This is something that we’ve seen precious little reporting on, the 10% of Iraq’s (and every society’s) gay population and how they are faring. It’s not pretty. From the BBC:
“I don’t want to be gay anymore. When I go out to buy bread, I’m afraid. When the doorbell rings, I think that they have come for me.”That is the fear that haunts Hussein, and other gay men in Iraq.
They say that since the US-led invasion, gay people are being killed because of their sexual orientation.
Islam considers homosexuality sinful. A website published in the Iranian city of Qom in the name of Ayatollah Sistani, Iraq’s most revered Shia cleric, says: “Those who commit sodomy must be killed in the harshest way”.The statement appears in Arabic section of the website, in a section dealing with questions of morality, but not in the English-language equivalent.
I recommend using the link to read the article as it’s just about the only one you’ll find on the plight of gays in Iraq. Even Amnesty International doesn’t have their ears to the ground here.
Ahmed is a 31-year-old interior decorator who used to live in Baghdad with his boyfriend, Mazin.Ahmed fled to Jordan nine months ago after Mazin was murdered outside a gym.
After his partner was shot dead, Ahmed hid in the gym toilets then slipped away and later flew to Amman, the Jordanian capital.He says it was well known that they were a couple and Mazin was targeted because of his sexuality.”I fled from Iraq because of the threat to my life, because I was a gay man,” he told the BBC.
Ahmed also said that, before the gym shooting, he and a gay friend had survived a grenade attack and he still had fragments of shrapnel in his face.The friend was killed a week later by gunmen who raided his house, he added.”Saddam was a tyrant, but at least we had more freedom then,” said Hussein. “Nowadays, gay men are just killed for no reason.”
That last quote says it all.
