Sistani removes 'death to gays' fatwa

Iraqi gay protesters win success

Sistani urged to condemn homophobic murders and scrap anti-lesbian fatwa

Plea for fatwa against all vigilante murders

London – 12 May 2006

Iraqi gays and lesbians are claiming success following the decision of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to remove from his website a fatwa calling for the killing of homosexuals in the "worst, most severe way possible" (see the fatwa text below).

The removal on 10 May follows protests to Sistani by the London office of the Iraqi gay rights organisation, Iraqi LGBT, which represents a clandestine network of lesbian and gay activists inside Iraq’s major cities, including Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala, Hilla, Duhok and Basra.

Following two weeks of negotiations with Iraqi LGBT – UK, Sistani’s office agreed to remove the fatwa calling for the murder of gay men, but has curiously refused to remove the fatwa urging punishment for lesbianism.

Initially, Sistani’s office had demanded that Iraqi LGBT-UK delete their criticisms of Sistani from their website and apologise to the Grand Ayatollah for questioning his religious authority.

Iraqi LGBT-UK refused. It issued a counter-demand that Sistani remove his ‘death to gays’ fatwa from his website. After two weeks of sometimes tense negotiations, Sistani’s representatives in London and Najaf agreed to drop the homophobic fatwa from his website – except for the section calling for the punishment of lesbianism.

“We welcome the decision to remove the most murderously homophobic part of Sistanti’s fatwa from his website,” said gay Iraqi refugee, Ali Hili, who heads the organisation Iraqi LGBT – UK (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender). Mr Ali is also Middle East Affairs spokesperson for the British LGBT movement, OutRage!, which works closely with Iraqi LGBT – UK.

“This decision does not go far enough. The fatwa has been removed from Sistani’s website only. It has not been revoked. We want the entire fatwa withdrawn, including the hateful denunciation calling for the punishment of lesbians.

“Iraqi LGBT-UK urges Sistani to apologise and revoke his fatwa calling for the murder of homosexuals, and to issue a new fatwa condemning all vigilante violence, including vigilante attacks on gay and lesbian people.

“We believe that Sistani's fatwa has encouraged and sanctioned the current wave of execution-style assassinations of lesbians and gay men. He owes gay Iraqis an apology. He owes all Iraqis an apology for setting straight Iraqis against gay Iraqis.

“Endorsing the murder of other human beings is unIslamic. Our Muslim faith is one of love, compassion, tolerance and mercy. Hatred and prejudice have no legitimate place in our religion.

“Sistani’s encouragement of homophobic violence provokes negative views towards the Islamic faith and towards Muslim people.

“Iraqi LGBT-UK holds Sistani personally responsible for the murder of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Iraqis. He gives the killers theological sanction and encouragement.

“Evidence we have received from our underground gay contacts inside Iraq shows rising levels of homophobic threats, intimidation and violence by fundamentalist supporters of Sistani. These attacks have intensified since Sistani issued his anti-gay fatwa.

“Grand Ayatollah Sistani is the spiritual leader of all Shia Muslims in Iraq and around the world. He is also the spiritual leader of Iraq’s main Islamic fundamentalist movement, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which plays a leading role in the Iraqi government.

“SCIRI’s armed wing is the Badr corps, which is responsible for much of the sectarian and fundamentalist violence in Iraq today.

“The Badr Corps is a terrorist organisation and uses terrorist methods against political, religious, sexual and ethnic dissidents. It is behind much of the sectarian violence in Iraq today, including suicide bombings, kidnappings and the assassination of Sunnis, moderate Shia, trade unionists, women’s rights activists, gay people and secularists.

“The government in Iraq consults regularly with Sistani on political, social and moral issues. He wields huge influence over Iraqi government policy and the over Iraqi Shia public opinion.

“Sistani is not even Iraqi. He is an Iranian national who has set himself up as a religious leader in Iraq. He wants to impose an Iranian-style theocracy on the Iraqi people.

“The British government paid for Sistani to have medical treatment in the UK in 2004, and fetes him as a revered Muslim leader.

“Despite Badr’s murderous record, the UK allows its political arm, SCIRI, to have offices and fundraise in the UK.

“The Badr Corps has instituted a witch-hunt of lesbian and gay Iraqis – including violent beatings, kidnappings and assassinations.

“Badr agents have a network of informers who, among other things, target alleged 'immoral behaviour'. They kill gays, unveiled women, prostitutes, people who sell or drink alcohol, and those who listen to western music and wear western fashions.

“Badr militants are entrapping gay men via internet chat rooms. They arrange a date, and then beat and kill the victim.

“Males who are unmarried by the age of 30 or 35 are placed under surveillance on suspicion of being gay, as are effeminate men. They will be investigated and warned to get married. Badr will typically give them a month to change their ways. If they don't change their behaviour, or if they fail to show evidence that they plan to get married, they will be arrested, disappear and eventually be found dead. The bodies are usually discovered with their hands bound behind their back, blindfolds over their eyes, and a bullet wound in the back of the head.

“Our sources inside Iraq report the murders of the following gay and bisexual men. All the killings bear the hallmarks of the execution-style murders for which the Badr organisation is notorious.

“These killings are just a few of the many we have been able to get details about. They are the tip of an iceberg of religious-motivated summary executions. Gay Iraqis are living in fear of discovery and murder,” said Mr Hili.

Karim, aged 38, survived a hand grenade attack on his house in the Al-Jameha district of Baghdad in 2004. The attack by members of the Badr Corps, left him with severe facial disfigurement and shrapnel in his body. Simultaneously, the Badr Corps murdered his partner, Ali, at his house, also in the Al-Jameha district. They shot Ali as he tried to escape.

Haydar Faiek, aged 40, a transsexual Iraqi, was beaten and burned to death by Badr militias in the main street in the Al-Karada district of Baghdad in September 2005.

Sarmad and Khalid were partners who lived in the Al-Jameha area of Baghdad. Persons unknown revealed their same-sex relationship. They were abducted by the Badr organisation in April 2005. Their bodies were found two months later, in June, bound, blindfolded and shot in the back of the head.

Naffeh, aged 45, disappeared in August 2005. His family were informed that he was kidnapped by the Badr organisation. His body was found in January 2006. He, too, had been subjected to an execution-style killing.

Ammar, aged 27, was abducted and shot in back of the head in Baghdad by suspected Badr militias in January 2006.

Bashar, an actor aged 34, who resides in Baghdad, has been forced to go into hiding, after receiving death threats against him and his family. Before he went underground, his house was raided several times by the Badr Corps. Fortunately, he was not at home, otherwise he fears he would have been kidnapped and killed.

A copy of Sistani's fatwa, with translation, follows below.

Further information:

Ali Hili in London

Mobile phone: + 44 (0) 79 819 594 53

Email: iraqilgbt@yahoo.co.uk

Weblog: http://iraqilgbtuk.blogspot.com/

The text of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s fatwa, calling for the killing of sodomites, as it was shown on his website prior to its removal on 10 May 2006.

It was on the Sistani website

www.sistani.org

It was under the section Istiftaaat. You went to letter L in Arabic, and looked up the word Lewat which means (sodomy). See question 5.


5

§ السؤال : ما هو حكم اللواط والسحاق؟§ الجواب : حرام. ويعاقب فاعلهما بل يقتل فاعل اللواط اشد قتلة.


Direct link:
http://www.sistani.org/html/ara/main/index-istifta.php?page=4&lang=ara&part=4

Q5: What is the judgment for sodomy and lesbianism?
A5: Forbidden. Punished, in fact, killed. The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way possible.

ENDS

Iraq: Ayatollah Sistani says death to gays

Sistani fatwa encourages terror against queers

Shia Badr Corps execute sodomites, Sunnis and others

UK fetes Sistani and hosts Badr’s political wing, despite anti-gay murders

London – 15 March 2006

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani of Iraq has issued a death fatwa against lesbian and gay people. In a question and answer section of his website, he calls for the killing of homosexuals in the "worst, most severe way" (see Sistanti’s text below).

“Sistani's murderous homophobic incitement has given a green light to Shia Muslims to hunt and kill lesbians and gay men,” says exiled gay Iraqi, Ali Hili, of the London-based gay human rights group OutRage.

Mr Hili also heads up the new Iraqi LGBT – UK Abu Nawas group, which consists of exiled gay Iraqis and has close links with clandestine gay activists inside Iraq.

“We hold Sistani personally responsible for the murder of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Iraqis. He gives the killers theological sanction and encouragement,” said Mr Hili.

“Evidence we have received from our underground gay contacts inside Iraq suggests intensified homophobic abuse, threats, intimidation and violence by fundamentalist supporters of Sistani and other Shia leaders.

“Grand Ayatollah Sistani is the spiritual leader of Shia Muslims in Iraq, including supporters of the main Islamic fundamentalist movement, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and its armed wing, the Badr Corps.

“The government in Iraq consults regularly with Sistani on political, social and moral issues. He wields huge influence over Iraqi government policy and the over Iraqi Shia public opinion.

“Sistani is not even Iraqi. He is an Iranian national who has set himself up as a religious leader in Iraq. He wants to impose an Iranian-style theocracy on the Iraqi people.

“The British government paid for Sistani to have medical treatment in the UK in 2004, and fetes him as a revered Muslim leader.

“The Badr Corps, which is the armed wing of SCIRI, has instituted a witch-hunt of lesbian and gay Iraqis – including violent beatings, kidnappings and assassinations.

“Despite Badr’s murderous record, the UK allows its political arm, SCIRI, to have offices and fundraise in the UK. Badr is the terrorist wing of SCIRI. Badr should be proscribed as a terrorist organisation.

“Badr agents have a network of informers who, among other things, target alleged 'immoral behaviour'. They kill gays, unveiled women, prostitutes, people who sell or drink alcohol, and those who listen to western music and wear western fashions.

“Badr militants are entrapping gay men via internet chat rooms. They arrange a date, and then beat and kill the victim.

“Males who are unmarried by the age of 30 or 35 are placed under surveillance on suspicion of being gay, as are effeminate men. They will be investigated and warned to get married. Badr will typically give them a month to change their ways. If they don't change their behaviour, or if they fail to show evidence that they plan to get married, they will be arrested, disappear and eventually be found dead. The bodies are usually discovered with their hands bound behind their back, blindfolds over their eyes, and bullet wounds to the back of the head.

“The Badr Corps is a terrorist organisation and uses terrorist methods against political, religious, sexual and ethnic dissidents. It is behind much of the sectarian violence in Iraq today, including suicide bombings, kidnappings and the assassination of Sunnis, moderate Shia, trade unionists, women’s rights activists, gay people and secularists.

“Our sources inside Iraq report the murders of the following gay and bisexual men. All the killings bear the hallmarks of the execution-style murders for which the Badr organisation is notorious.

“These killings are just the ones we have been able to get details about. They are the tip of an iceberg of religious-motivated summary executions. Gay Iraqis are living in fear of discovery and murder,” said Mr Hili.

Karim, aged 38, survived a hand grenade attack on his house in the Al-Jameha district of Baghdad in 2004. The attack by members of the Badr Corps, left him with severe facial disfigurement and shrapnel in his body. Simultaneously, the Badr Corps murdered his partner, Ali, at his house, also in the Al-Jameha district. They shot Ali as he tried to escape.

Haydar Faiek, aged 40, a transsexual Iraqi, was beaten and burned to death by Badr militias in the main street in the Al-Karada district of Baghdad in September 2005.

Sarmad and Khalid were partners who lived in the Al-Jameha area of Baghdad. Persons unknown revealed their same-sex relationship. They were abducted by the Badr organisation in April 2005. Their bodies were found two months later, in June, bound, blindfolded and shot in the back of the head.

Naffeh, aged 45, disappeared in August 2005. His family were informed that he was kidnapped by the Badr organisation. His body was found in January 2006. He, too, had been subjected to an execution-style killing.

Ammar, aged 27, was abducted and shot in back of the head in Baghdad by suspected Badr militias in January 2006.

Bashar, an actor aged 34, who resides in Baghdad, has been forced to go into hiding, after receiving death threats against him and his family. Before he went underground, his house was raided several times by the Badr Corps. Fortunately, he was not at home, otherwise he fears he would have been kidnapped and killed.

A copy of Sistani's fatwa, with translation, follows below.

Further information:

Ali Hili in London 077 5755 6946 , iraqilgbt@yahoo.co.uk

The text of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s fatwa for the killing of sodomites is below. The date of the fatwa is unknown, but we estimate it to have been issued in late in 2005.

To see the fatwa yourself:

Go to the Sistani website

www.sistani.org

Under the section Istiftaaat, go to letter L in Arabic, look up to Lewat which means (sodomy). See question and answer 5.



االسؤال : ما هو حكم اللواط والسحاق؟ الجواب : حرام. ويعاقب فاعلهما بل يقتل فاعل اللواط اشد قتلة.


Direct link:
http://www.sistani.org/html/ara/main/index-istifta.php?page=4&lang=ara&part=4

Q5: What is the judgment for sodomy and lesbianism?
A5: Forbidden. Punished, in fact, killed. The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.

ENDS

U.S State Dept. ‘troubled’ over anti-gay violence in Iraq (Gay)

U.S. embassy in Baghdad willing to meet with gay groups

By LOU CHIBBARO JR
25 May 2006

The U.S. State Department said it is “troubled” by reports of increased violence against gays in Iraq and said the U.S. embassy in Baghdad is interested in meeting with gay rights groups to address the problem.

The Bush administration announcement came in response to a request by the U.S. based International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice condemn a rash of anti-gay killings in Iraq and to “ask that U.S. military and civilian personnel in Iraq call these abuses to the attention of Iraqi authorities.”
In an April 20 letter to Rice, Paula Ettelbrick, IGLHRC executive director, urged Rice to “demand a response” from the Iraqi authorities over the anti-gay killings.

In a May 11 reply to Ettelbrick’s letter, L. Victor Hurtado, acting director of the State Department’s Office of Iraq Affairs, said the U.S. is working with the Iraqi government to promote the protection of human rights.

“We are very troubled by these reported incidents of threats, violence, executions, and other violations of humanitarian law against members of the gay and lesbian community in Iraq,” Hurtado said in his letter.

Hurtado said the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad “is interested in further dialogue on this issue” with non-governmental groups, including the Iraq-based group Rainbow for Life, which monitors human rights abuses against gays.

Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Defense, told the Blade last week that reports of killings of Iraqi gays come at a time when other Iraqi groups are being targeted for assassinations and kidnappings. Among them, he said, are college professors, doctors and owners of liquor stores.

“We try to stop killings and assassinations regardless of the motive,” Venable said. “Violence is violence. We want to see it reduced and eliminated.”
A spokesperson for the Iraqi Embassy to the United States in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

Violence linked to fatwa

A London-based group of exiled gay Iraqis took credit last week for pressuring a powerful Islamic leader into removing from his website a fatwa calling for the killing of gays in Iraq.

“They didn’t expect a gay rights group could challenge their religious authority, and we succeeded in doing that,” Ali Hili, founder and spokesperson for LGBT Iraqis U.K., said in a telephone interview from London.

But Hili’s group quickly discovered that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, while removing the announcement of the fatwa from his website, did not revoke the death order itself. Sistani also chose to leave on the site a clause in the fatwa that targets lesbians.

“Conditions are still very bad for gays and lesbians in my country,” Hili said.
Hili’s claims about the removal of the fatwa and his organization’s role in that decision could not be independently confirmed.

The fatwa — which Sistani issued last October — declared that all people “involved” in homosexuality “should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.”
Hili said it was too soon to determine whether Sistani’s decision to remove the fatwa announcement from Sistani’s widely read, Arabic language website would curtail a rash of death threats, kidnappings and assassinations of gay Iraqis. The killings increased sharply toward the end of last year, he claimed.

Death squads formed by Shiite Islamic militias have used Internet chat rooms established by gay Iraqis to arrange to meet gays in Baghdad and other cities, Hili said. In some cases the unsuspecting gays ensnared by this tactic have been abducted and shot to death, he said.
Gay Iraqis who have fled their country because of the threats have told gay rights groups in Europe that conditions had gotten so bad that entire categories of men — including unmarried men older than 30, anyone perceived as being effeminate or involved in the arts, and men with longer hair — have come under suspicion of being gay and are targets for death threats.
The Bush administration, while condemning Islamic clerics for threatening to execute a citizen of Afghanistan for converting to Christianity earlier this year, had remained silent over the anti-gay killings in Iraq.

However, during the past week, an official with the State Department and a spokesperson for the Pentagon said U.S. authorities in Iraq were troubled over a rash of assassinations and kidnappings waged by insurgents and Islamic militias against people in all segments of Iraqi society, including gays.

Hili said vague assurances by U.S. and British officials that they oppose violent acts against the Iraqi people have had little impact on the plight of Iraqi gays.
He said gay Iraqis have told his group through telephone and e-mail conversations that U.S. military officials repeatedly have turned down pleas for help by gays who show up at the U.S. military headquarters in the Green Zone in Baghdad.

“One guy went there and said, ‘I’m receiving death threats from the militias, please help me,’” Hili said. “They said we can’t help you, we can’t help all Iraqis. And the guy died. He’s been found shot — executed.”
Another call for help
The British gay rights group Outrage has expressed concern that Britain and the United States may be reluctant to condemn Sistani for his anti-gay fatwa because Sistani opposes the Iraqi insurgency and has backed the creation of an elected Iraqi government.
The 77-year-old Sistani has long called for Islamic law to supersede civil law in Iraq, in marked contrast to President Bush’s call for a constitutional form of government that includes the separation of church and state.
U.S. and other coalition nations haven’t challenge Sistani on human rights matters because he is viewed as the spiritual leader of the overwhelming majority of Iraqi Shiites.
Shiites make up the largest number of Iraqis and are expected to dominate the newly elected government.

According to reports by gay Iraqi exiles and others familiar with the turmoil in Iraq, a powerful militia supported by Iran and believed to be under the leadership of Sistani known as the Badr Corps has organized some of the death squads that target gays.

Hili, pointing to Sistani’s ties to Iran, calls him an Iranian “Trojan Horse” who wants to convert Iraq into the same type of “extremist” state that has taken hold in Iran.
He said he is convinced that the radical Islamic forces in Iran that are responsible for widespread executions of gays in that country prompted Sistani to issue his anti-gay fatwa in Iraq.

Hili said Sistani agreed to remove the fatwa from his website in response to pressure from international human rights groups. The pressure began after Hili’s group and others called attention to anti-gay persecution in Iraq.

He said Sistani’s organization opened negotiations with LGBT Iraqis U.K. through long-distance telephone conferences between London and Iraq and Iran, where the Iranian born Sistani has offices.

Hili said Sistani’s representatives expressed concern over allegations on LGBT Iraqis U.K.’s website that Sistani was misusing his religious authority in Iraqi affairs. Hili said his group used the influence his group’s website apparently was having on Sistani as a bargaining chip to seek removal of the fatwa from the Sistani website.

According to Hili, who said he is in contact with a clandestine network of gays in Iraq, at least two other ayatollahs have issued separate fatwas against Iraqi gays in the past several weeks.

A fatwa is a legal opinion or ruling issued by an Islamic scholar.

The immediate urgent priority is to Support and Donate Money to LGBT activists in Iraq in order to assist their efforts to communicate information about the wave of homophobic murders in Iraq to the outside world.

Funds raised will also help provide LGBTs under threat of honour killing with refuge in the safer parts of Iraq (including safe houses and food), and assist efforts help them seek asylum abroad.

Iraqi LGBT UK do not yet have bank account.

We are working closely with the LGBT human rights group OutRage! in London.

Donations to help Iraqi LGBT in the UK and in Iraq should be made payable to "OutRage!",with a cover note marked "For Iraqi LGBT", and sent to :

OutRage!, PO Box17816, London SW14 8WT, England, UK

Solidarity!

Gays flee as religious militias sentence them all to death

From Daniel McGrory in Baghdad
The Times 17th May 2006

THE death threat was delivered to Karazan’s father early in the morning by a masked man wearing a police uniform.

The scribbled note was brief. Karazan had to die because he was gay. In the new Baghdad, his sexuality warranted execution by the religious militias.

The father was told that if he did not hand his son over, other family members would be killed.

What scares the city’s residents is how the fanatics’ list of enemies is growing.

It includes girls who refuse to cover their hair, boys who wear theirs too long, booksellers, liberal professors and prostitutes.

Three shops known to sell alcohol were bombed yesterday in the Karrada shopping district.

In this atmosphere of intolerance and intimidation, the militias have made no secret of their hatred of homosexuals.

The man who threatened Karazan said that he was a member of the Thaib (Wolf) Brigade, a commando group reportedly infiltrated by the armed wing of the hardliner Shia party the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Its orders come from fundamentalist clerics.

With his skin-tight clothes and long blonde hair, Karazan, a 23-year-old arts student, stood out in the Shia neighborhood of al-Dura.

He told The Times: “A number of my gay friends have been murdered, so I took this warning seriously.” The family fled this month to a suburb north of the city centre.

Karazan cut his hair short and dyed it black, but he is still too frightened to venture out.

His partner is in the Iraqi Army. With little money and no valid passport, he does not know how he can flee abroad.

Ali Hili, who ran a gay nightclub in Baghdad but fled to Britain this year after receiving death threats, says that he knows of more than 40 men murdered in recent months. “Badr militants used chartrooms to lure them to a rendezvous and then kill them,” he said.

He described a co-ordinate attack on one couple: 38-year-old Karim survived a hand- grenade attack on his home in al-Jameha, but his partner, Ali, was shot dead when he tried to flee his house near by.

Haydar Faiek, 40, a transsexual, was beaten and burnt to death last September in Karrada’s main street. Ammar, 27, was abducted and shot in the head in January.

Meanwhile, a 34-year-old theatre actor, who would only give his name as Bashar, has gone into hiding after a death threat. Two close members of his family have been murdered by militants, who say they will carry on killing his relatives until he turns himself in.

The Interior Ministry says that it is investigating a claim by gay activists that a 14-year-old male prostitute was killed in al-Dura last month by men in police uniforms. The gunmen told the boy’s father that he was executed for “corrupting the community”.

A ministry spokesman said that the Government did not condone vigilante groups. However, Nouri al-Malaki, the Prime Minister-designate, has conceded that the Iraqi security forces have been infiltrated by militia extremists.

Mr. Hili claims that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered spiritual figure in Iraq, provoked the murders by saying on his website in April last year that homosexuals should be killed in the “worst, most severe way”.

He said: “Al-Sistani gave the militias a theological sanction to murder gays.” He added that the ayatollah was forced to lift the fatwa against gays following protests, but refused to remove the reference to the punishment for lesbians.
“These people are taking Iraq back to the Dark Ages,” added Mr. Hili, 33.

His nightclub, in the basement of the Palestine Hotel, was one of the best-known in the city. Restaurants and cafés along Abu Nuwas Street were also popular haunts for gays.

His organization, Iraqi LGBT, runs safe houses in the capital and an underground network to help people to leave the country.

He said: “We could never envisage this happening when Saddam was overthrown. I had no love for the former President, but his regime never persecuted the gay community.”

Upsurge of violence in capital claims dozens

GUNMEN killed five guards then blew up an oil tanker parked near a market in northeastern Baghdad yesterday, killing 19 people and injuring at least 37 others, police said. The blast was an apparent sectarian attack against a Shia neighborhood.

A United Arab Emirates diplomat was seized as he walked home from his embassy in the Mansour district of Baghdad. His Sudanese guard was shot and wounded.

Four workers at a US base in Taji were killed by gunmen in northern Baghdad. Three US soldiers were killed by roadside bombs, and six civilians died in crossfire when police and suspected insurgents fought in Baghdad.

The US military said that it killed a militant planting a bomb southwest of Baghdad.

From: The Times

U.S. military acknowledges Iraq anti-gay killings

Exiled leader claims troops involved in Baghdad gay harassment

By LOU CHIBBARO JR. 7 Jun 2006

The U.S. military is aware of a rash of anti-gay killings in Iraq during the past eight months and is taking steps to curtail sectarian violence against all Iraqis, including gays, according to a spokesperson for the U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq.

At least three men suspected of being gay were gunned down March 20 in the Iraqi city of Ramadi. U.S. forces say they are concerned about the rising number of anti-gay killings in Iraq. (Photo by Bilal Hussein/AP)
"If someone is in danger of being slaughtered or persecuted, we do all we can to stop it," said Army Maj. Joseph Todd Breasseale, chief of the Media Relations Division of the Multinational Corps in Iraq.


Breasseale spoke by telephone from his office at U.S. military headquarters in a section of Baghdad known as the Green Zone.


Faced with a highly volatile atmosphere brought about by warring Islamic factions, the U.S. and its coalition allies must use caution in addressing the issue of homosexuality, Breasseale said.


"It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, when we're in a fledgling time like this, to go in and say, 'Here's these issues that are going to repel 80 percent of the population and this is what we want to inflict on you,'" he said. "We're trying not to get into too many values judgment type issues and just do the right thing."


Breasseale's comments came in response to questions about how the U.S. was responding to a decision last October by a powerful Islamic leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to issue a fatwa calling for the killing of gays in Iraq. Bush administration officials have cited al-Sistani as a moderate voice among Iraqi Shiites.


Islam considers homosexuality sinful. A website published in the Iranian city of Qom in the name of Sistani, says: "Those who commit sodomy must be killed in the harshest way," according to BBC news reports. The statement appeared in an Arabic section of the website dealing with questions of morality, but not in the English-language equivalent.


A network of gay Iraqi exiles in Europe reported that the fatwa triggered a flurry of assassinations, kidnappings and death threats against Iraqi gays.

Ali Hili, founder and spokesperson for the exile group LGBT Iraqis U.K., said Islamic death squads came to life in response to Sistani's fatwa and brought about an atmosphere of terror among gays. He said some death squad members arranged meetings with gays through chat rooms by posing as gays themselves, then captured and sometimes assaulted or killed their targeted victims.


A call for action


International human rights groups, including the U.S.-based International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission, complained that the U.S. and its coalition partners in Iraq did not appear to be taking any action to stop the anti-gay killings.


In a May 11 letter to IGLHRC executive director Paula Ettelbrick, a State Department official said the American government was troubled over reports of violence against gays in Iraq and said the U.S. embassy in Baghdad would meet with gay rights groups to address the problem.


The letter came in response to a letter from IGLHRC calling on the State Department to speak out against the anti-gay killings in Iraq.


Breasseale's comments mark the first time a U.S. military spokesperson in Iraq has publicly discussed the anti-gay killings there.


"The problem is it's such a widespread [and] concerted effort of violence against so many disparate groups and organizations," Breasseale said. "It's essentially anyone who runs afoul of anyone who has a mind to do it winds up getting killed. So we're very much aware of it, and we take both the murders and the political assassinations very seriously.


"When it's possible, we work to investigate and try to track down who did it. But as you can imagine, it's a massive, massive concerted effort we're up against."


Claims of anti-gay abuse by U.S. military denied


Breasseale's telephone interview comes shortly after American military authorities disclosed they were investigating allegations that a Marine Corps unit intentionally shot and killed 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, a rural farming town in the Upper Euphrates Valley.


Hili, the head of the gay Iraqi exile group in London, alleged that in two cases, U.S. soldiers verbally abused and, in one case, assaulted gay Iraqis during routine searches of houses in Baghdad. In yet another incident, Hili said he learned through contacts in Iraq that a gay Iraqi was killed by one of the death squads after U.S. officials refused his request to gain access to the Green Zone for protection.


"We try to attack these issues as they come up, and all accusations of misbehavior that is attributed to bigotry are taken very seriously," Breasseale said in discussing Hili's reports of abuse against gay Iraqis by U.S. soldiers.

Breasseale called on Hili to provide more details about the incidents, such as dates, locations, and descriptions of the soldiers involved.


"All I can do at this point is reassure your readers that these allegations are taken very seriously, and that our soldiers — the vast 99.9 percent of them — do their jobs with honor and integrity day in and day out in what is easily one of the world's most grueling situations," Breasseale said. "And I can assure your readers that when allegations pan out, service members and their leadership are held accountable," he said.

http://www.washblade.com/thelatest/thelatest.cfm?blog_id=7336

The immediate urgent priority is to Support and Donate Money to LGBT activists in Iraq in order to assist their efforts to communicate information about the wave of homophobic murders in Iraq to the outside world.

Funds raised will also help provide LGBTs under threat of honour killing with refuge in the safer parts of Iraq (including safe houses and food), and assist efforts help them seek asylum abroad.

Iraqi LGBT UK do not yet have bank account. We are working closely with the LGBT human rights group OutRage! in London.

Donations to help Iraqi LGBT in the UK and in Iraq should be made payable to "OutRage!",with a cover note marked "For Iraqi LGBT", and sent to :OutRage!, PO Box17816, London SW14 8WT, England, UK

BAGHDAD GAYS FEAR FOR THEIR LIVES.

Homosexuals across the capital are being hunted down and murdered byIslamic militants and even the police.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006Basim al-Shara'a

Faris Thamir carefully watches the street in his Al-Batawinneighbourhood, afraid the police or militia men might try to kill him.

In Iraq, where religious radicals consider homosexuality a sinpunishable by death, gays have good reason to worry about being"outed".

Thamir, 35, is wary of the extremist Islamic groups that prowl thestreets of the capital - but neither does he trust the police who aresupposedly there to protect him.

Thamir and other gay men complain about frequent mistreatment bypolice, accusing them of blackmail, torture, sexual abuse and theft."Policemen raped me several times at gunpoint and threatened to handme over to extremist groups if I refuse," said Thamir.

Concern about the involvement of policemen in criminal acts have alsobeen raised by western officials and Sunni Arab leaders who say theShia-controlled interior ministry has been infiltrated by Shiamilitias, like the Badr Brigades, who allegedly use their uniforms ascover to kidnap, torture and murder.

Earlier this month, the head of 8th National Police Brigade, one ofBaghdad's frontline police units, was detained on suspicion ofinvolvement with sectarian death squads. Several thousand policemenhave been dismissed and face prosecution for criminal acts.

Thamir does not count on any official help anymore. After spending amonth in prison - during which he said he was tortured and beaten -police continued to pursue him. So he hid at a friend's house - andonly dares to go out twice a month, disguised as a woman.

For him, the Saddam era seems like a "golden" time becausehomosexuality was discreetly tolerated. "Now I am desperate because Iexpect either to be shot or beheaded at any moment," he said.

The legal situation for gays in Iraq today remains vague. According toresearch by Sِdertِrn University in Stockholm, it is unclear to datewhether a new law on the family, approved by the Interim GoverningCouncil in December 2003, prohibits homosexual activities.

Under Islamic law, homosexual practise is a crime that carries thedeath sentence. Article two of the Iraqi constitution approved byreferendum in December 2005 refers to Islam as being "the officialreligion of the state and a basic source of legislation" . But theextent to which state laws upholds Sharia is still under dispute.

Meanwhile, the witch-hunt against the country's gays has apparentlyreceived a blessing from one of the highest religious authorities inIraq, Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

According to the London-based gay human rights group OutRage!, awebsite linked to Sistani in the Iranian city of Qom posted a fatwaagainst gays in October 2005. "The people involved [in homosexuality]should be killed in the worst, most severe way," it said. Although thetext was removed from the website in May 2006, the fatwa has not beenofficially revoked.

Inhabitants of the Baghdadi neighbourhoods of Al-Amiriya andAl-Jamia'a speak of how extremist groups have killed gays in thestreet and also targeted their relatives.

Outrage! reports of cases where members of a family have been killedfor refusing to hand over a gay male relative to the militia.

From his house in the western neighbourhood of Al-Jamia'a, MukhtarSalah, 40, a former member of Saddam's security forces, said hewitnessed gunmen kill a young man, who he later heard is alleged tohave had an affair with an American soldier.

After killing him, the militants ordered people to go home andthreatened to behead anyone who tried to claim the body. "[It] wasleft in the street for two days," said Salah, until eventually it waspicked up by a National Guard patrol.

In Saddam's time, you risked being imprisoned for being gay - buthomosexual practices were nonetheless common in religiousneighbourhoods where young unmarried men would not dare to have anycontact with women.

Nail Mohammed, 25, considers his being gay just one risk among manyothers. In the Al-Fadhil neighbourhood where he lives, extremistIslamic groups kill gay men, but also people who wear jeans or drinkalcohol. In the past six months, he said three of his closest friendshave been killed for drinking.

Bilal Arif, 40, a Baghdad lawyer, feels Iraqi society is going frombad to worse: open and secular from the 1950s to the 1970s, it turnedinto a military dictatorship under Saddam and is now moving towardsreligious extremism, he says.

Arif doubts that homosexuals are being systematically targeted.Rather, he suspects they are the victims of "the mess all over Iraq"which allows people to take the law into their own hands. "They arekilled because there is no state to hold the murderers responsible orpursue them judicially," he said.

Paradoxically, those who kill gays believe they are acting within thelaw as the Sharia, which they adhere to, deems homosexuality a crimepunishable by death.
In so-called religious courts, supervised by clerics, with no officialauthority, gays are tried, sentenced to death and then executed bymilitiamen.

Such courts were first established by Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, fatherof Muqtada al-Sadr, in 1999 in secret to adjudicate on Islamic issues.Now they are present in many predominantly Shia towns like Ammara,Basra, Ramadi and in several Shia neighbourhoods in Baghdad such asShu´la, Hurria and Sadr City.

Due to the absence of the state in large areas of the country, theseillegitimate courts have gained more and more popular support.

The trials, presided over by young inexperienced clerics, are held inHusseiniyas (Shia mosques), offices of the Sadr movement or,particularly in Shu'la and Sadr City, in ordinary halls. Gays andrapists face anything from 40 lashes to the death penalty.

Mohammed al-Saidi, one of the self-appointed judges in Sadr City,believes that homosexuality is on the wane in Iraq. "Most [gays] havebeen killed and others have fled," he said. Indeed, the number who'vesought asylum in the UK has risen noticeably over the last few months.

Saidi insists the religious courts have a lot to be proud of, "We nowrepresent a society that asked us to protect it not only from thievesand terrorists but also from these [bad] deeds."
Basim al-Shara'a is an IWPR contributor in Baghdad.

(The names of people featured in this piece have been changed forsecurity reasons)
Copyright (c) 2006 Spero

U.N. confirms anti-gay death squads in Iraq

by Anthony Glassman

Baghdad--The United Nations has for the first time confirmed that there are organized campaigns to kill gays in Iraq, directed by orders from Islamic leaders.

One such order says gays “should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.”

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq’s Human Rights Report for the last two months of 2006 has a section on sexual orientation, the first time it has been included in a report from the organization.

“Even though homosexuality is not condoned in Iraqi society, homosexuals are protected under Iraqi law,” the report reads. “Attacks on homosexuals and intolerance of homosexual practices have long existed, yet they have escalated in the past year.”

“The current environment of impunity and lawlessness invites a heightened level of insecurity for homosexuals in Iraq,” it continues. “Armed Islamic groups and militias have been known to be particularly hostile towards homosexuals, frequently and openly engaging in violent campaigns against them.”

Those campaigns are at the behest of Islamic leaders, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual leader of Shiite Muslims in Iraq.

British gay civil rights advocate Peter Tatchell issued a warning last March that such attacks were being carried out with increasing regularity. It had a link to Sistani’s website and its proscriptions against same-sex activity.

“What is the judgment for sodomy and lesbianism?” Sistani’s site asks.

“Forbidden,” comes the answer. “Punished, in fact, killed. The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.”

Currently, Sistani’s site says, “Question: What is the view on a man embracing another man with lust, and go about kissing one another with sexual desire? What if they go even further and enter the domain of deviant sexual behaviour? Answer: All of this is haram even if there might be difference in the degree of prohibition.”

“Haram” is that which is forbidden in Islam.

“Allegedly, three fatwas [Islamic legal pronouncements] would have been issued by Islamic clerics authorizing ‘good Muslims’ to hunt and kill homosexuals,” the U.N. report states. “[The Human Rights Office] was also alerted to the existence of religious courts, supervised by clerics, where homosexuals allegedly would be ‘tried,’ ‘sentenced’ to death and then executed.”

Both Tatchell and the UNAMI report expound on some of the attacks on LGBT Iraqis. UNAMI’s report says, “At least five homosexual males were reported to have been kidnapped from Shaab area in the first week of December by one of the main militias. Their personal documents and information contained in computers were also confiscated.”

“The mutilated body of Amjad, one of the kidnapped, appeared in the same area after a few days,” it continues.

Tatchell, meanwhile, spoke to Ali Hili, head of the Iraqi LGBT UK Abu Nawas organization, made up of expatriate queer Iraqis living in Britain. Hili is also a member of Tatchell’s group, OutRage.

“Sistani is not even Iraqi,” Hili noted. “He is an Iranian national who has set himself up as a religious leader in Iraq. He wants to impose an Iranian-style theocracy on the Iraqi people.”

In Tatchell’s report, Hili details eight people who were killed, and one who was forced into hiding, because of the militias’ crusades against LGBT people.

Activists like Hili, who said that discreet homosexuality was tolerated under Saddam Hussein’s rule, noted that the power vacuum in the country is contributing to the violence. He is doubtful that President Bush’s plan to increase the number of troops will help the gay community.

Shia death squads target Iraqi gays -- U.S. indifferent

SHIA DEATH SQUADS TARGET IRAQI GAYS -- U.S. Indifferent

23 March 2006 - Gay City News -- New York's largest gay weekly newspaper

By Doug Ireland

Following a death-to-gays fatwa issued last October by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, death squads of the Badr Corps have been systematically targeting gay Iraqis for persecution and execution, gay Iraqis say. But when they ask for help and protection from U.S. occupying authorities in the “Green Zone,” gay Iraqis are met with indifference and derision.

“The Badr Corps is committed to the ‘sexual cleansing’ of Iraq,“ says Ali Hili, a 33-year-old gay Iraqi exile in London who, with some 30 other gay Iraqis who have fled to the United Kingdom, five Years ago founded the Abu Nawas Group there to support persecuted gay Iraqis (Abu Nawas was a great 8th century classical poet of Arab and Persian descent who is known throughout Middle East cultures, and is famous for his poems in praise of same-sex love.)

Said Hili, “We believe that the Badr Corps is receiving advice from Iran on how to target gay people.” In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been carrying out a lethal anti-gay pogrom against Iranian gays, notably through entrapment by Internet -- and this tactic has recently begun to be used by the Badr Corps in Iraq to identify and hunt down Iraqi gays.

The well-armed Badr Corps is the military arm of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the powerful Shia group that is the largest political formation in Iraq’s Shia community, which was head quartered in Tehran until Saddam Hussein‘s fall. The SCIRI’s Badr Corps is trained and commanded by former Iraqi army officers.

The Ayatollah Sistani, the 77-year-old Iranian-born cleric who is the supreme Shia authority in Iraq, is revered by SCIRI as its spiritual leader. His anti-gay fatwa (available on Sistani’s official website) says that “people involved” in homosexuality “should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.”

Speaking by telephone from London, the Abu Nawas Group's Hili said that “there is a very, very serious threat to life for gay people in Iraq today. We are receiving regular reports from our extensive network of contacts with underground gay activists and gay people in Iraq -- intimidation, beatings, kidnappings and murders of gays have become an almost daily occurrence. The Badr Corps was killing gay people even before the Ayatollah’s fatwah, but Sistani’s murderous homophobic incitement has given a green light to all Shia Muslims to hunt and kill lesbians and gay men.”

Hili says,”Badr Corps agents have a network of informers who, among other things, target alleged 'immoral behavior'. They kill gays, unveiled women, prostitutes, people who sell or drink alcohol, and those who listen to western music and wear western fashions.

"Badr militants are entrapping gay men via internet chat rooms. They arrange a date, and then beat and kill the victim. Males who are unmarried by the age of 30 or 35 are placed under surveillance on suspicion of being gay, as are effeminate men. They will be investigated and warned to get married. Badr will typically give them a month to change their ways. If they don't change their behavior, or if they fail to show evidence that they plan to get married, they will be arrested, disappear and eventually be found dead. The bodies are usually discovered with their hands bound behind their back, blindfolds over their eyes, and bullet wounds to the back of the head.”

Tahseen is an underground gay activist in Iraq, and a correspondent there for the British Abu Nawas Group. A 31-year-old photography lab technician, Tahseen told me by telephone from Baghdad this weekend that, “Just last week, four gay people we know of were found dead. I am afraid to leave my room and go out in the street because I will be killed. We all live in fear.“ Tahseen said that men who seem obviously gay “cannot walk in the street. My best friend was recently killed for being gay.”

Tahseen confirmed the murderous efficiency of the Badr Corps’ Internet entrapment program. “Within one hour after they meet a gay person in an Internet chat room, that person will disappear and be found dead,” he said, adding that “since Sistani’s fatwa, the life of a gay person is worth nothing here, and the violence and killings have gotten much, much worse.”

Tahseen lives in a Baghdad apartment with his two brothers. “Right now, I have five gay men hiding in my room in fear of their lives, because they cannot go outside without risking being killed,” he said, with anguish audible in his voice. “They are all listening to me as I speak with you.” All those hiding with Tahseen are in their late twenties or early thirties, and by their mannerisms would be easily identified as gay by most Iraqis. I spoke briefly with one of them, who expressed his fear in a soft, shy voice.

One of those being given refuge by Tahseen is Bashar, a 34-year-old stage actor, who was forced to go into hiding after receiving death threats against him and his family. Before he went underground, his house was raided several times by the Badr Corps. Fortunately, he was not at home, otherwise he fears he would have been kidnapped and killed.

“We desperately need protection!” pleaded Tahseen. “But, when we go to the Americans, they laugh at us and don’t do anything. The Americans are the problem!” The Abu Nawas Group’s Hili confirmed from London that representations to officials of the U.S. occupation in Baghdad’s famous “Green Zone” had been made by underground gay activists, only to be met with disdain and indifference.

Hili, who has a bachelor’s degree in English literature, and who used to work for Iraqi radio and television, fled to the U.K. in 2002 after having been persecuted for being gay under Saddam Hussein. “In the late ‘80s and early 90s there were a couple of gay clubs in Baghdad, but they were all shut down in 1993 after sanctions were imposed against Saddam’s regime and Iraq.

"We had a weekly gay nightclub in the Palestine Hotel that became the gathering place for gay people, especially for actors and others in the entertainment world, but it, too, was shut down.

"I was arrested three times for being gay, and tortured. After several attempts, I finally was able to escape the country, going first to Dubai, then Jordan, then Syria, and finally reaching England.” Now, Hili says, he is heartbroken to see that, three years after Saddam’s fall, life for gay people in Iraq is even more unbearable than before.

“Just last night I spoke via Internet with a young gay man in his mid-20s who was caught by SCIRI agents. He had no identification with him -- gay people are afraid to carry their I.D.s when they go in the street in case they are caught,” because both the police and the Badr Corps agents would inform their families and add them to a list of known homosexuals, which would be used later to target them for killing.. “This young man had his left arm broken by the SCIRI thugs -- I saw this with my own eyes via Internet camera,” Hili said.

Hili said the Abu Nawas Group is accumulating evidence that Iranian agents are advising SCIRI and the Iraqi police on how to implement anti-gay persecution. Not only has Iran’s Internet entrapment campaign targeting gays been adopted in Iraq, he says, but there are reports that Iranian agents have been involved in interrogations, questioning those arrested in Persian through translators. “This is particularly true in Basra in the south,” Hili says.

Hili provided information on the cases of several gay victims of the Badr Corps, but said, “"These killings are just the ones we have been able to get details about. They are the tip of an iceberg of religious-motivated executions. Gay Iraqis are living in fear of discovery and murder." The victims include:

Haydar Faiek , aged 40, a transsexual Iraqi, was beaten and burned to death by Badr militias in the main street in the Al-Karada district of Baghdad in September 2005.

Ammar , aged 27, was abducted and shot in back of the head in Baghdad by suspected Badr militias in January 2006.

Naffeh, aged 45, disappeared in August 2005. His family was informed that he was kidnapped by the Badr organization. His body was found in January 2006. He, too, had been subjected to an execution-style killing.

Sarmad and Khalid were partners who lived in the Al-Jameha area of Baghdad. Persons unknown revealed their same-sex relationship. They were abducted by the Badr organization in April 2005. Their bodies were found two months later, in June, bound, blindfolded and shot in the back of the head.

The al-Arabiya TV network reported this weekend that a backroom deal had been reached to nominate Abdel Mahdi , a leading SCIRI figure and currently Iraq’s vice president, to be the new Iraqi prime minister (the accord is said to have been reached by representatives of SCIRI, the Kurdish list, and the Sunni Iraqi Concord Front.)

There is great fear that the Badr Corps-SCIRI campaign against gay people will become official Iraqi policy, especially if the report that a top SCIRI politican may become the new prime minister turns out to be true. Under the Iraqi Constitution -- virtually written by U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad and his associates -- Sharia law, which mandates death for homosexuals, is the foundation of all Iraqi law.

Reuters reported last August 20th, under the headline, “U.S. Concedes Ground to Islamists on Iraqi Law,” that the U.S. brokered a deal “making Islam 'the,' not 'a,' main source of law -- changing current wording -- and subjecting all legislation to a religious test.”

Reuters quoted a leading Kurdish politician as saying at that time, “'We [are given to] understand the Americans have sided with the Shi'ites," he said. "It's shocking. It doesn't fit American values. They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state ... I can't believe that's what the Americans really want or what the American people want.'"

If you would like to help support gay Iraqis, the Abu Nawas Group desperately needs money to expand its work on their behalf. The Abu Nawas Group works closely with the British gay rights group OutRage! -- so, if you'd like to make a donation to the Abu Nawas Group, checks/cheques should be made payable to "OutRage!", with a cover note stating it is a donation for "Abu Nawas Iraqi LGBT - UK".

Mail your donation to:
OutRage!, PO Box 17816, London SW14 8WT, England, UK.

Posted by Doug Ireland, New York

IRAQ - MORE GAY EXECUTIONS

Baghdad refuses to protect gays and denounces UN report

London – 3 April 2007

“Iraqi lesbians and gays continue to be subjected a systematic reign
of terror by Shia death squads. The government of Iraq refuses to
crack down on the killers or to take any action to protect its gay
citizens. It is a regime that is dominated by Shia fanatics and
homophobes,” according to Ali Hili, the coordinator of the human
rights group Iraqi LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender).

Mr Hili lists below a few examples of the many death squad killings of
gay Iraqis.

“Supporters of the fundamentalist Sadr and Badr militias boast that
they are cleansing Iraq of what they call ‘sexual perverts’. They are
open about terrorising gay Iraqis to make them flee the country and
murdering those who fail to leave. Their goal is a queer-free,
pro-homophobic Iraq. They are dragging our country back to the dark
ages,” said the London-based Mr Hili, who is also Middle East
spokesperson for the gay human rights group, OutRage!

“Some members of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government are
linked to the anti-gay death squads. They are the political
representatives of the Muqtada al-Sadr movement and the Supreme
Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Both these parties
have militias, respectively the Mahdi army and the Badr brigades, who
are responsible for the execution-style killing of lesbian and gay
Iraqis – and the murder of many other Iraqis, including Sunni Muslims,
trade unionists, unveiled women, journalists and men wearing shorts,
jeans or western-style haircuts.

“The murder of gay Iraqis has the support of highly influential
religious leaders, such as Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. He issued a
fatwa in late 2005, calling for the execution of gay people in the
‘most severe way possible’. After international protests, he removed
the fatwa from his website, but the fatwa itself has not been
rescinded. It remains in force and is the spiritual sanction for the
death squads to murder gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people,”
said Mr Hili.

The United Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI) has corroborated
Iraqi LGBT’s claims of “sexual cleansing” by the death squads and
Islamist courts:

"Armed Islamic groups and militias have been known to be particularly
hostile towards homosexuals, frequently and openly engaging in violent
campaigns against them," January’s UNAMI report said.

"There have been a number of assassinations of homosexuals in Iraq…At
least five homosexual males were reported to have been kidnapped from
Shaab area in the first week of November (2006) by one of the main
militias. The mutilated body of Amjad, one of the kidnapped, appeared
in the same area after a few days. [We were] also alerted to the
existence of religious courts, supervised by clerics, where
homosexuals allegedly
would be 'tried,' 'sentenced' to death and then executed," UNAMI
said.

This UNAMI report provoked a hostile reaction from the government of
Iraq, which suggested that gay people are unIraqi and unIslamic:

“There was information in the report that we cannot accept here in
Iraq. The report, for example, spoke about the phenomenon of
homosexuality and giving them their rights," said Mr al-Dabbagh, a
spokesperson for the Iraqi government. "Such statements are not
suitable to the Iraqi society. This is rejected. They (the UN) should
respect the values and traditions here in Iraq.”

Iraq’s many LGBT victims of the death squads

Here are details of a few of the LGBTs who have been murdered in Iraq
in recent months:

“Anwar, aged 34, a taxi driver, was a member of Iraqi LGBT and helped
run one of the group’s safe houses in the city of Najaf. He
disappeared in January 2007. He was arrested in his taxi after being
stopped at a police and militia checkpoint. His body was found in
March 2007. He had been subjected to an execution-style killing.

“Nouri, aged 29, a tailor, was kidnapped in the city of Karbala in
February 2007. He had received many death threats by letter and phone
in the past, accusing him of leading a gay life. He was found dead a
few days later, with his body mutilated and his head severed.

“Hazim, a 21-year-old man, was taken by police officers from his house
in Baghdad in February 2007. He was well-known to be gay. After
threats because of his homosexuality, his family was forced to leave
their home. Hazim’s body was subsequently found with several shots to
the head.

“Sayf, a gay 25-year-old, worked for the Iraqi police as a translator.
He was kidnapped in the Al-Adhamya suburb by black masked men in
Ministry of Interior security force uniforms who drove a marked police
car. Almost certainly they were members of the Badr militia which has
infiltrated the Interior Ministry and police. Sayf’s body was found
several days later, with his head cut off.

“Khaldon, a 45 year old gay man lived in al-Hurriya, a mainly Shia
neighborhood of Baghdad. He worked as a chef. The Sadr militia, the
Mahdi army, kidnapped him in November 2006. His decaying corpse was
found in February 2007.

“Khalid, a 19 year old gay man, a college student who lived in
al-Kadomya, was kidnapped in December 2006. Three months later, his
family was handed his tortured and burned remains.

“Hasan Sabeh, a 34 year old transvestite - also known as Tamara -
worked in the fashion industry designing women’s clothes. He lived in
the al-Mansor district of Baghdad. Hasan was seized in the street by
an Islamist death squad and hanged in public on the holy Shia
religious day, 11 January 2007. His body was mutilated and cut to
pieces. When his brother-in-law tried to defend him, he was also
murdered.

“Four gay friends had been receiving threatening letters at their
Baghdad houses. All four were arrested on 26 December 2006 by militia
at a roadside checkpoint. They were interrogated about whether they
were Sunnis. Their identity cards showed that three of the men were
Shia. These three men were released after several hours of
interrogation. The fourth man, Samer, a 26 year old a Sunni who lived
in Zayona, was later found with gunshot wounds to his head, his eyes
blindfolded and his hands tied behind his back. His body showed marks
of torture and many burns. It is not clear whether Samer was executed
because he was Sunni or gay or both.

“Alan Thomas, was a 23 year old, Christian gay Iraqi who lived in
al-Gadeer, a Shia majority district of Baghdad. He received many
threats for being gay and was eventually kidnapped and executed by
Shia death squads in late 2006. His older sister spoke to me over the
phone from Baghdad; explaining how the murder of her only brother
caused the death of their sick elderly mother. She told me: ‘The new
Iraqi evil regime does not provide effective protection to the
population of Iraq. Shia militias act in collusion with security
force gangs to take revenge on the Sunni’s and other minorities.’

“Occasionally, some victims of the fundamentalists have been able to
buy their survival. Hamid A, a 44 year old bisexual man, from the
Al-Talibya district. He was kidnapped twice by the Sadr militia. The
first instance was in April 2006 when he, his nephew and his brother
were kidnapped and tortured. He was released in May 2006 after his
tribe members paid a huge ransom to save his life and the lives of his
relatives. Hamid was kidnapped for a second time in November 2006 by
the same Sadr militia, when an informant reported that he was drinking
alcohol and that he was suspected of being gay. He was held in a big
office in Sadr city, along with other detainees - most of them Sunnis
and Christians. Again, he was ransomed and is now in hiding; a rare
survivor of the Sadr militia interrogation centres.

“Heterosexual friends of gays are also executed. This happened to
Majid Sahi, aged 28, a civil engineer. He had been helping Iraqi LGBT
members in Baghdad. Abducted by the Badr militia from his home, they
objected to his association with gay Iraqis. His family was advised by
the Badr forces that their son’s “immoral behavior” was the reason for
his kidnapping. His body was found in Baghdad, with bullet wounds in
the back of his head, on 23 February 2007.

Photos of some of these victims are available here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/outrage/sets/72157600042494571/

NB: Sorry, we do not have high resolution versions.


“Despite the great danger involved, Iraqi LGBT has established a
clandestine network of lesbian and gay activists inside Iraq’s major
cities, including Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala, Hilla and Basra,” reports
Peter Tatchell of OutRage!, who is working closely with Ali Hili and
Iraqi LGBT.

“These heroic activists are helping gay people on the run from
fundamentalist death squads; hiding them in safe houses in Baghdad,
and helping them escape to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon,” said Mr
Tatchell.

Ali Hili is making an appeal for donations to fund the work of Iraqi
LGBT:

“Iraqi LGBT needs donations to help gay people in Iraq who are fleeing
the death squads. We need money for safe houses, food, electricity,
security protection and clothing - and to help pay the phone bills of
members of the Iraqi LGBT group. They are sending us information about
the homophobic killings, at great risk to their own lives.

“Many of the people we are helping had nothing but the clothes on
their backs, when they fled the attacks by fundamentalist militias.

“We are also paying for medication for members who are HIV positive.
Otherwise, they will not get treatment. If it is discovered that they
have HIV, they will surely be killed,” said Mr Hili.

The UK-based gay rights group OutRage! is working with Iraqi LGBT to
support its work. Iraqi LGBT is coordinated by Ali Hili from the
safety of London UK. The group does not yet have a bank account.
Operating an Iraqi LGBT bank account in Baghdad would be suicide. For
this reason, it has to operate its finances from London. All the
group’s members in London are Iraqi refugees seeking asylum. Their
lack of proper legal status makes it difficult for them to open a bank
account in the UK. This is why Iraqi LGBT is asking that cheques be
made payable to:

“OutRage!”, with a cover note marked “For Iraqi LGBT”, and sent to
OutRage!, PO Box 17816, London SW14 8WT, England, UK. OutRage! then
forwards the donations received to Ali Hili and Iraqi LGBT for wire
transfer to Baghdad.

More information:

Ali Hili 079 819 594 53

Blog: http://iraqilgbtuk.blogspot.com/

Photos of some of the LGBT victims are available here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/outrage/sets/72157600042494571/

NB: Sorry, we do not have high resolution versions.

For photos of other victims, see:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/outrage/sets/72057594087304767/


Peter Tatchell, OutRage! 020 7403 1790

END.

USA TODAY - Militias target some Iraqis for being gay

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2009-07-28-gays-in-iraq_N.htm

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."

Two Members of US Congress Protest Persecution of Gay Iraqis

Representatives Tammy Baldwin and Barney Frank

Condoleezza Rice Asked to Intervene

WASHINGTON, June 14, 2007

Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Congressman Barney Frank (D- MA) have written to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urging the State Department to investigate reports of violent persecution of homosexual Iraqis by Islamic groups and militias.

The two lawmakers cited a United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq's (UNAMI) Human Rights Report issued for the period of November 1 to December 31, 2006, which stated that an environment of “impunity and lawlessness” currently permeating Iraq has invited open and violent campaigns against LGBT Iraqis.

“In 2005, the Iraqi people adopted a Constitution guaranteeing that ‘every individual has the right to enjoy life, security and liberty’.

“Unfortunately, such promises have been particularly eroded for LGBT Iraqis, who must live in constant fear of being targeted for execution.

“We therefore urge you to raise this serious issue with the Iraqi leadership and press them to take immediate action to halt the killings of Iraqi homosexuals,” Baldwin and Frank wrote.

Representatives Baldwin and Frank asked Secretary Rice to raise the issue and express her concerns to Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani, while urging the Iraqi government to step up its protection of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Iraqis and stop these senseless attacks by the militias.

Full text of the letter:

Dear Secretary Rice:

We are writing to express our strong concerns regarding recent reports that Iraqi homosexuals have been systematically persecuted in Iraq under a violent campaign led by Islamic groups and militias. We urge the State Department to investigate such allegations and report its findings as part of the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. We also urge you to raise the issue and express your concerns to Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani, while urging the Iraqi government to step up its protection of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Iraqis and stop these senseless attacks by the militias.

According to the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq's (UNAMI) Human Rights Report issued for the period of November 1 to December 31, 2006, an environment of "impunity and lawlessness" currently permeating Iraq has invited open and violent campaigns against LGBT Iraqis. According to news reports, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the chief spiritual leader of Iraqi Shia Muslims, issued a "'fatwa,' or religiously-inspired legal pronouncement, in October 2005 calling for death for all gays and lesbians in "the most severe way possible." While the fatwa was eventually removed from Sistani's website last May, it was never revoked, and the decree has led to the deployment of anti-gay death squads by the military arm of the Supreme Council for the Islamic revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the Badr Corps. As a result, violence against gay Iraqis surged in 2006.

According to Iraqi LGBT, a London-based human rights group working to support the human rights of gay Iraqis, twenty-six of its members have been killed since 2003, including the murder of two minors - eleven-year-old Ameer and fourteen-year-old Ahmed who were forced into child prostitution--in 2006. In addition, a mass kidnapping of five gay men from the Shaab area of Iraq took place during the first week of December 2006. All are now presumed dead.

In April of this year, Iraqi LGBT documented that eight additional murders took place in 2007, while several other gay activists were arrested and tortured. A report by the Institute for War and Peace (IWPR) also documented that religious courts now exists in Iraq allegedly to try homosexuals, sentencing them to death, and subsequently executing them under the supervision of clerics.

The aforementioned news accounts, coupled with UNAMI and IWPR's reports, present a substantial body of evidence that LGBT Iraqis have been systematically targeted for violence by Islamic clerics and militias. Yet the 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, released by the State Department this March, made no reference to any human rights violations in Iraq based on sexual orientation. We thus urge the State Department to investigate such allegations and incorporate the findings in the annual human rights report.

Furthermore, we urge you to utilize every diplomatic tool available to engage Prime Minister Al-Maliki and President Talabani and call on the Iraqi government to crack down on the systematic prosecution of Iraqi homosexuals. In 2005, the Iraqi people adopted a Constitution guaranteeing that "every individual has the right to enjoy life, security and liberty," (emphasis added). Unfortunately, such promises have been particularly eroded for LGBT Iraqis, who must live in constant fear of being targeted for execution. We therefore urge you to raise this serious issue with the Iraqi leadership and press them to take immediate action to halt the killings of Iraqi homosexuals.

Sincerely,
Tammy BaldwinMember of Congress
Barney FrankMember of Congress

Iran Exports Anti-Gay Pogrom to Iraq

By Doug Ireland

Shiite death squads in Iraq are carrying out a campaign that targets gay men for murder. This so-called “sexual cleansing” is happening under the nose of the U.S. military—but American authorities in the Green Zone have refused to do anything about it.

The highly organized campaign of beatings, kidnappings and murders of Iraqi gays follows a death-to-gays fatwa issued last October by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the 77-year-old Iranian who is supreme spiritual leader of all Shia Muslims in Iraq. The fatwa, available on Sistani’s official Web site, puts it this way, “The people involved [in homosexuality] should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.”

This reign of terror represents the importation into Iraq of the anti-gay killings being carried out in the Islamic Republic of Iran (see “Iran’s Anti-Gay Pogrom,” January). The Iraqi murders are the work of the Badr Corps, the military arm of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). The largest political formation in Iraq’s Shia community, SCIRI was headquartered in exile in Tehran until Saddam Hussein’s fall.

The SCIRI’s Badr Corps wear the uniforms of Iraqi police, which is under the nominal control of the Interior Ministry. But the Interior Ministry has been heavily infiltrated by Iran. Moreover, the Badr Corps’ salaries are paid by Iran—as a counselor of Sistani’s, Ali Debbagh, who is a member of the Iraqi parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, confirmed in a Feb. 17 interview with Le Monde.

“We are receiving regular reports from our extensive network of contacts with underground gay activists and gay people in Iraq—intimidation, beatings, kidnappings and murders of gays have become an almost daily occurrence,” says Ali Hili, a 33-year-old gay Iraqi exile in London. Five months ago, Hili, along with some 30 other gay Iraqis who have fled to the United Kingdom, founded the Iraqi LGBT U.K. group to document this persecution and support the victims. The group is accumulating evidence that Iranian agents are advising SCIRI. He says there are reports that Iranian agents have been involved in interrogations, questioning those arrested in Persian through translators.

Also, as in Iran, “Badr militants are entrapping gay men via Internet chat rooms,” Hili says. “They arrange a date, and then beat and kill the victim. Males who are unmarried by the age of 30 or 35 are placed under surveillance on suspicion of being gay, as are effeminate men. They will be investigated and warned to get married. Badr will typically give them a month to change their ways. If they don’t, or if they fail to show evidence that they plan to get married, they will be arrested, disappear and eventually be found dead. The bodies are usually discovered with their hands bound behind their back, blindfolds over their eyes and bullet wounds to the back of the head.”

Tahseen, a 31-year-old photography lab technician and underground gay activist, told me by telephone from Baghdad that, “Just last week, four gay people we know of were found dead. I am afraid to leave my room and go out in the street because I will be killed.” He said that men who seem obviously gay “cannot walk in the street. My best friend was recently killed for being gay.”

Tahseen also described the Badr Corps’ Internet entrapment program, noting that “since Sistani’s fatwa, the violence and killings have gotten much, much worse.” Tahseen lives in a Baghdad apartment with his two brothers. “Right now, I have five gay men hiding in my room in fear of their lives,” he said, the anguish audible in his voice. One man given refuge by Tahseen is Bashar, a 34-year-old stage actor, who was forced into hiding after he and his family received death threats. He said that before he went underground, his house was raided several times by the Badr Corps. Fortunately, he was not at home.

“We desperately need protection!” Tahseen pleaded. “But, when we go to the Americans, they laugh at us and don’t do anything.”

According to Hili, “These assaults and murders have been reported by underground gay activists in Baghdad to the Green Zone, but the Americans don’t want to upset the religious authorities, and so they do nothing and treat gay Iraqis with contempt or as an object of humor.”

An April 10 report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs confirmed that gay Iraqis have been targeted for kidnapping and murder because of their sexual orientation. A week later, the BBC also carried a report, interviewing several victims. But U.S. major media have so far turned a blind eye to this systematic murder of gays in Iraq—and to the refusal of the U.S. occupier to do anything to stop it.

The immediate urgent priority is to Support and Donate Money to LGBT activists in Iraq in order to assist their efforts to communicate information about the wave of homophobic murders in Iraq to the outside world.

Funds raised will also help provide LGBTs under threat of honour killing with refuge in the safer parts of Iraq (including safe houses and food), and assist efforts help them seek asylum abroad.

Iraqi LGBT UK do not yet have bank account. We are working closely with the LGBT human rights group OutRage! in London.

Donations to help Iraqi LGBT in the UK and in Iraq should be made payable to "OutRage!",with a cover note marked "For Iraqi LGBT", and sent to :

OutRage!, PO Box17816, London SW14 8WT, England, UK

Solidarity!