to the other five gay men who were with you?" I asked. "They killed them," he said flatly. "I paid." Hassan (not his real name) is one of a handful of gay Iraqis who have sought refuge in Lebanon since the beginning of the year, when, according to Iraqis and human rights workers interviewed for this post, some sort of understanding was reached between the Iraqi government and the Mahdi Army to "cleanse" Iraq of homosexuals.

According to Hassan and M.M., another gay Iraqi who fled to Jordan and eventually made his way to Lebanon, Moqtada al-Sadr was given the green light from the government to attack homosexuals after video footage of a private party attended by gays, lesbians and transsexuals began circulating Iraq. Neither had attended the party or seen the footage, but several others confirmed they had heard the rumor. The BBC recently posted a number of videos depicting homosexuals and cross dressers being harassed by security forces.

The video provided a pretext for the partially disbanded and discredited Mahdi Army to reconstitute itself as morality force. Other armed groups were not far behind. "It’s creating a competition to see who can be the most righteous, the most steeped in blood," said Scott Long, the director of the LGBT Rights division of Human Rights Watch.

Since the killings were reported in the American press several weeks ago, the Iraqi government has vociferously denied any direct involvement. But according to Hassan, who was arrested at a government checkpoint, "The government and the Mahdi Army are working together to kill [homosexuals]." Long was also skeptical of the government’s claims. He stopped by Beirut on his way back from Baghdad to check on Hassan and the other Iraqis who have contacted Helem since arriving in Lebanon.

"[The Ministry of Interior] went very ostentatiously to the New York Times and said ‘gays are being targeted in Sadr City," Long said. "That’s for show; the reality is they are at minimum turning a blind eye." Long, along with another Human Rights Watch researcher, Rasha Moumneh, went to Iraq to investigate reports of organized campaign against homosexuality and other forms of gender deviation.

"It’s difficult to navigate sensationalist stories about gay violence In the Middle East, because they often serve political ends," said Moumneh. "I went in with some skepticism that it was a targeted campaign, but that changed very quickly." "The intensity and scope of the violence was astonishing," Long added. Although it is nearly impossible to determine an exact number of attacks that are motivated by sexual orientation, a doctor in Baghdad told Long it was in the hundreds. Morgues and hospitals are receiving more bodies of men who have been castrated, had their anuses glued shut or the word "pervert" carved into their skin, indicating they were not the victims of "ordinary" sectarian killing.

Hassan was targeted for his activism as much as his sexual orientation. Since 2005, he was been working with a London-based Iraqi LGBT rights organization to set up safe houses in Baghdad, which at one point housed over 40 individuals before the situation became so dangerous he shut them down. In 2006, he was detained and tortured briefly by the Mahdi Army, whose drug use has earned it the nicknamed the "pink army," a reference to the pink eyes of habitual hashish users. Since coming to Lebanon, he has registered with the United Nations and is currently awaiting resettlement in the US or Europe. As a victim of torture, his file receives priority attention, but in the meantime, he must wait in a country where homosexuality is illegal and violence against gays not unheard of.

"They don’t persecute people who translated for the Americans in Lebanon," said Long, explaining why homosexuals’ cases should be treated differently from other Iraqi refugees. "Of the countries surrounding Iraq, none are safe for homosexuals, so there is the added urgency of folks having to wait in countries where they are also at risk," he said.

Still, the Iraqis seem to be taking full advantage of the freedoms Lebanon does offer, often to the chagrin of Azzi, who, as director of Helem, has taken on the role of reluctant mother hen. Last week, they disappeared from his radar only to text him later from Acid, the notoriously decadent gay club just outside Beirut. "We couldn’t tell him beforehand-he would have worried about us," Hassan said, throwing his friend a sly smile. "Georges is our father, the leader of the revolution!"

"Yeah," Azzi answered, laughing. "We’re the real ‘pink army’."

May 28, 2009 – ABC News

9
Tortured and Killed in Iraq for Being Gay: Baghdad’s Militias Are Carrying Out a Violent Crackdown on Iraq’s Gay Community

by Mazin Faiq
Baghdad, Iraq – Two gay men were killed in Baghdad’s Sadr City slum, and police confirmed they found the bodies of four more men, all killed during a 10-day period after an unknown Shiite militia group urged a crackdown on homosexuals in the country. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs believes as many as 30 people have been killed during the last three months because they were — or were perceived to be — gay.

In a letter to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the human rights group Amnesty International called for "urgent and concerted action" to end the violence against the gay community, the group reported on its Web site. Homosexuality is prohibited almost everywhere in the Middle East, but conditions have become especially dangerous in recent years for gays and lesbians, as religious militias have become more powerful since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. But an Iraqi military source claimed the recent killings were linked to tribal violence, not militias, and his characterization of the killings hints at how deep homophobia runs in Iraqi society.

"Two young men were killed Thursday. They were sexual deviants. Their tribes killed them to restore their family honor," an Iraqi army member who did not want to give his name told ABC News. The army source said the bodies of four gay men were unearthed in Sadr City March 25, each bearing signs reading "pervert" in Arabic on their chests. All the bodies found bore signs of torture, and were found fixed to poles when they were killed. The Iraqi army source also said two of the men found dead were wearing diapers and women’s lingerie.

Two gay men were found elsewhere in Sadr City, alive but bearing the scars of severe torture. They were beaten, their chests showed signs of cigarette burns, and when police found them they were rushed to the hospital. They had been sodomized with iron bars, sources said. Other men said they had had their chests slashed and their nipples cut off. The slum is a bastion of support for fiery Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army militia. But an Iraqi government source told ABC News that a previously unknown Shiite group called Asaieb al-Haq (the righteous leagues) is suspected of playing a role in these killings. This group emerged after the Mahdi militia froze its activities last year. According to the source, the group includes not only Iraqis but also Iranians and Lebanese.

Many young men who might have cut their hair short and grown beards when religious gangs controlled much of Iraq now dress in a more Western style as government forces take back control. Some of those men have now reportedly been accused of being gay by Asaieb al-Haq. In the last 10 days in Sadr City, witnesses said at least five coffee shops, which are popular with Iraqi gays, were set on fire.

Army Sources Claim Gay Prostitution Is on the Rise
According to army members who carry out patrols on the streets of Baghdad, cosmetic peddlers are selling a number of products targeted at gay men, pills and hormones to enlarge their breasts, hair removal cosmetics, and skin ointments. A member of the Iraqi army said homosexuality was now more widespread since the fall of the Saddam regime. "It is a consequence of war in 2003 and what comes after," he said, saying that gay prostitution is rife in the country since the war ended. Homosexual acts are punishable by up to seven years in prison in Iraq.

May 29, 2009 – PinkNews

10
Radical Iraq cleric orders ‘depraved’ homosexuality to be eradicated

by Jessica Geen
Moqtada Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric in Iraq, has ordered that the "depravity" of homosexuality must be eradicated, yet urged an end to violence against gays and lesbians. His spokesman Sheikh Wadea al-Atab said today that a series of meetings are being held with clerics, tribal leaders and police to tackle the "phenomenon". According to AFP, Atabi said: "The purpose of the meetings is to fight the depravity and to urge the community to reject this phenomenon. The only remedy to stop it is through preaching and guidance. There is no other way to put an end to it."

Regarding the recent killings of six gay men in Sadr city, on the outskirts of Baghdad, Atabi said: "Al-Sadr rejects this type of violence … and anyone who commits violence [against gays] will not be considered as being one of us." Homosexuality is not illegal in Iraq but religious leaders condemn it. Two gay men were found dead in the Baghdad Shiite slum of Sadr City In April following condemnations of homosexuality by a leading local cleric.

A further four were murdered in March after the Shiite cleric Sattar al-Battat allegedly repeatedly condemned homosexuality in Friday prayers. Following reports of the murders, Amnesty International took the unusual step of writing to Iraqi president Nouri al-Maliki to demand "urgent and concerted action" by his government to stop the killings of gay men in the country. The letter suggested that evidence shows police are encouraged to target gay men and calls for officers who incite homophobic attacks to be "held to account and either prosecuted or disciplined and removed from office".

Niall Couper, a spokesperson from Amnesty International, said: "The gay community in Iraq deserves protection and that means their leaders needs to stand up for them. Amnesty International is calling on Nouri al-Maliki to condemn all attacks on members of the gay community, publicly, unreservedly and in the strongest terms possible."

Writing for PinkNews.co.uk in February, human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell claimed: "Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, homophobia and the terrorisation of LGBT people has got much worse. The western invasion of Iraq in 2003 ended the tyrannical Baathist dictatorship. But it also destroyed a secular state, created chaos and lawlessness and allowed the flourishing of religious fundamentalism. The result has been an Islamist-inspired homophobic terror campaign against LGBT Iraqis."

"Queers are being shot dead in their homes, streets and workplaces," he added. "Even suspected gay children are being murdered. They killers claim to be doing these assassinations at the behest of the ‘democratic’ Iraqi government, in order to eradicate what they see as immoral, un-Islamic behaviour."

June 12, 2009 – PinkNews

11
US State Department condemns killings of Iraqi gays

by Jessica Geen
The US State Department has strongly condemned the reported killings of gay men in Iraq. In a department press briefing on Wednesday, spokesman Ian Kelly confirmed that the US embassy in Baghdad has raised the issue with Iraqi government officials. Gay campaigners have criticised the US embassy in Baghdad and the State Department for failing to address the issue. In answer to a question from a reporter, Kelly said: "We absolutely condemn acts of violence and human rights violations committed against individuals in Iraq because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. This is an issue that we’ve been following very closely since we have been made aware of these allegations, and we are aware of the allegations."

He added: "The US embassy in Baghdad has raised and will continue to raise the issue with senior officials from the government of Iraq, and has urged them to respond appropriately to all credible reports of violence against gay and lesbian Iraqis." However, Kelly would not comment on recent remarks made by radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr. According to Sadr’s spokesman, the religious leader ordered that the "depravity" of homosexuality must be eradicated, yet urged an end to violence against gays and lesbians.

Homosexuality is not illegal in Iraq but religious leaders condemn it. Two gay men were found dead in the Baghdad Shiite slum of Sadr City In April following condemnations of homosexuality by a leading local cleric. A further four were murdered in March after the Shiite cleric Sattar al-Battat allegedly repeatedly condemned homosexuality in Friday prayers. Last week, Iraqi LGBT said it had evidence of the Iraqi government’s involvement with militia groups advocating violence and murder towards gays.

However, a statement from the US embassy which said there no was evidence of government involvement was described as "offensive and insulting" by the group. Speaking to PinkNews.co.uk, Ali Hili of Iraqi LGBT said that politics is preventing the US from stepping in to help, claiming that Hillary Clinton’s State Department and Obama’s administration will not upset the Iraqi government as they have no other allies within the country.

June 18, 2009 – PinkNews

12
Exclusive: British Foreign Office reacts to gay Iraqi killings

by Jessica Geen
The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office has released a statement on the killings of gay men in Iraq, following strong condemnation of the reports from the US State Department last week. An FCO spokeswoman told PinkNews.co.uk: "We have received reports of violence committed against individuals because of their sexual orientation in Iraq. Although it is difficult to get precise information, officials in Baghdad will continue to monitor the situation carefully.

"FCO officials remain in contact with vulnerable groups and organisations such as the UK-based Iraqi Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans-Gender Group, and are looking into their most recent reports. The UK condemns the persecution of any individual because of their sexual orientation and has raised the issue with the government of Iraq’s Minister for Human Rights."

Homosexuality is not illegal in Iraq but is condemned by religious leaders. Two gay men were found dead in the Baghdad Shiite slum of Sadr City in April following condemnations of homosexuality by a leading local cleric. A further four were murdered in March after the Shiite cleric Sattar al-Battat allegedly repeatedly condemned homosexuality in Friday prayers. According to Amnesty International, 25 boys and men were reportedly killed in Baghdad between March and April because they were, or were perceived to be, gay.

Last Wednesday, US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly confirmed that the US embassy in Baghdad has raised the issue with Iraqi government officials. He said: "We absolutely condemn acts of violence and human rights violations committed against individuals in Iraq because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. This is an issue that we’ve been following very closely since we have been made aware of these allegations, and we are aware of the allegations."

Gay campaigners have criticised the US for failing to address the issue, claiming that the State Department and Obama’s administration will not upset the Iraqi government as they have no other allies within the country. Responding the FCO statement, Ali Hili of Iraqi LGBT said: "Iraqi LGBT is still working inside Iraq in spite of the dangerous situation and sensitivity of the position of our activist inside. We are still monitoring the situation and reporting to the FCO regularly.

"We thank the FCO and all their staff who have been helping to bring this issue to the Iraqi officials to help stop the murder of LGBT people in Iraq." Earlier this month, Iraqi LGBT claimed it has evidence the Iraqi government is involved with militia groups advocating violence and murder towards gays.

Hili told PinkNews.co.uk: "A police office from the Ministry of Interior Intelligence told us secretly that there is a campaign of murder and violence against gays. We had to pay him $5,000 US to help release one of our members from jail." He added: "With all the evidence we have been presenting, including some from one of our members who was recently released from prison, we have evidence of mass arrests [of LGBT Iraqis]."

30 June 2009 – BBC News

13
Gay life was much easier under Saddam Hussein, harrowing Radio 5 Live documentary finds

The ability of gay people in Iraq to live relatively freely has been severely curtailed following the toppling of Saddam Hussein, a documentary on BBC Radio 5 Live has found. In Gay Life After Saddam, Aasmah Mir finds out how life for the country’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community (LGBT) has got much worse since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Human rights campaigners claim hundreds of LGBT people have been killed or tortured while others have fled the country fearing for their safety since Saddam was toppled from power six years ago.

Meanwhile, in the UK, gay Iraqis seeking asylum are struggling to persuade authorities to let them stay. Through some harrowing testimonies, Aasmah hears from campaigners and those who’ve been persecuted to see how life has actually changed for gay Iraqis. Producer Ashley Byrne says: "The programme includes an interview with a gay Iraqi who was kidnapped and raped before fleeing the country, we hear from a young man who fled to Paris after being tortured and we get exclusive access to a so-called ‘safe house’ harbouring vulnerable LGBT Iraqis on the outskirts of Baghdad."

Ashley adds: "Some of the evidence is very difficult to comprehend especially a form of torture involving glue and diarrhoea-inducing drugs." Presenter Aasmah Mir also meets a London-based Iraqi whose life is under threat for the work he’s doing to help gay people in his homeland.

Ali Hilli (a pseudonym) claims he has had two fatwas issued against him from extremists in the Middle East. Co-Producer Gail Champion says: "What becomes clear throughout is that not one person, one group or another is responsible for this persecution. It seems like it’s chaos in Iraq with the authorities struggling to keep control. "What surprised me more than anything was how much life was easier for LGBT people under Saddam Hussein."

Radio 5 Live Commissioning Editor Jonathan Wall said: "This important programme raises issues about human rights and tells some stories seldom heard in the general narrative from Iraq. It’s a moving and powerful documentary." The programme also includes interviews with the Iraqi Prime Minister, religious leaders and ordinary people on the streets of Baghdad where homosexuality is still viewed by many as an illness and something that needs treatment.

Throughout, the programme asks what the West should do and it includes reaction from the White House and the Foreign Office in London. Gay Life After Saddam is produced by Ashley Byrne and Gail Champion and is a Made in Manchester Production for BBC Radio 5 Live.

Gay Life After Saddam, BBC Radio 5 Live, 7.00-8.00pm, Sunday 5 July 2009

10 July 2009 – Daily Queer News

14
Iraqi LGBT to apply for charitable status, provides interim accounts

Posted by Daily Queer News
The Iraqi LGBT organisation has today provided interim accounts for its Syria operations (see below) and announced that it will resubmit an application for charitable status. Based in the UK, the group works to aid lesbians, gays, bisexual and transgender people within Iraq as well as many who have fled for exile in nearby countries. It runs a ’safe house’ in Baghdad, Iraq, where 20 LGBT people are currently housed and where previously 70 people have stayed for various periods.

The safe house will be featured in a documentary on BBC Radio this Sunday. It includes interviews with the person who runs it as well as some of those who live there. Since it was founded Iraqi LGBT has provided safety for over 100 people, including supporting 70 people financially. It has provided support for 23 people outside Iraq including shelter, medication and food.

The reapplication for charitable status follows a change in the group’s aims which removed working the requirement to work for change in Iraqi law, which resulted in a previous rejection by the UK’s Charity Commission as this was regarded as ‘political’. It also follows the work of the group’s volunteer accountant on preparing accounts to meet charity commissioners’ standards. In addition the group has become a Company limited by guarantee (No. 06954355).

Iraqi LGBT’s accountant Josh Botham ATT ACPA ACCA IIT[dip] explained that – like others such as Amnesty International – the group has had to use circuitous routes in order to get funds to exiles, as well as pay bribes in order to secure release of people under real threat of death. Botham said that as part of the application the group would publish full accounts on its website shortly. Funding for the group in the past has come from the group’s own members and donations including one in 2008 from the US Representative Jared Polis. He donated $10,000 (£6,853) via the Heartland Alliance to aid the project in Syria.

Polis’ funding went to the Chicago based LGBT group Heartland Alliance to provide for five people to be moved from Iraq to Syria and to provide housing rent, food and other basic needs in Syria. This project ran between 1 June and 31 December 2008. Included in the cost was the living accommodation for the local administrator of the group. Botham said that: “Providing the financial support involved a difficult money transfer process in order to avoid coming to the attention of Syrian authorities. Such an operation also meant that in order to safeguard the lives of these refugees, people were only informed on a need to know basis.”

“Heartland Alliance [as grant provider] however insisted that our group should meet up with the Lebanese LGBT group, Helem, in November 2008, at that same time that some prominent members of Heartland Alliance visited Syria. The result was disastrous for our group, Iraqi LGBT. Some of our members were arrested by Syrian police in Damascas in (which city). With the help of a local lawyer, Iraqi LGBT managed to get these people released. However one of them was later to be deported back to Iraq.”

Iraqi LGBT has experienced other difficulties in coordinating activities with Heartland Alliance. Another grant of $10,000 meant for Iraqi LGBT came to the group from the Elisabeth Morse Genius Charitable Trust, based in Chicago. Botham gave them a budget of how to allocate this money.

However communications broke down with the Heartland Alliance’s representative when it was claimed that the last transfer of $4,000 had never been received by our sources in Iraq. Says Botham: “This underlines the perils of where we are working and who we are working with. Iraqi LGBT has supported another nine Iraqi refugees in Syria, as well as a safe house in Iraq and has had to spend money on freeing people from custody. Obviously in such situations one doesn’t get a receipt.”

“Between 1 June 2008 to 31 May 2009, the Polis supported project represented one sixth of the group’s expenditure. Just under a quarter of the group’s funding actually came from the group’s founder, Ali Hili, his family and his partner.”

Iraqi LGBT Chair Ali Hilli added: “We are confident that the charitable status will be accepted and will be a great help for the group. As we have been reporting for several years now, our people in Iraq are being killed and we desperately need more financial support to save them and where necessary move them out of Iraq. “This work is dangerous and threatening. Even in London I am under real threat and have been forced to move as a result.”

Donations for Iraqi LGBT can be made via PayPal. See the group’s website at http://iraqilgbtuk.blogspot.com for details.

July 28, 2009 – USA Today

15
Militias target some Iraqis for being gay

by Paul Wiseman and Nadeem Majeed, USA TODAY
Baghdad — The young man turns to the camera and pleads with his tormentors. "I’m not a terrorist," he tells the Iraqi police who surround him. "I want you to know I am different. But I am not a terrorist." To some fundamentalist Iraqi Muslims, Ahmed Sadoun Saleh was worse than a terrorist. He was gay. He wore his hair long and took female hormones to grow breasts. Amused by his appearance, Iraqi police officers stopped him in December at a checkpoint in a southern Baghdad neighborhood dominated by radical Shiite militias. They groped Saleh and ridiculed him.

The assault was captured on video and circulated on cellphones throughout Baghdad, says Ali Hili, founder of London-based Iraqi LGBT, a group dedicated to protecting Iraq’s gays and lesbians. Shortly after the video was made public, Hili says Saleh contacted him, fearing for his life, and asked for his help to flee Iraq. "Unfortunately, it was too late," Hili says. Saleh turned up dead two months later, he says. At least 82 gay men have been killed in Iraq since December, according to Iraqi LGBT. The violence has raised questions about the Iraqi government’s ability to protect a diverse range of vulnerable minority groups that also includes Christians and Kurds, especially following the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities last month.

Mithal al-Alusi, a secular, liberal Sunni legislator, is among those who blame the killings on armed militant groups such as al-Qaeda and the Mahdi Army militia. By targeting one of the most vulnerable groups in a conservative Muslim society — people whose sexual orientation is banned by Iraqi law — the militias essentially are serving notice that they remain powerful despite the U.S. and Iraqi militaries’ efforts to curtail them, al-Alusi says. The militants "want to educate the society to accept killers on the street," al-Alusi says in an interview. "Why did Hitler start with gays? They are weak. They have no political cover. They have no legal cover."

The attacks have terrified a gay community that, for a brief time after the U.S. troop surge in 2007-08, tentatively enjoyed greater freedom and security. "I am worried about my life," says a middle-age gay man in Baghdad who asked to be identified by the pseudonym Hassan. He declined to be identified by his real name because the recent violence has made him fear for his life. "I don’t know what to do," he says.

Hili and other gay rights activists believe the killers operate with the complicity and sometimes the direct involvement of Iraqi security forces. As part of a drive to stop the sectarian violence that peaked in Iraq in 2006-07, those forces have taken into their ranks numerous former militia members from the Mahdi Army (loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr) and the pro-Iranian Badr Brigade. "The Ministry of Interior in Iraq is behind this campaign of terror," Hili says in an e-mail.He says witnesses have told him that police harass and beat suspected gays at checkpoints and sometimes turn them over to militias for execution.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf disputes such allegations. He says the ministry has assigned a special bureau to investigate the killings of gays; he says he knows of six gays who had been executed as of May. Homosexuality, Khalaf says, is against the law and "is rejected by the customs of our society." He adds, however, that offenders should be handled by the courts, not dispatched by vigilante groups. The killers aren’t just executing their gay victims. They are "mutilating their bodies and torturing them," says fundamentalist Sunni cleric Sheik Mohammed al-Ghreri, who has criticized the violence.

Hili says the militias have come up with a particularly cruel way to inflict pain: sealing victims’ anuses with glue, then force-feeding them laxatives. Hili says he has spoken to several victims who survived the ordeal.

‘You can just be crushed’
Besides targeting gays, Sadr City militias also are harassing and sometimes killing straight young men who violate fundamentalist fashion and decorum by wearing low-riding pants and other Western-style clothing, slicking back their hair or making it spiky, hanging out in cafes or pool halls or flirting with girls, says human rights activist Mohammed Jasim, 28.

"The campaign is against gays and anybody who looks gay" in the eyes of militiamen indoctrinated to believe immodest dress is an affront to God, Jasim says. "Young people felt their city had been liberated," says Jasim’s friend Wisam Mizban, 32. "They thought they could wear what they wanted. The militias felt threatened and started killing them. They are doing their crimes under the cover of the government. … Most young people want a civilized life. The militias and the government are putting pressure on them again."

The campaign has had a chilling effect on Baghdad’s nightlife.
Entrepreneur Ali al-Ali opened the Shisha coffee shop in an upstairs storefront overlooking a bustling street in the upscale Karrada neighborhood. The place quickly became a hangout for young gay men, who’d sit and talk and drink lattes, and smoke flavored tobacco from the water pipes that gave the cafe its name. But as the militias started killing gay men, Ali discouraged gays from congregating at his cafe. "If (militias) see gays coming here, maybe they will target me outside Karrada," al-Ali says.

His sentiments were echoed by Hussam Abdullah, whose tea shop also used to be a hangout for gay men — until militias warned Abdullah there would be trouble if he didn’t send them away. So he did. The militias usually send out warnings before they attack. Posters go up in Sadr City listing the offenders — gay and flashy straight men — by name and neighborhood. "If you don’t give up what you are doing," said a recent one seen by a USA TODAY reporter, "death will be your fate. And this warning will come true, and the punishment will be worse and worse."

The poster referred to the offenders as "puppies," the fundamentalist epithet for gays here. "In Arabic culture, if you want to insult someone you call them a dog," human rights activist Yanar Mohammed says. "If you’re a small dog, you can just be crushed." Among those listed was a young man named Allawi Hawar, a local soccer star who incurred the wrath of the militias by wearing his hair long and partying with his friends in Sadr City cafes.

Hawar was playing pool one day last month when two masked men drove up on a motor scooter. One climbed off and made his way inside the cafe, clutching a pistol. "We have something to deal with," he announced to startled patrons, according to witness Emad Saad, 25. The gunman grabbed Hawar and dragged him outside. Then he shot the young athlete in the leg. After Hawar crumpled to the ground, bleeding, the gunman shot him again and killed him, Saad says.

The militiamen pick their targets by entering cafes and looking for men who appear feminine or too showy, Saad says. Then they ask around to get the offenders’ names, and later put them on the death lists distributed around town. Saad himself likes to wear Western jeans and slicked-back hair. He has taken to carrying a Glock pistol, awaiting his showdown with the militias. "Some people are afraid, but I am not," he says. "I have done nothing wrong."

The Sadr City warning posters do not appear to be the work of educated theologians. A recent one was filled with Arabic misspellings, including a faulty rendering of "compassionate" — part of one of the 99 names for God. But Ali Hili, the London activist, and others believe high-level clerics have ordered the killings. Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani several years ago decreed that the punishment for homosexuality is death "if it is proven before the religious judge."

An Iraqi TV channel, Alsumaria, reported that Sunni cleric al-Ghreri has called for the execution of gays. Al-Ghreri denies issuing such a statement, but concedes that some "stubborn" clerics might support the death penalty for gays. He says homosexuality is "abnormal" and that gays should know that "freedom has limits." First, he says, gays should be warned to change their offensive behavior. If that fails, he says, they should be jailed. If detentions don’t work, they should endure 100 lashes for engaging in gay sex. And if four separate lashings fail and if witnesses testify against the suspects, he says, then they should be executed.

Exactly what unleashed the recent wave of violence is unclear.
Some — including Hassan, the middle-age gay man — trace the terror to a birthday party around New Year’s at a cafe on Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad. The party attracted about 20 gay men who cut loose on the dance floor, celebrating what they thought was their freedom in a more peaceful, stable Iraq. A video of the revelry was entitled Gay Scandal and distributed around the city. "This was the start of it," Hassan says. "It made the ministry people crazy."

In London, activist Hili calls the party "a foolish action from members of our community who let their guard down." However, he doesn’t believe the party "was the spark that ignited all the flames." Hili says the violence started earlier, with clerical fatwas against gays and police raids in December in Najaf, Karbala and Kut.

The search for safety
Unable to trust the authorities — and in some cases shunned by their own families — many Iraqi gays have gone into hiding. Hassan and some gay friends say they had found refuge in a house in Karrada. But as the threat against them increased, they became afraid the police would find them. So they scattered.

Hassan says he sometimes stays at home with his brothers — their parents are dead — but he’s afraid even of them, afraid they will kill him because he has brought shame to the family. He says he wanted to move in with his sister, who lives in Abu Dhabi. She turned him away, saying she didn’t want her children to know they have a gay uncle. Unwilling to trust the police, Iraqi LGBT has set up its own safe houses for gays in Iraq. The group has struggled to raise money and had to close three safe houses in the past couple of months, leaving just one open.

Hili says five safe houses are needed, each of them housing 10 to 12 gay refugees. Rent for a 2,150-square-foot safe house is usually $600 a month. Yet other expenses pile up: security guards, food, fuel, medical bills, pots and pans, bedding. "We desperately need to add more because we have so many urgent cases," Hili says. "We receive requests for shelter every day, but are not able to help." Things were better for gays, Hassan says, under the dictatorial rule of Saddam Hussein.

"In the Saddam era, it wasn’t like this," he says. Saddam’s security forces, offended by Hassan’s openly gay lifestyle, once arrested him and hauled him to court. The judge let him go, ruling that he had done nothing wrong. "Now, you don’t know who to be afraid of," he says. "Forget about freedom or democracy. We just want our safety."

August 17, 2009 – The Washington Post

16
Gay Men Targeted In Iraq, Report Says – Militias Blamed for Scores of Killings

by Ernesto Londoño, Washington Post Foreign Service
Baghdad – Human Rights Watch will urge in a report to be released Monday that the Iraqi government do more to protect gay men, saying militiamen have killed and tortured scores in recent months as part of a social cleansing campaign.

Although the scope of the problem remains unclear, hundreds of gay men may have been killed this year in predominantly Shiite Muslim areas, the report’s authors said, basing their conclusion on interviews with gay Iraqi men, hospital officials and an unnamed United Nations official in Baghdad.

"The government has done absolutely nothing to respond," said Scott Long, director of the gay rights program at Human Rights Watch. "So far there has been pretty much a stone wall." Homosexuality was tacitly accepted during the last years of Saddam Hussein’s rule, but Iraqis have long viewed it as taboo and shameful.

Iraq’s human rights minister, Wijdan Salim, has expressed concern about the reported slayings, but few other government officials have addressed the issue publicly or indicated that they are disturbed by the reports. A senior police official in Baghdad said authorities could not effectively protect gay men because they often do not report crimes.

"To protect someone, you have to know who he is and his location," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the issue. "It’s very easy for the militiamen to find them and harm them, and it’s very difficult for our forces to protect them." Reports of slayings targeting gay men began circulating early this spring in Sadr City, a conservative Shiite district in eastern Baghdad. Gay men were also reportedly slain in Basra, Najaf and Diyala province, Human Rights Watch said.

Gay activists said militiamen loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had target lists containing the names of men suspected of being gay. Some were killed and some were tortured, they said. Human Rights Watch said a commonly reported form of torture involved injecting super glue into men’s rectums.

When violence in Iraq began ebbing in 2008 and militia and insurgent leaders lost sway in several parts of the country, social norms became less strict. Women began to shed abayas — long black robes that cover them from head to toe — in certain formerly conservative neighborhoods. Liquor stores began selling alcohol openly. And gay men began to congregate in cafes and other venues for parties. The advent of the Internet in Iraq after the 2003 invasion also allowed gay men to form bonds and circles of friends.

The attacks on gay men appear to have coincided with a call by religious leaders in Sadr City and other Shiite communities to curb behavior that clerics called unnatural and unhealthy. Sadr movement officials say they condemn homosexuality, but have denied participating in violence targeting gay men. Sadr City residents opposed to homosexuality said in interviews that the presence of gay men became overt after the Iraqi army was allowed to move into the district in the spring of 2008, asserting control over a vast area formerly controlled by Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi Army.

"When the Iraqi army started coming here, this phenomenon started coming to our area," said Ali Abu Kara, 23, a mechanic who identified himself as a member of the Mahdi Army. "We felt very glad when those puppies were killed," he added, using a pejorative term for gay men. Human Rights Watch said the Mahdi Army, which has been observing a cease-fire for more than a year, appears to have used the gay issue to build its image.

"It exploited morality for opportunistic purposes," the report said. "It aimed at popularity by targeting people few in Iraq would venture to defend." The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and American lawmakers have expressed concern about the reports of slayings. "Reports from Embassy contacts familiar with the areas where some of the bodies were found suggest the killings are the work of militias who believe homosexuality is a form of Western deviance that cannot be tolerated," Patricia Butenis, then the charge d’affaires at the embassy, wrote in an April 22 letter to Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.).

Polis, who is openly gay, raised the issue with Iraqi and U.S. officials during a visit to Iraq this spring. "There is no doubt that gay Iraqi men live in a constant state of terror," he said in an interview shortly after his visit. "That was not the case under Saddam Hussein’s regime. And it’s not the case in Jordan and Syria, where homosexuality is not accepted as it is in the West but people don’t live in fear."

Long, the Human Rights Watch official, said reports of slayings and intimidation have become more infrequent in recent months as gay communities have gone underground and scores of gay men have fled their neighborhoods. "The militias have run out of people to kill," he said.

Special correspondent Qais Mizher contributed to this report.

August 17, 2009 – UK Gay News

17
London Group Spent £60,000 Last Year to Aid Gay and Transgender Iraqis…£24,000 donated by public, Iraqi LGBT accounts to 31 May shows

London – Iraqi LGBT, the London-based group that support gay, lesbian and transgender Iraqis, received just over £60,000 in donations in the year to May 2009, the accounts published this morning show. And in the same period, all but £15 was sent to the Middle East to provide ‘safe houses’ in Iraq and Syria. Currently, the group runs two ‘safe houses’ in Syria and one in Iraq. Of the donations received, £35,550 came a grants from two organisations, the Heartland Alliance (HA) in Chicago (£11,236) and Hivos (£24,313), a human rights group in the Netherlands that is mainly financed by the Dutch government.

The remaining £24,773 in donations came from individuals. The costs incurred in the UK of running group was 9 per cent of the total expenditure (almost £5,450, which included £1,340 for special accounting for Hivos). Largest expenditure was almost £1,400 which was spent on costs of the group’s weekly meetings during the financial year. In a bid to save cash, this has now been reduced to a meeting every two weeks, with a current proposal for the 19-strong group to meet monthly, the report says.

The report highlights the considerable difficulties in transferring cash to Iraq and Syria from the Iraqi LGBT bank account in London. “We have realised that we sometimes need to trust our local people at face value and when we transfer funds to them, we have to believe that they will distribute these funds to the refugees who rely on this,” the report says.

“We have subsequently found out through making certain checks that our local administrator in Syria has not always passed on the funds. This is the same person who has been deported back to Iraq and for whom we put in a significant effort to keep him out the hands of the Iraqi Interior Ministry. As a result of this episode we have decided to pay each refugee in Syria individually to circumvent this problem. We have had no other problems, neither in Iraq , nor Turkey nor Jordan .”

While there was just £15 surplus at the end of the financial year, Iraqi LGBT is to get an increased contribution from Hivos – this year the Dutch organisation has allocated 50,000 Euros, the report says. During the last financial year, the group realised that in order for their activities to survive, the organisational part has to remain secretive.

“Given the risks and dangers to which our local members are exposed, we must inform them on a need to know basis,” the report says . “We are aware that this has caused confusion but if these local activists know how our whole operation works then they could disclose this to the Iraqi authorities under interrogation.

“We have learned that there is a lot more to just providing shelter for refugees. There is not just the physical but also the psychological aspects which impact the refugees. It has been just as much a learning curve for us as it is for them.” Iraqi LGBT is currently in the process of registering as a charity. A previous attempt to get charitable status failed, the report reveals.

“When we have previously applied, we were told that our current constitution does not allow us to be registered as a charity as it contained clauses which have a political motive,” the report says. The report also points out that they are working to register gay Iraqi refugees with The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This is being done with the help of Brian Soucek of Yale University in the USA.

To read the full report and accounts, click here

August 18, 2009 – LGBT Asylum News

18
Iraqi LGBT welcome Human Rights Watch report on pogromand and urges practical aid

The Iraqi LGBT group today welcomed the release by Human Rights ‘They want us exterminated’ which documents the killing of LGBT people in Iraq, in particular the extensive media coverage it has generated. Much of the information in the report is sourced from Iraqi LGBT members. "This report underlines what we have been saying since our group’s formation in 2006," said Iraqi LGBT spokesperson, Ali Hili. "We have information on over 700 killings including honour killings."

However Hili says that the group, which has 100 members inside Iraq (as well as refugees in neighboring countries) and supports LGBT people through safe houses, offers practical support (food etc.), psychological and educational support, is chronically underfunded. "We are the only people offering support to our fellow Iraqi LGBT inside Iraq but because we do not have the funds we have had to turn people away," he said.

The group recently published its annual report, available on its website, which showed how the money it receives is spent. The report explains how it has developed methods of operating clandestinely which are essential for such an operation in the Middle East. Hili is the only visible member of the group and as a result has attracted death threats in his exile in London. He is under police protection.

Recently it received a second substantial donation from a Dutch group. However due to low funding it has had to close safe houses and slow its development plans. At the same time it has seen very large amounts of money raised in the United States go to a Lebanese group which is supposed to be supporting Iraqi LGBT refugees. Ali says that the refugees, delivered to Lebanon by Human Rights Watch, have in fact been abandoned and some have returned to Iraq because they had no practical support.

"We have been trying to support one refugee who returned to Iraq from Lebanon because his medical needs were not being supported and who is now in danger. Through the United Nations, he has actually been accepted as a refugee by Sweden however it costs $2000 just for him to get back to Lebanon and then there are his travel costs to Sweden on top of that plus organising support in Sweden. This is an example of a case where we have great difficulty helping. It also shows something of the real costs involved in actually supporting people. Another example of that would be the bribes we have had to pay to save peoples lives.

"Our group represents Iraqi LGBT – they are our members – and, despite immense difficulties, our group has gained a lot of experience since we were established. Please support us if you want to help save LGBT people in Iraq."

Donations to Iraqi LGBT can be made to the PayPal Account.

Or make cheques payable to (IRAQI LGBT) and send them to:

Iraqi LGBT
22 Notting Hill Gate
Unit 111London,
W11 3JE
United Kingdom

For further information please call ++44 (0) 79-819 59453 or email or see

Ali said that the group also welcomed those who could donate their skills.

————————————————————————

The Safe Houses Project

Iraq: Emergency Shelter, Human Services and Protection for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People:

Iraqi LGBT started to establish a network of safe houses inside Iraq in March 2006.

As of today, we have only two safe houses open and running funded by HIVOS a Dutch based human rights organization. The members of our group inside Iraq urgently need funds to open at least four safe houses. These funds will allow us to keep the four safe houses open and running, and provide safety, shelter, food and many other needs for our LGBT friends inside Iraq. Any funds we receive that go beyond what we need for these four safe houses could be used to open more safe houses in the near future. We desperately need to add more because we have so many urgent cases in other cities. We receive requests for shelter every day, but we are not able to help yet.

Every safe house has around 200 square meters of living space, but harbors 10 to 12 people, so is very overcrowded. The residents are struggling badly because of the shortages of almost all the basic necessities in Iraq.

Rent: We have paid three months rent in advance. The most recent payments were in August. The average rent per safe house per month is $ 600 US Dollar.

Security: We paid the salaries of two guards per house, at $ 200 US Dollar per guard per month.

Other expenses of each house: We have paid $ 600 a month for each house approximately for natural gas and kerosene for cooking, and for food, fuel for generators which provide the electricity supply. Urgent priority needs: Our priorities at this stage are: natural gas or kerosene for cooking and heating; fuel for generating electricity; food; mobile phones and calling cards; money for transportation to allow residents some freedom of movement; beds, mattresses, blankets, sheets and pillows; cameras; printers; two computers; house supplies, such as cooking pans, dishes, and flatware; some furniture; clean water for drinking and bathing; soap for washing and bathing, tooth paste, razors and of course housing, guards etc.

Amount needed and how it would be spent (per month):
Natural gas or kerosene for cooking and heating – 50 GBP
Fuel for generating electricity – $ 300
Food – $ 600
Mobile phones, calling cards, and internet café charges – $ 450 etc.
Transportation – $ 250
Beds, mattresses, blankets, sheets and pillows – $ 1,300 – onetime payment
Cameras – $ 100 – onetime payment
Printers – $ 100 – onetime payment
Two computers – $ 1,200 – onetime payment
Kitchen supplies, such as cooking pans, dishes, and flatware – $ 400 – onetime payment
Some furniture – $ 500– onetime payment
Clean water for drinking and bathing; $ 250
Toiletries (soap for washing and bathing, tooth paste, razors etc.) – $ 150
We also need to pay for medicines for the members of our group, doctors will come and have a home visit monthly for all members their cost is $ 400 US Dollar each month.

Iraqi LGBT Annual Report and Financial Statements For the period ending 31 May 2009
Human Rights Watch Report Says
Report: The Iraqi anti-LGBT pogrom

Ali Hili – Iraqi Lgbt – Chair
22 Notting Hill Gate
Unit # 111
London , W11 3JE
United Kingdom
Mob: ++44 798 1959 453
Website

Visit our website, LGBT asylum news (formally Save Medhi Kazemi)

September 9, 2009 – Foreign Policy

19
Iraq’s New Surge: Gay Killings – As U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill testifies before Congress today, Iraqi’s security is far from assured. Militias now targetting the socially marginalized could soon take their killing spree mainstream.

by Rasha Moumneh
When my colleague and I sat down last April with Hamid, an Iraqi man from Baghdad, his trauma-induced stutter said as much as the words he spoke. Huddled inconspicuously in a dingy restaurant, Hamid recounted how militia members killed his partner along with three other men, two kidnapped from their Baghdad homes, two slaughtered in the streets. The next day, Hamid said, "they came for me. They came into my house and they saw my mother, and one of them said, ‘Where’s your faggot son?’ My mother called me after they left, in tears. … I can’t go home."

As the world hails Iraq’s supposed return to normality, the country’s militias — the same ones that spent years waging a sectarian civil war — have found a new, less apparent target: men suspected of being gay. The systematic killings, which began earlier this year, reveal the cracks behind Iraq’s fragile calm. Iraq’s leaders may talk of security and democracy from behind barbed wire in the Green Zone, but the surge of murders against gay men is a stark sign of how far Iraqi society still has to go.

During a 10-day Human Rights Watch research trip to Iraq in April, we heard harrowing stories of torture, abductions, kidnappings, extortion, and murder. We listened to dozens of men who had faced violence at the hands of armed militias, attacked by youths with guns for violating the unwritten codes of Iraqi masculinity. A number of signs might implicate one as being not "manly" enough, from neighborhood gossip that a man is gay to looking somehow effeminate or foreign in the wrong people’s eyes: wearing one’s hair too long or one’s jeans too tight, for example. There is no count available for the number of deaths since the killings began earlier this year, but one U.N. worker told us that the victims could number in the hundreds.

Not a single murder has been adequately investigated, and not a single murderer has been arrested. Infiltrated by militias and fearing for their reputations if they defend "immorality," government officials turn a blind eye. Most survivors pointed to Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia as the main culprit in the attacks. The stand-down of al-Sadr’s men over the past year has been pointed to as a sign of the U.S. troop surge’s success. Now, however, many Iraqis speculate that the Mahdi Army is hoping to revitalize its street cred by seizing a murderous new role: as guardians of morality.

Western attention has always focused primarily on sectarian attacks in Iraq. Yet al-Sadr’s militia and its counterparts in countless neighborhoods and towns have long had other targets in their cross hairs. These men claim to bear the banners of religion and morality, defending against any transgressors. They paint themselves as the caretakers of tradition, culture, and national authenticity — which often means keeping women, as well as men, in their rigidly enforced traditional roles. Ironically, they sell their violence as a means of security: Amid the total upheaval of Iraqi society over the last eight years, many people regard any relaxing of gender roles as a threat to public order, undermining patriarchal power. And since the coalition forces failed to provide security after the invasion, such cultural conservatives have moved in to fill the role. Many aimless, unemployed advocates of rigid traditionalism have taken up the task with their guns.

Indeed, since 2003, the Mahdi Army and other militias have targeted women, murdering hundreds if not thousands for working outside the home, for wearing makeup or pants, or just for walking on the streets unveiled. More recently, as attacks on gay men have grown more pronounced, Iraq’s media and its mosques have taken up the theme that Iraqi masculinity is under threat. Friday prayers warn that the "third sex" is on the loose in Baghdad cafes. News articles bemoan the "feminization" of Iraqi men, apparent not only by homosexuality but in Western dress and habits, scandalously tight T-shirts and expensive jeans. The hatred of "feminized" men betrays a deep-seated fear of women, and anxiety over the loss of fatherly and familial control.

Assaults on marginalized people, however, never stay at the margins. The fate of the most isolated, vulnerable people is a barometer of whether the law can protect, and the state will serve, all citizens.

We’ve seen this pattern all too closely before. In the 1990s, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe proclaimed that lesbians and gays were "people without rights," foreshadowing a broader campaign of brutality — against farm owners and farmworkers, dissidents and demonstrators, newspapers and trade unions. No one was left untouched. In Iraq today, the government’s indifference to a similar campaign of murder — within a stone’s throw of the Green Zone — is a grim augury for the future. Militias, emboldened by their successes, will need and find new victims. The rights and lives of all Iraqis are potentially at stake.

Today, American and Iraqi politicians’ televised boasts about the surge and security sound like a cruel delusion in the homes of countless grieving families. There will be no security in Iraq until the government reins in militias and establishes the rule of law. There will be no justice until assaults against invisible victims — including the epidemic of gender-based violence — are investigated and punished. Otherwise, these men, whose only crime is looking different, will only be the first victims in Iraq’s second surge — of killings.

13 September 2009 – The Guardian

20
How Islamist gangs use internet to track, torture and kill Iraqi gays – Iraqi militias infiltrate internet gay chatrooms to hunt their quarry – and hundreds are feared to be victims

by Afif Sarhan and Jason Burke
Sitting on the floor, wearing traditional Islamic clothes and holding an old notebook, Abu Hamizi, 22, spends at least six hours a day searching internet chatrooms linked to gay websites. He is not looking for new friends, but for victims. "It is the easiest way to find those people who are destroying Islam and who want to dirty the reputation we took centuries to build up," he said. When he finds them, Hamizi arranges for them to be attacked and sometimes killed.

Hamizi, a computer science graduate, is at the cutting edge of a new wave of violence against gay men in Iraq. Made up of hardline extremists, Hamizi’s group and others like it are believed to be responsible for the deaths of more than 130 gay Iraqi men since the beginning of the year alone.

The deputy leader of the group, which is based in Baghdad, explained its campaign using a stream of homophobic invective. "Animals deserve more pity than the dirty people who practise such sexual depraved acts," he told the Observer. "We make sure they know why they are being held and give them the chance to ask God’s forgiveness before they are killed." The violence against Iraqi gays is a key test of the government’s ability to protect vulnerable minority groups after the Americans have gone.

Dr Toby Dodge, of London University’s Queen Mary College, believes that the violence may be a consequence of the success of the government of Nouri al-Maliki. "Militia groups whose raison d’être was security in their communities are seeing that function now fulfilled by the police. So their focus has shifted to the moral and cultural sphere, reverting to classic Islamist tactics of policing moral boundaries," Dodge said.

Homosexuality was not criminalised under Saddam Hussein – indeed Iraq in the 1960s and 1970s was known for its relatively liberated gay scene. Violence against gays started in the aftermath of the invasion in 2003. Since 2004, according to Ali Hali, chairman of the Iraqi LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) group, a London-based human-rights group, a total of 680 have died in Iraq, with at least 70 of those in the past five months. The group believes the figures may be higher, as most cases involving married men are not reported. Seven victims were women. According to Hali, Iraq has become "the worst place for homosexuals on Earth".

The killings are brutal, with victims ritually tortured. Azhar al-Saeed’s son was one. "He didn’t follow what Islamic doctrine tells but he was a good son," she said. "Three days after his kidnapping, I found a note on my door with blood spread over it and a message saying it was my son’s purified blood and telling me where to find his body." She went with police to find her son’s remains. "We found his body with signs of torture, his anus filled with glue and without his genitals," she said. "I will carry this image with me until my dying day."

Police officers interviewed by the Observer said the killings were not aimed at gays but were isolated remnants of the sectarian violence that racked the country between 2005 and 2006. Hamizi’s group, however, boasts that two people a day are chosen to be "investigated" in Baghdad. The group claims that local tribes are involved in homophobic attacks, choosing members to hunt down the victims. In some areas, a list of names is posted at restaurants and food shops.

The roommate of Haydar, 26, was kidnapped and killed three months ago in Baghdad. After Haydar contacted the last person his friend had been chatting with on the net, he found a letter on his front door alerting him "about the dangers of behaving against Islamic rules". Haydar plans to flee to Amman, the Jordanian capital. "I have… to run away before I suffer the same fate," he said.

According to Human Rights Watch, the Shia militia known as the Mahdi army may be among the militants implicated in the violence, particularly in the northern part of Baghdad known as Sadr City. There are reports that Mahdi army militias are harassing young men simply for wearing "western fashions". A Ministry of Interior spokesperson, Abdul-Karim Khalaf, denied allegations of police collaboration. "The Iraqi police exists to protect all Iraqis, whatever their sexual persuasion," he said.

Hashim, another victim of violence by extremists, was attacked on Abu Nawas Street. Famous for its restaurants and bars, the street has become a symbol of the relative progress made in Baghdad. But it was where Hashim was set on by four men, had a finger cut off and was badly beaten. His assailants left a note warning that he had one month to marry and have "a traditional life" or die. "Since that day I have not left my home. I’m too scared and don’t have money to run away," Hashim said.

September 15, 2009 – Human Rights Watch

21
Iraq’s New Surge: Gay Killings

by Rasha Moumneh, originally published at ForeignPolicy.com, September 9, 2009
When my colleague and I sat down last April with Hamid, an Iraqi man from Baghdad, his trauma-induced stutter said as much as the words he spoke. Huddled inconspicuously in a dingy restaurant, Hamid recounted how militia members killed his partner along with three other men, two kidnapped from their Baghdad homes, two slaughtered in the streets. The next day, Hamid said, "they came for me. They came into my house and they saw my mother, and one of them said, ‘Where’s your faggot son?’ My mother called me after they left, in tears. … I can’t go home."

Rasha Moumneh is Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch, which recently issued a report, "’They Want Us Exterminated’: Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq."

October 7, 2009 – daily queer news

22
The Hunted

Posted by Daily Queer News

by Matt McAllester The New Yorker
On a bright afternoon in late March, an 18-year-old named Fadi stood in a friend’s clothing store in Baghdad checking out the new merchandise. A worker in a neighboring store walked into the boutique with a newspaper in his hand and shared a story he had just read. It was about “sexual deviants,” he said. Gay men’s rectums had been glued shut, and they had been force-fed laxatives and water until their insides exploded. They had been found dead on the street

That evening Fadi met up with his three closest friends—Ahmed, Mazen, and Namir—in a coffee shop called the Shisha café in the Karada district of Baghdad. Karada is a mixed Shia-Christian neighborhood that has a more relaxed, cosmopolitan feel than many parts of the Iraqi capital. Fadi and his friends had been meeting there nearly every evening for a year, Fadi coming from his job cleaning toilets for Americans in the Green Zone and the three others from college. The coffee shop was relatively new and attracted a young crowd. The walls were colored in solid blocks of orange, green, and blue, the glass-topped tables painted red and black. It was the closest thing to hip that Baghdad had to offer. For Fadi and his three friends, who secretly referred to themselves as the 4 Cats, after a Pussycat Dolls–like Lebanese group, the Shisha was a refuge from the hostile, often violent anti-gay climate that they had grown up with in Iraq.

Fadi has a warm, irrepressible laugh; his eyes narrow under thick black eyebrows whenever someone tells a joke. He told his friends about the newspaper story, but insisted it couldn’t be true.

“They’re doing this to frighten us,” he said

November 20, 2009 – LGBT Asylum News

23
Terror Campaign against LGBT Iraqis Continues

The rise of fundamentalist groups in Iraq since the 2003 U.S. led invasion has proven deadly to LGBT Iraqis, who are now being forced to either hide or face the consequences. Using the internet as a means to track down new victims, militia members are now employing computer analysts to monitor traffic on gay dating and networking websites in the region. They work with internet café owners to single out people who frequent these sites and set up fake profiles in the attempt to lure them out.

On the 28th of August, police raided the houses of Asad Galib and Faeq Ismail, both 24 years old, and took them into custody. They were held and questioned for about four hours, accused of viewing gay websites in an internet café on the 21st of July. Both men denied the accusations and explained that the websites had already been open when they had begun using the computers. They were later released and are now in contact with Iraqi LGBT, a London based organization working to support and protect LGBT individuals in Iraq. Others who have been accused or are suspected of such activities have not been as lucky.

On the 2nd of September, the body of 21-year-old student Mizher Hussien was discovered in Al Najaf, a city south of Baghdad. His head and genitals had been severed, and he had the word “pervert” written in black across his chest. The details of his murder are unknown, and Iraqi police have refused to launch an investigation into the cause or motivation of the crime. On the 18th of September in Al Shatra Amara, two bodies were found exhibiting signs of torture. They had both been decapitated and left with a paper stating, “This is the end of all pervert homosexuals”.

Iraqi LGBT has been working since 2003 to raise awareness of the abuses being committed against LGBT people in Iraq, as well as provide protection to those who have been targeted. The organization currently funds a number of safe houses in the region, with nearly 100 individuals in Iraq directly benefitting from their work. In addition, Iraqi LGBT has been involved in securing asylum for Iraqi refugees who have been forced to flee the country.

Unfortunately, Iraqi LGBT has not been able to help everyone. The organization estimates that over 720 LGBT men and women have been murdered by these extremist militias in the last six years. The Iraqi government has largely been absent in pursuing the roaming death squads who carry out these acts, likely due to the influence of extremist Shia religious parties that are calling for a moral cleansing of Iraq. With extremist militias threatening all those known to support LGBT rights, including the 2006 raid of an Iraqi LGBT planning meeting in which five activists were arrested, there is little hope for Iraqis suffering under the new socio-political climate. Once the most liberal and secular of the Arab nations, nowadays a religious extremism has taken hold of the country to the detriment of its people.

Iraqi LGBT calls for immediate international action to prevent the further torture and execution of LGBT people in Iraq. More information and details on making donations to the safe houses effort can be found at the Iraqi LGBT blog (Persian)

Gay Iraq News & Reports 2009

Search

Countries

GlobalGayz: The Book

Life and Death in a Global Gay World

by Richard A. Ammon

True Stores and In-Person Interviews From a Hundred Countries From Persecution to Pride From Australia to Zambia

ADS