[health-vn] Iraq’s Newly Open Gays Face Scorn and Murder

[Vern Weitzel]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/world/middleeast/08gay.html?_r=1&ref=world

Iraq’s Newly Open Gays Face Scorn and Murder


By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and TAREQ MAHER
Published: April 7, 2009

BAGHDAD — The relative freedom of a newly democratic Iraq and the recent 
improvement in security have allowed a gay subculture to flourish here. The 
response has been swift and deadly.

In the past two months, the bodies of as many as 25 boys and men suspected of 
being gay have turned up in the huge Shiite enclave of Sadr City, the police and 
friends of the dead say. Most have been shot, some multiple times. Several have 
been found with the word “pervert” in Arabic on notes attached to their bodies, 
the police said.

“Three of my closest friends have been killed during the past two weeks alone,” 
said Basim, 23, a hairdresser. “They had been planning to go to a cafe away from 
Sadr City because we don’t feel safe here, but they killed them on the way. I 
had planned to go with them, but fortunately I didn’t.”

Basim, who preferred to be called “Basima” — the feminine version of his name — 
wears his hair long for Iraq. It falls to just below the ear. His ears are 
pierced, uncommon for Iraqi males. White makeup covers his face, a popular look 
for gay men in Sadr City who say they prefer light skin.

Though risky, his look is one result of the overall calm here that has allowed 
Iraqis to enjoy freedoms unthinkable two years ago: A growing number of women 
walk the streets unveiled, a few even daring to wear dresses above the knee. 
Families gather in parks for cookouts, and more people have begun to venture out 
at night.

But that has not changed the reality that Iraq remains religious, conservative — 
and still violent. The killers, the police say, are not just Shiite death 
squads, but also tribal and family members shamed by their gay relatives. (And 
the recent spate of violence has seemed aimed at more openly gay men, rather 
than homosexuality generally.)

Clerics in Sadr City have urged followers to help root out homosexuality in 
Iraqi society, and the police have begun their own crackdown on gay men.

“Homosexuality is against the law,” said Lt. Muthana Shaad, at a police station 
in the Karada district, a neighborhood that has become popular with gay men. 
“And it’s disgusting.”

For the past four months, he said, officers have been engaged in a “campaign to 
clean up the streets and get the beggars and homosexuals off them.”

Gay men, he said, can be arrested only if they are seen engaging in sex, but the 
police try to drive them away. “These people, we make sure they can’t get 
together in a coffee shop or walk together in the street — we make them break 
up,” he said.

Gay men and lesbians in Iraq have long been among the targets of both Shiite and 
Sunni death squads, but their murders have been overshadowed by the hundreds of 
overall weekly casualties during the height of sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007.

In 2005, the country’s most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali 
al-Sistani, issued a religious decree that said gay men and lesbians should be 
“punished, in fact, killed.” He added, “The people should be killed in the 
worst, most severe way of killing.” The language has since been removed from his 
Web site.

In recent months, groups of gay men have been taking greater chances, gathering 
in cafes and other public places in Baghdad, Basra, Najaf and other cities. On a 
recent night in Sadr City, several, their hair parted down the middle, talked as 
they quietly sipped tea at a garishly lighted cafe, oblivious to the stares of 
passers-by.

Basim, who would not give his last name out of fear for his safety, said he knew 
at least 20 young men from Sadr City’s large but hidden gay community who had 
disappeared during the past two months. He said he had learned later that each 
was found dead. After three of his friends were killed, he stayed inside his 
house for a week. Recently he has begun to go out again.

“I can’t stay at home all day,” he said. “I need to see my friends.”

Publicly, the Iraqi police have acknowledged only the deaths of six gay men in 
the neighborhood. But privately, police officials say the figure is far higher.

The chief of a Sadr City police station, who spoke on the condition of anonymity 
because he was not allowed to speak to reporters, said family members had 
probably committed most of the Sadr City killings. He played down the role of 
death squads that had once been associated with the Mahdi Army, the militia that 
controlled Sadr City until American and Iraqi forces dislodged them last spring.

“Our investigation has found that these incidents are being committed by 
relatives of the gays — not just because of the militias,” he said. “They are 
killing them because it is a shame on the family.”

He said families typically refused to cooperate with the investigation or even 
to claim the bodies. No arrests have been made in the killings.

At the same time, though, clerics associated with Moktada al-Sadr, an 
anti-American cleric with significant influence in Sadr City, have devoted a 
portion of Friday Prayer services to inveighing against homosexuality.

“The community should be purified from such delinquent behavior like stealing, 
lying and the effeminacy phenomenon among men,” Sheik Jassem al-Mutairi said 
during his sermon last Friday. Homosexuality, he said, was “far from manhood and 
honesty.”

Abu Muhaned al-Diraji, a Sadrist official in Sadr City, said the clerics were in 
no way encouraging people to kill gay men.

“All we are doing is giving advice to people to take care of their sons,” Mr. 
Diraji said. He acknowledged, however, that some of the killing had been 
committed by members of “special groups,” or death squads.

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

In addition to the killings, a Sadr City cafe frequented by gay men recently 
burned down under mysterious circumstances.

Some young gay men in Sadr City have become nihilistic about the ever present 
threat.

“I don’t care about the militias anymore, because they’re going to kill me 
anyway — today, tomorrow or the day after,” said a man named Sa’ad, who has been 
taking estrogen and has developed small breasts. “I hate my community and my 
relatives. If they had their way, the result would be one gunshot.”

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