Anti-gay Iran, Iraq, Afganistan etc

[Daniel]

Originally Posted by Zerbie

I would gladly donate (but it would be a drop in the bucket amount,) if I knew where/how to make a small contribution in US dollars to their safe houses.

http://iraqilgbtuk.blogspot.com/

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr

[Daniel]

http://www.towleroad.com/2007/11/iranian-leader-.html

Notes from an Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting between British and Iranian leaders in May were recently released. The IPU is a peace body and part of the meeting concerned questions from the British PMs regarding the hangings of underage youths for the crime of homosexuality particularly the public executions of Mahmoud Asqari and Ayad Marhouni in 2005. Photographs of the disturbing execution were distributed widely across the internet.

The Times Online reports: "When the Britons raised the hangings of Asqari and Marhouni, the leader of the Iranian delegation, Mr Yahyavi, a member of his parliament’s energy committee, was unflinching. He 'explained that according to Islam gays and lesbianism were not permitted', the record states. 'He said that if homosexual activity is in private there is no problem, but those in overt activity should be executed [he initially said tortured but changed it to executed]. He argued that homosexuality is against human nature and that humans are here to reproduce. Homosexuals do not reproduce.'"

Yesterday, when the notes were released to the public, the British delegation head Labour MP Ann Clwyd said: "It is of great concern that these attitudes persist and we made it clear what we felt."

I'm glad the British spoke up about this issue. However, it seems that the response leaves a lot to be desired.

[paul]

Daniel,

What do you know of this and how confident are you of it's legitimacy? I too would be interested in donating to this if I could determine that. I trust you and your understanding of what goes on...what do you think? Are you endorsing this or just passing it on?
paul

[Daniel]

Originally Posted by paul

Daniel,

What do you know of this and how confident are you of it's legitimacy? I too would be interested in donating to this if I could determine that. I trust you and your understanding of what goes on...what do you think? Are you endorsing this or just passing it on?
paul

Good question.

My sense is that the organization is legitimate, having read of them before in related news, but I don't know for certain. Amnesty International may have some info on Iraqilgbtuk.

[Zerbie]

Oh, thanks for asking Paul - I meant to, and got distracted. The website looked rather like an individual's blog, so I didn't donate because I suspected it might not be genuine.

Can anyone find out if donations to the cause can be made via a known, reputable human rights organization?

[Daniel]

http://www.towleroad.com/2007/11/execution-of-ir.html

Execution of Iranian Gay Man Stayed Due to International Pressure

At the end of October, I posted about a report on the imminent execution of another gay man in Iran. Here's some good news. There are reports that because of international pressure from human rights groups and gay activists, an Iranian Chief Justice halted the execution.

"According to Human Rights Watch, three men complained to police in Sep 2006 that Makvan Mouloodzadeh had raped them seven years earlier. Mouloodzadeh was arrested and in May 2007, he was sentenced to death on charges of raping three boys when he was 13-years-old. He claims he was physically assaulted in prison, and forced to confess a crime he says he never committed. Iran's Chief Justice says the death sentence was in violation of Islamic teachings and the law, according to the ILGHRC."

Said Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of the New York-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission: "This is a stunning victory for human rights and a reminder of the power of global protest."

Earlier this week, a news report came out of Britain saying that Iranian leaders were still committed to hanging individuals for homosexual crimes.

[Daniel]

http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2007/11/27/42200.html

Hundreds protest turning Morocco into a "brothel"

Moroccan "bride" jailed for gay wedding

A wedding for a well-known gay man in Morocco ended with the colorful 'bride' behind bars, along with five other wedding guests, and sparked riots and calls for authorities to clamp down on gays in Moroccan society.

The Court of First Instance in the northern city of Al-Qasr Al-Kabir, where the wedding took place, handed down jail sentences to six people who participated in the lavish wedding ceremony, including the 'bride', Fouad, a well-known gay man who sells alcohol for a living.

The identity of the groom is still unknown, press reports said Monday, but a full investigation is underway.

The wedding, attended by scores of gays and lesbians, lasted two days and had many elements of a traditional Moroccan wedding.

The 'bride,' adorned with jewelry and full facial makeup, wore a green gown with a golden belt. His head was covered with a white scarf. For the second day's celebrations, which featured a musical performance, he changed into a yellow cloak.

A black bull – one of the gifts to the newlyweds – was slain to the celebratory sounds of cheers and ululations. Afterwards, the 'bride' knelt, filled his glass with the bull's blood, and drank it, one of the guests reported.

But the 'bride' turned himself into police after he was caught and beaten by protestors, the Moroccan newspaper Al-Tajdeed reported.



Indignation

More than 600 men and women took to the streets, chanting slogans condemning the city's leniency towards homosexuals and criticizing the couple's audacity to hold a gay wedding in the open.

An MP for the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD), Saeed Khairoun, said the wedding signaled the disintegration of Muslim values and was a flagrant violation of the society's traditions.

He called on the government to "combat those want to turn Morocco to a brothel."

Moroccan gays were recently allowed to found their own organization, which demands equal rights for homosexuals and aims to combat all forms of discrimination.

According to article 489 of the Moroccan Penal Code, homosexuality is illegal and is punishable by six months to three years in jail and a fine of 120 to 1,200 dirhams (15 to 155 dollars).

But the law is rarely enforced, and the sight of gay couples has become fairly common, especially in cities with large European expatriate communities like Tangiers, Marrakech, and Agadir.


(Translated from Arabic by Sonia Farid).

[Daniel]

Originally Posted by Daniel

http://www.towleroad.com/2007/11/execution-of-ir.html

The lastest news here....

http://www.towleroad.com/2007/12/iranian-man-exe.html

Iranian Man Executed Today Without Notice for Alleged Sex Crime

The execution of a 21-year-old Iranian man that was reportedly stayed due to international pressure in mid-November has happened.

"Mr. Makvan Mouloodzadeh was executed in Kermanshah Central Prison at 5 a.m. this morning, Iranian time." the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission reports:

"Mr. Mouloodzadeh was a 21-year-old Iranian citizen who was accused of committing anal rape (ighab) with other young boys when he was 13 years old. However, at Mr. Mouloodzadeh's trial, all the witnesses retracted their pre-trial testimonies, claiming to have lied to the authorities under duress. Makvan also told the court that his confession was made under coercion and pleaded not guilty. On June 7, 2007, the Seventh District Criminal Court of Kermanshah in Western Iran found him guilty and sentenced him to death. Despite his lawyer's appeal, the Supreme Court upheld his death sentence on August 1, 2007. The case caused an international uproar, and prompted a letter writing campaign by IGLHRC and similar actions by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Outrage! and Everyone Group. In response to mounting public pressure, and following a detailed petition submitted to the Iranian Chief Justice by Mr. Mouloodzadeh's lawyer, the Iranian Chief Justice, Ayatollah Seyed Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi, nullified the impending death sentence of Mr. Mouloodzadeh. In his November 10, 2007 opinion (1/86/8607), the Iranian Chief Justice described the death sentence to be in violation of Islamic teachings, the religious decrees of high-ranking Shiite clerics, and the law of the land. In accordance with Iranian legal procedure, Mr. Mouloodzadeh's case was sent to the Special Supervision Bureau of the Iranian Justice Department, a designated group of judges who are responsible for reviewing and ordering retrials of flawed cases flagged by the Iranian Chief Justice. However, in defiance of the Chief Justice, the judges decided to ratify the original court's ruling and ordered the local authorities to carry out the execution."

According to their report, "Neither Mr. Mouloodzadeh's family or his lawyer were told about the execution until after it occurred."

Said Paula Ettelbrick, IGLHRC's executive director: "This is a shameful and outrageous travesty of justice and international human rights law. How many more young Iranians have to die before the international community takes action?"

[NathanATX]

Those judges should all be put in prison for life.

[ladyinred]

Folks this is all the more reason why we don't want a theocracy here in the US. Most Iranians believe it or not want a democratic govt, they are digusted with the corruption of the now current govt and it's hardliners. They want a democracy but most do not want the US to stick their nose in their affairs or intervene. The economy in Iran is suffering and many Iranians are poor. Theocracy is characteristic of the govt there now.

[Daniel]

Originally Posted by Zerbie

I am just trembling. These poor people are living out the most horrible nightmare.

I would gladly donate (but it would be a drop in the bucket amount,) if I knew where/how to make a small contribution in US dollars to their safe houses.

Zerbie- there is an article in today's NYTimes about this story. It would seem that the safe house is a real deal, as well as the website set up to obtain funds to run it and others.

God! This story makes me weep.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/wo...=1&oref=slogin

http://iraqilgbtuk.blogspot.com/

Gays Living in Shadows of New Iraq

Originally Posted by NYTimes

BAGHDAD — In a city and country where outsiders are viewed with deep suspicion and attracting attention can imperil one’s life, Mohammed could never blend in, even if he wanted to.

Mohammed, 37, has been openly gay for much of his adult life. For him, this has meant growing his hair long and taking estrogen. In the past, he said, that held little danger. As is true throughout the Middle East, men have always been publicly affectionate here.

But, at least until recently, Mohammed and many of his gay friends went one step further, slipping into lovers’ houses late at night. And, until the American invasion, they said, Iraqi society had quietly accepted them.

But being openly gay is not an option in the new Iraq, where the rise of religious extremism has left Mohammed and his gay friends feeling especially vilified.

In January, a United Nations report described the increased persecution, torture and extrajudicial killing of Iraqi lesbians and gay men. In 2005, Iraq’s most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, calling for gay men and lesbians to be killed in the “worst, most severe way.”

He lifted it a year later, but neither that nor the recent ebb in violence has made Mohammed or his friends feel safe. They yearn to leave Iraq, but do not have the money or visas. They agreed to be interviewed on the condition that their last names not be used.

They described an underground existence, eked out behind drawn curtains in a dingy safe house in southwestern Baghdad. Five people share the apartment — four gay men and one woman, who says she is bisexual. They have moved six times in the last three years, just ahead, they say, of neighborhood raids by Shiite and Sunni death squads. Even seemingly benign neighborhood gossip can scare them enough to move.

“We seem suspicious because we look like a cell of terrorists,” said Mohammed, nervously fingering the lapel of his shirt. “But we can’t tell people what we really are. A cell, yes, but of gays.”

His hand drifted to his newly shorn hair. He had lopped it off days earlier. There had been reports of extremists stopping long-haired men, shearing their hair and forcing them to eat it.

It is impossible to say how many gay men and women face persecution in Iraq. According to an Iraqi gay rights group, run by a former disc jockey in Baghdad named Ali Hili who now lives in London, 400 people have been killed in Iraq since 2003 for being gay.

Set against the many thousands of civilians and soldiers killed in the war, the number is small. But for Mr. Hili, and Mohammed and his friends, it is a painful barometer of just how far Iraq has shifted from its secular past.

For a brief, exhilarating time, from the mid-1980s until the early 1990s, they say, gay night life flourished in Iraq. Whereas neighboring Iran turned inward after its Islamic revolution in 1979, Baghdad allowed a measure of liberation after the end of the Iran-Iraq war.

Abu Nawas Boulevard, which hugs the Tigris River opposite what is now the Green Zone, became a promenade known for cruising. Discos opened in the city’s best hotels, the Ishtar Sheraton, the Palestine and Saddam Hussein’s prized Al-Rasheed Hotel, becoming magnets for gay men. Young men with rouged cheeks and glossed lips paraded the streets of Mansour, an affluent neighborhood in Baghdad.

“There were so many guys, from Kuwait, from Saudi Arabia, guys in the street with makeup,” said Mr. Hili, who left Iraq in 2000. “Up until 1991, there was sexual freedom. It was a revolutionary time.”

Then came the Persian Gulf war, and afterward Saddam Hussein put an end to nightclubs. Iraq staggered under the yoke of economic sanctions. While antigay laws were increasingly enforced, Mohammed and Mr. Hili said they still felt safe. Homosexuality seemed accepted, as long as it was practiced in private. And even when it was not tolerated, prison time could be evaded with a well-placed bribe.

The American invasion was expected to usher in better times.

“We thought that with the presence of Americans, life would become paradise, that Iraq would be Westernized,” Mohammed said. “But unfortunately the way things were before was so much better than where we are now.”

One night shortly after Saddam Hussein fell, American soldiers burst into the apartment that Mohammed shared with his two brothers. They were looking for insurgents, but took one look at Mohammed, with his long hair and shapely body wrapped in a robe, and teased him, he said.

“What are you, a lady man?” he remembered them barking. “A boy? Or a girl?” They turned to one of Mohammed’s brothers, “Who is this?” they asked, “Your girlfriend?”

The news raced through Mohammed’s building. “All my neighbors came to know that I was gay,” he said. “My brother said, ‘Mohammed, leave the house; you can’t live here anymore.’”

He rented another apartment, and was soon joined by some gay friends. They moved nine months later, after suspicious neighbors began to talk. Nine months after that, they moved again. They came to rely on remittances sent by Mr. Hili, who raises money for them in London.

Mr. Hili taps a network of acquaintances in Baghdad to ferret out safe houses, and pays extra for landlords to alert him to possible trouble. He says he supports about 32 people.

Few work, though one of Mohammed’s roommates, Amjad, who is 33 and has manicured eyebrows and feathered hair, said he sometimes sleeps with an older man for money. “He loves me, but I hate him,” Amjad said. “He is jealous and ugly.”

One of Mohammed’s friends, a 25-year-old law student named Rafi, said he was especially desperate to get out of Iraq. It is a sentiment shared by millions of Iraqis, but Rafi believes his future here is especially bleak. The influence from Iran is growing, he said. And in Iran, homosexuality is often punishable by death.

“I want to get out, but not just out of Iraq, out of the Middle East,” Rafi said, “to a country that has respect for human rights. And for us.”

He paused, casting his eyes downward. “It will never be possible here.”

[antonyh]

I thought I would share this youtube:

[Daniel]

I read the following articles this morning via towleroad- and I have to say- it put the Presidential debates we watched last night into perspective.

http://www.towleroad.com/2008/09/coordinator-of.html

Coordinator of 'LGBT in Iraq' Group Assassinated in Baghdad
Yesterday, British gay activist Peter Tatchell of Outrage! wrote up an article about death squads who hunt down gay Iraqis and execute them, before releasing the following terribly sad statement:

"This morning, I received news from Iraq that the coordinator of Iraqi LGBT in Baghdad, Bashar, aged 27, a university student, has been assassinated in a barber shop. Militias burst in and sprayed his body with bullets at point blank range. He was the organiser of the safe houses for gays and lesbians in Baghdad. His efforts saved the lives of dozens of people. Bashar was a kind, generous and extremely brave young man – a true hero who put his life on the line to save the lives of others. My thoughts go out to his loved ones and to the other members of Iraqi LGBT. Their courage is an inspiration to all people everywhere fighting against injustice."

Tatchell's article in the Guardian is below. For the original with important links see:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...aq.humanrights

Sexual cleansing in Iraq

Islamist deaths squads are hunting down gay Iraqis and summarily executing them.

The "improved" security situation in Iraq is not benefiting all Iraqis, especially not those who are gay. Islamist death squads are engaged in a homophobic killing spree with the active encouragement of leading Muslim clerics, such as Moqtada al-Sadr, as Newsweek recently revealed.

One of these clerics, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a fatwa urging the killing of lesbians and gays in the "most severe way possible".

The short film, Queer Fear – Gay Life, Gay Death in Iraq, produced by David Grey for Village Film, documents the tragic fates of a several individual gay Iraqis. You can view it here. Watch and weep. It is a truly poignant and moving documentary about the terrorisation and murder of Iraqi lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Since this film was made, the killings have continued and, many say, got worse. For gay Iraqis there is little evidence of the transition to democracy. They don't experience any newfound respect for human rights. Life for them is even worse than under the tyrant Saddam Hussein.

It is a death sentence in today's "liberated" Iraq to love a person of the same sex, or for a woman to have sex outside of marriage, or for a Muslim to give up his or her faith or embrace another religion.

The reality on the ground is that theocracy is taking hold of the country, including in Basra, which was abandoned by the British military. In place of foreign occupation, the city's inhabitants now endure the terror of fundamentalist militias and death squads.

Those who are deemed insufficiently devout and pure are liable to be assassinated.

The death squads of the Badr organisation and the Mahdi army are targeting gays and lesbians, according to UN reports, in a systematic campaign of sexual cleansing. They proudly boast of their success, claiming that they have already exterminated all "perverts and sodomites" in many of the major cities.

You can view photos of a few of the LGBT victims of these summary executions
here and here.

My friends in Iraq have relayed to me the tragic story of five gay activists, who belonged to the underground gay rights movement, Iraqi LGBT.

Eye-witnesses confirm that they saw the men being led out of a house at gunpoint by officers in police uniform. Yes, Iraqi police! Nothing has been heard of the five victims since then. In all probability, they have been executed by the police – or by Islamist death squads who have infiltrated the Iraqi police and who are using their uniforms to carry out so-called honour killings of gay people, unchaste women and many others.

The arrested and disappeared men were Amjad 27, Rafid 29, Hassan 24, Ayman 19 and Ali 21. As members of Iraq's covert gay rights movement, for the previous few months they had been documenting the killing of lesbians and gays, relaying details of the murders to the outside world, and providing safe houses and support to other gay people fleeing the death squads.

Their abduction is just one of many outrages by anti-gay death squads. lslamist killers burst into the home of two lesbian women in the city of Najaf. They shot them dead, slashed their throats, and also murdered a young child who the women had rescued from the sex trade. The two women, both in their mid-30s, were members of Iraqi LGBT. They were providing a safe house for gay men on the run from death squads. By sheer luck, none of the men who were being given shelter in the house were at home when the assassins struck. They have since fled to Baghdad, and are hiding in an Iraqi LGBT safe house there.

Large parts of Iraq are now under the de facto control of the militias and their death squad units. They enforce a harsh interpretation of sharia law, summarily executing people for what they denounce as "crimes against Islam". These "crimes" include listening to western pop music, wearing shorts or jeans, drinking alcohol, selling videos, working in a barber's shop, homosexuality, dancing, having a Sunni name, adultery and, in the case of women, not being veiled or walking in the street unaccompanied by a male relative.

Two militias are doing most of the killing. They are the armed wings of major parties in the Bush and Brown-backed Iraqi government. The Mahdi army is the militia of Moqtada al-Sadr, and the Badr organisation is the militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which is the leading political force in Baghdad's governing coalition. Both militias want to establish an Iranian-style religious dictatorship. The allied occupation of Iraq is bad enough. But if the Mahdi or Badr militias gain in influence and strength, as seems likely in the long-term, it could result in a reign of religious terror many times worse.

Saddam Hussein was a bloody tyrant. I campaigned against his blood-stained misrule for nearly 30 years. But while Saddam was president, there was certainly no danger of gay people being assassinated in their homes and in the street by religious fanatics.

Since his overthrow, the violent persecution of lesbians and gays is much worse. Even children suspected of being gay are abducted and later found shot in the head.

Lesbian and gay Iraqis cannot seek the protection of the police, since the police are heavily infiltrated by fundamentalists, especially the Badr militia. The death squads can kill with impunity. Pro-fundamentalist ministers in the Iraqi government are turning a blind eye to the killings, and helping to protect the killers. Some "liberation".

Iraqi LGBT is appealing for funds to help the work of their members in Iraq. Since they don't yet have a bank account, they request that cheques should be made payable to "OutRage!", with a cover note marked "For Iraqi LGBT", and sent to OutRage!, PO Box 17816, London SW14 8WT.

[Daniel]

http://www.towleroad.com/2009/04/rep...l-torture.html

[keltic63]

that's just not what I needed to know this morning. how sad, how painful, and troubling to know that there are those in this country who would think that this is what we deserve.

[Zerbie]

Someone please tell me Amnesty is hearing about this and will do something? Otherwise, what can be done from over here?

The only thing new about this news is the technique - the torture and murder is not new, nor does it surprise me. But what can stop this?

[Daniel]

http://wockner.blogspot.com/2009/04/...ave-begun.html

Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Polis: Iraqi GLBT executions have begun

Of the five or six members of Iraqi LGBT who reportedly have been sentenced to death in Baghdad for belonging to a supposedly banned organization, one has escaped custody and one has been executed, says U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo.

According to Polis, the "egregious human rights violations" are "being carried out by Iraqi government officials from the Ministry of the Interior."

"While I do not know if these executions are being sanctioned at the highest levels of the Iraqi government, it is nonetheless disturbing that government officials and state-funded security forces are involved in the torturing and execution of LGBT Iraqis," Polis wrote to Patricia Butenis, the chargé d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.

Polis said the U.S. government "appears to be largely unaware that the executions of gay and transgender Iraqis have been able to occur in Iraq" and has expressed an "unwillingness to seriously consider these allegations and examine the evidence (from) international human rights watchdog organizations."

Reports of the pending executions were first brought to light by Iraqi LGBT founder Ali Hili, who launched the group in London after escaping Iraq.

In a recent phone interview, Hili said he isn't sure what statute might make belonging to a banned organization a capital offense.

"That's what they have been told by a judge in a brief court hearing," he said. "I don't think this is in the Iraqi constitution as a death penalty (crime). The court is ... kangaroo-style. It was brief and people weren't able to present legal representation or defend themselves in that kind of court. Our information is that these five members have been convicted to death for running activities of a forbidden organization on Iraqi soil."

Scott Long, director of Human Rights Watch's LGBT Rights Division, said: "We are trying urgently to determine who they (the condemned men) are and what has happened. ... Together with other groups, members of Congress and concerned activists, we're doing everything we can to investigate and determine who's jailed and what their fates may be. The Iraqi government and the U.S. government must both investigate these charges immediately."

At press time, Long was in Iraq attempting to learn more.

In addition to the uncertainty over what death-penalty crime the condemned men could have been charged with, it also is unclear if gay sex is illegal in Iraq. Some news reports have said it isn't, some have said the punishment is up to seven years in prison, and some have said engaging in gay sex is a capital crime. A lengthy Wikipedia entry on the question reflects the confusion.

The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association's quasi-definitive report "State-Sponsored Homophobia - A world survey of laws prohibiting same sex activity between consenting adults" says: "Iraq reinstated the Penal Code of 1969 after the American invasion in 2003. The Penal Code does not prohibit sexual activities between consenting adults of the same sex. However, as the country is under war, and law enforcement is not functioning properly, death squads operate in the country, killing homosexuals."

[Daniel]

So- it is their religious duty to kill gay men.

Alleged Executioner of Gay Men in Iraq Speaks of Killings

English language newspaper The National, based in Abu Dhabi, reports on the recent executions of gay men in Iraq.

Sadrcity They interview a man they call Abu Muslim, who claims to be involved in the actual killings:

“We see this [homosexuality] as a serious illness in the community that has been spreading rapidly among the youth after it was brought in from the outside by American soldiers. These are not the habits of Iraq or our community and we must eliminate them...We had approval from the main Iraqi tribes here to liquidate those [men] copying the ways of women. Our aim is not to destabilise the security situation. Our aim is to help stabilise society...Although the Mahdi Army is today limited and in fact stalled, we cannot sit by with our arms crossed while these homosexuals flout the rules and ethics that must be followed under the Islamic religion. These homosexuals think that Iraq is changing and becoming a non-Muslim, liberal society but our tribal and religious customs allow us to punish them in the most severe way."

They also speak with Hayder al Mousawi, an imam at the Hussein mosque in the Karada neighbourhood of Baghdad: “The truth is that the homosexual brings shame on them so how can God be angry with them for killing the homosexual? On the contrary, in killing the homosexual they are carrying out God’s will.”

Park And a doctor at Al Shaab hospital, Taher Mustafa, tells the paper that he knows of at least three men brought in recently that he thinks were killed because they were gay: “We had bodies in, they were of men between 17 and 25 years old and they’d either been shot or burnt to death. It’s good that people are beginning to get freedoms they’ve been deprived of for a long time, but the youth here have to understand that they are living in a society that is governed by traditions and religious customs, and that still has militias to enforce them. It is unacceptable that people are murdered in the streets for any reason, or for these gangs to behave as if they are the law,. As the national security system gets stronger, this will stop.”

They also speak with a 23-year-old gay Iraqi national who says he has received anonymous phone calls with threats to kill him: “It is our right to live as we see fit and it is the responsibility of the Iraqi government to protect us and that right, as citizens. Just because we are not practising Muslims does not mean that we can be treated as if we are not human beings. We all know homosexuals are killed here. They get murdered by firing squads, but only after they’ve been tortured. There’s a large waste dump in al Shaab and that’s where the bodies are left.”

[Daniel]

I really do.

This is what American forces are defending in Iraq? The ability of militias to kill gay and effeminate looking men?

I boggles the mind. It really does.

http://www.towleroad.com/2009/07/pap...-militias.html

Paper: Executions of Gays a Sign of Power for Iraqi Militias

USA Today has posted a frightening piece about the ongoing executions of gays in Iraq by militias hungry to show signs that they are still powerful despite U.S. and Iraqi efforts to banish them. Says Mithal al-Alusi, a secular, liberal Sunni legislator: "Why did Hitler start with gays? They are weak. They have no political cover. They have no legal cover."

An excerpt:

Sadrcity"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."

[Gennee]

Kimmyd, as a veteran myself I do see your point. However we need to remember that the vast majority of people in these countries are not terrorists. Did you know that there are Christians in these countries who are brutalized, tortured and murdered? It's not written about much but it is happening.

I'm against anyone who seeks to murder, maim and kill no matter where they come from. I actually welcome your opinion. I would like to discuss it further.

Gennee