In a major victory for LGBT asylum, Ugandan John Bosco defeats the Home Office

By Paul Canning

Following an eight year ordeal the Ugandan gay asylum seeker John 'Bosco' Nyombi has finally won asylum in the UK.

Despite a well-documented media and government anti-gay campaign in Uganda, which has included articles and photos of Bosco, he was deported in September last year. The UK Border Agency making it usual claim that LGBT can be safe in such countries if only they are 'discreet'. However the method of his deportation, which involved deception, violence and rule breaking, led to a historic decision by a British court following which the Home Office was forced to return him to the UK in March, where he was immediately put into a detention centre due to an 'error'.

As Bosco feared for his safety if he was returned, and also because the Home Office might use any publicity about his case against him, a court ruling meant that subsequent media reports referred to him Mister X.

On his return to Uganda, Bosco had been dumped by UK officials with no support (LGBT asylum seekers are regularly returned without their mobile phones, clothing other than what's on their backs or other basic items or given any opportunity to put their affairs in order) and was arrested. He managed to escape after paying a bribe.

As his face and situation was known through the local media's anti-gay campaigning he went into hiding. Twice during this time he was caught by Ugandan police and put into prison where he was violently beaten by both staff and inmates because he is gay.

Bosco won his return because a judge Sir George Newman, said the Home Office was guilty of "a grave and serious breach" of the law. He had an outstanding judicial review but despite this he was deceived into a meeting at a removal centre where he was instead bundled into a van and taken to Gatwick airport.

At the airport, when he resisted leaving the van, he was handcuffed, punched in his private parts to make him straighten his legs so they could be belted together. Crying, he was lifted on to the plane and flown out of the country. (Jacqui Smith has ordered an inquiry into widespread reports of violence during removals).

His mobile phone had been taken from him and he was given no chance to contact friends or lawyers, even though Home Office rules required that he should have 72 hours' notice of removal to give him a chance to make calls.

Judge Newman said he was satisfied that Bosco was telling the truth and that the actions of the Border Agency officers were "deliberately calculated to avoid any complication that could arise from Mr Bosco 's removal becoming publicly known."

Lawyers for the Home Secretary conceded in court that his removal was carried out illegally. But they argued that flying him back to the UK was pointless because the 38-year-old was bound to lose the fresh asylum claim he now wanted to make.

Rejecting their arguments, Judge Newman said: "I find it impossible to conclude, on the basis of the evidence as it now is [Bosco's situation on returning to Uganda], that there is not the real possibility that a judge might find that he is at risk if he is returned (to his homeland) by reason of his homosexuality."

As with the Ugandan lesbian Prozzy Kazooza, who was raped and tortured by the police and won asylum last year, this has now proved to be the case.

Bosco, who is a graduate and former bank manager, will now be able to return to the job he had held for seven years as a carer supporting vulnerable adults in the community in Southampton. His job has been held open by staff who had previously testified to his outstanding work.

In an email to the author Bosco said:

I was worried to death not knowing where my future will be other than death but now I can put a smile on my face.

Please I ask you kindly to pass on my sincere love and word of thank you everyone you know that supported me and prayed for me.

I will never say Britain is bad because I will include those good people helped me but Just Home office as a department they tortured me and can't understand why they had to do this to me when I obeyed all the rules.

• gayasylumuk condemns "inhumane, anti-gay" Labour government
  
  
• Human Rights Watch adds Home Office to 'Hall of Shame'

Toronto's 2008 Pride Festival has African theme

Fighting for the rights of queer people has always been a core message of Toronto's Pride Festival and after 29 years in the making, this year's theme is going back to its roots.

Pride executive director Tracey Sandilands says the 2009 "Can't Stop, Won't Stop" theme is emphasizing that as much as we have rights for queer people now, we can't assume that they will always be there.

"They can be taken away at anytime, the tide can be turned and for that reason we cannot stop and we will not stop fighting for equality for queer people all over the world," she says.

Sandilands says what's happening south of the border - California's ban against gay marriages - is not the only motivation for this year's theme, because there's many countries around the world where homosexuality is still criminalized.

The year's Grand Marshall is transgender lesbian activist Victor Juliet Mukasa from Uganda, a country where homosexuality is criminalized.

"This year our focus is specifically on Africa, and we look at what people in the continent go through just to be out."

"Human rights for queer people is a big part of our message. We have a focus on keeping an eye on what's happening around the world," Sandilands says.

As important as this year's theme is, the expanding theme of inclusivity is more evident than ever before.

Sandilands says there's an array of events for men, women, transsexuals and a specific family pride section to make the festival "family friendly."

PR and the selling of border controls

By Jon Burnett

Jon Burnett analyses a recent Sky TV series, UK Border Force, which portrayed the work of the UK Border Agency.

In 2008, the Home Office paid £400,000 to Steadfast Television,[1] an independent production company, to help fund a documentary for Sky TV on UK border control. The programme, according to Sky, was 'a revealing new documentary series which takes you behind the scenes at Heathrow Terminal 3, Calais, Dover and out and about with diligent enforcement teams - all cracking down on illegal immigrants.'[2]

In turn, Steadfast suggested that viewers would be shown the 'battle to stem the tide of illegal entries'.[3] In exchange for payment, exclusive access to the inner workings of the UK's mechanisms of border policing was granted. Camera crews were allowed to follow enforcement teams as they raided homes and workplaces, officers checking lorries in Calais, and immigration officers interviewing those who wished to enter the country. Staff at the UK Border Agency (UKBA)[4] explained their jobs in detail, discussing their work and its aims.

New Labour has channelled significant energy and resources into transforming the immigration and asylum system in recent years, with Minister of State for Borders and Immigration, Phil Woolas, stating, last year, that 2008 would see 'the biggest shake up of our border security and immigration system in its history'.[5] This documentary then provided an ideal vehicle through which to propagate particular images of the state at a time of restructuring. It provided a clear opportunity to portray the work of UKBA and the programme was overseen on behalf of the Home Office by the Central Office of Information (COI).[6]

It was inevitable, then, that suspicion of bias would emerge. And this was buttressed by growing controversy over the fact that the £400,000 spent on this programme was only one part of a wider £2 million that had been spent by the government on sponsoring other 'documentaries'. Ofcom was concerned enough to investigate whether broadcast codes had been breached. And in this context, on 15 September 2008, it was reported that Sky had given the £400,000 back, claiming that viewers needed to be assured that the programme was 'wholly independent'.[7] A gesture that might have carried more credibility were it not for the fact that the series had already begun.

UK Border Force was an eight-part series that aired between September and October 2008. Each one-hour episode followed the work of the UKBA and focused interchangeably upon the role of enforcement teams, juxtaposed immigration controls in France, the work of staff at Heathrow airport, and visa controls in India.[8] Throughout, the underlying narrative was of the routine manner in which the state refuses entry, targets, raids, stops and searches, detains, and deports those who are in breach of (or suspected of being in breach of) immigration and asylum laws. Viewers were shown close-up images of people breaking down in tears, threatening to end their own lives, fleeing from enforcement teams, and emerging bewildered and confused from their attempted modes of transport into the UK as they were caught and turned away. That their own narratives - those who are described in the programme at various points as 'illegals', 'clandestines', and 'human traffic jams' - remain unexplored is indicative of immigration and asylum policy. 'As far is the law is concerned', one immigration officer bluntly explains, 'there is no flexibility'.

Offshore border controls

British immigration officers are stationed at 135 different countries worldwide in order to 'vet those who want to travel'. Under the doctrine of managed migration their role is to regulate migration flows at the point of departure and, according to one immigration officer, 'We are trying to stop people in the first place who have no right to go'.

Research by the Refugee Council has drawn attention to the manner in which the New Labour government seeks to place more emphasis on pre-entry controls. And these take on a variety of guises, including the imposition of carrier sanctions of airlines that transport 'inadequately documented passengers', referring 'irregular' passengers to local authorities and gathering information on immigration trends. One of the impacts of such practices, according to the Refugee Council, is the refoulement of asylum seekers in need of protection. But in a legal challenge against the UK's use of 'pre-entrance controls' in Prague in 2001, the immigration service asserted that the government was 'not obliged under the 1951 Refugee Convention to consider applications outside the UK, nor to facilitate travel to the UK for the purpose of applying for asylum'.[9] At the same time EU externalised border controls force thousands of people into 'irregular migration' by, effectively, closing down routes for 'legal' travel. It is in this context that people are forced to use other forms of transport including boats and through the use of people smugglers.

None of this is explored in UK Border Force where cameras film immigration offices in Delhi that administer 8,000 applications to travel to the UK a week. Cameras film a range of applicants as they are questioned and cross-examined by officials. One man, for example, is refused a visa as he does not have as much money as he claims in his bank account. 'The fact that you've submitted false documents means I can't believe anything you say', he is told. This is reported without question. As is the fact that the police are called and he is banned from entering the UK for ten years. Like all applicants to the UK from Delhi since 2007, he has his fingerprints and photograph taken and stored in a database which, if the figure of 8,000 applications a week is correct, adds 416,000 people to its files a year. Similarly, a student who has paid £4,500 in order to study in the UK is refused entry as he does not have sufficient grasp of English and cannot answer certain questions. The whole process, in which he loses the fees he has paid, is administered with unswerving efficiency. The reasons why people wanted to leave India are never questioned. Rather, the programme suggests that 'The visa system acts as a filter and strict border controls stop people getting in the country illegally'.

Without any concept of how distinctions between 'legal' and 'illegal' migration are created, or indeed the interests these distinctions serve, UK Border Force is reduced to merely reproducing these distinctions as fact. Juxtaposed immigration controls in Calais are observed faithfully: reported as a line of defence valiantly preventing those whom the narrator describes as the 'clandestine community' from entering the UK. So we are told that of the 5,000 trucks a day that pass through Calais, three-quarters of them are checked for people. We are told that by doing so 12,000 people were prevented from entering the UK in 2007. But at no point does the programme seriously question the terrible conditions in the makeshift camps dotted around the port in which those who are desperate to enter exist. 'If you don't catch them you don't feel like your doing your job', one immigration officer explains. And considerable time is spent showing them 'doing their job'.

Carbon dioxide probes - specially designed devices that detect breathing - are portrayed as a vital tool in the detection of those who try and enter the UK. The immigration officers are meticulous and there is no doubt that they are effective. Close up images show people caught in the back of lorries and vans; behind boxes and beneath pallets and, at one point, 'buried amongst the tyres'. In the latter example, seven people are found hidden in a vehicle just before it is about to board a ferry to the UK. 'Look guys. So close', one of the immigration officers exclaims.

The exact number of migrants who have suffocated whilst in transit, trying to enter the UK, is unknown. Aside from incidents where there are mass casualties - such as the suffocation of fifty-eight Chinese people in a van entering Dover in 2000 - there is little interest from the mainstream media. But a Vietnamese family who are filmed with plastic bags tied over their heads, in a desperate attempt to avoid the carbon dioxide probes, may well have come dangerously close to adding to this number. 'I personally don't have an opinion whilst at work as to the reasons they are coming', one immigration officer remarks. It is a view that UK Border Force follows fastidiously.

Terminal Three - Heathrow airport

Heathrow airport was opened in 1946 and is recognised as the busiest airport in the world. Every year 66.9 million people pass through its jurisdiction, and it plays an intrinsic role in enforcing UK immigration laws and policies. It is no coincidence that the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), set up in 1967 as a welfare service assisting those entering the UK who were made the target of discriminatory immigration laws, initially based itself there.

UK Border Force films immigration officers at Heathrow airport as they process applications to the UK, and painstakingly records their work cross-examining, questioning, and ensuring the removal of those who they suspect of breaking immigration laws. 'Many passengers are from the worlds poorest countries', the programme asserts, and one man who is stopped, held for a period and questioned recognises that poverty, in itself, appears to be a cause for suspicion. 'This is just because I am poor', he claims of his treatment. Not once does the programme even begin to examine the legacies of colonialism and imperialism through which countries have maintained their dominance through extrapolating wealth from other countries.

The United Nations has suggested that the EU needs at least 20 million non-EU migrants by 2020 in order to sustain its economy. Such predictions, in part, have underpinned the efforts of member states in creating and streamlining various types of routes and entitlements (or indeed lack of) for migrants who take up employment. At the same time, significant resources are channelled into ensuring that those who are not deemed desirable by governmental targets and dictates are denied entry and removed. According to the former Home Secretary Charles Clarke, '[t]he UK needs a world class migration system to attract the brightest and the best from across the world'.[10] It can be presumed that one woman from Cape Town, who is stopped and tells the officers that she wants to study on a beauty training course, is not seen to fit into these requirements. She has no money, but has a number of CVs and, as such, the Heathrow staff conclude that she is trying to enter the UK in order to work. Eventually, the woman begins to cry, offering that she has to support her whole family and that this is 'her only break'. In a bizarre scene one of the immigration officers appears to express a level of sympathy for the woman's plight; explaining that they have been to Cape Town and suggesting 'it's pretty horrible'. Regardless, the woman is made to return there. 'She falls well short of the requirements for entry', viewers are told. Whilst an immigration officer acknowledges that they are 'robbing her of her chance to help her family'.

It is presumably women like this that former Prime Minister Tony Blair referred to, in 2004, when he stated, 'We will neither be Fortress Britain, nor will we be an open house. Where necessary we will tighten the immigration system. Where there are abuses we will deal with them, so that public support for the controlled migration that benefits Britain will be maintained.'[11]

And UK Border Force offers a conduit through which such images of border controls can be displayed - without question.

In another example a Pakistani man who claims to be a student is suspected of lying about his course and questioned about what tube route he uses to get to college. He is unable to answer. When contacted, the college that he says he has been studying at confirms that he has not attended since 2007. 'He's played the game', an immigration officer working on the case claims. He is told that he will be removed to Pakistan, but that he has a right of appeal which extends to twenty-eight days if he leaves, or five days if he chooses to remain. If he takes the latter option, it is explained to him that he will be placed in detention and appealing in this way 'is a waste of taxpayers' money'. This, it appears, is the main priority and such is the manner in which a decision on one individual's future is made. When an American citizen, born in Jamaica tells one immigration officer at Heathrow that 'my life is right here in your hands', the answer is instant, and unequivocal. 'That's right', he replies.

Enforcement teams

In all of the ways identified above, UK Border Force grants viewers up close access to the work of immigration officers as they implement policies designed, in part, to prevent entry into the UK. But the footage does not stop there. Considerable time is spent filming the work of immigration officers as they raid homes and workplaces in a hunt for those whose presence is deemed 'irregular'. 'Preventing people who come here illegally is one thing', the programme narrates. 'Tracking down those who have slipped through the net is another. That's where the enforcement team comes in.'

The resources that have been put into tracking down irregular migrants are considerable. Manpower has increased substantially, and information sharing between a variety of agencies is unprecedented. Some (although, as we shall see below not all) of the work of the enforcement teams is based, ostensibly, on intelligence and it is explained that one particular centre in Manchester receives 1,000 'tip-offs' a week.[12] Many of these relate to people working without permission and the officers raid workplaces to catch workers in their jobs. Officers enter a restaurant on the basis of such 'intelligence' in one example and, after breaking some of the furniture (albeit accidentally) they learn that one of the people they are looking for does not actually work in the business. The others have permission to work. Neither the stigmatising effect on the business (there are customers eating as the raid takes place), the fear generated by such events, nor the source of the information are questioned or explored in any way. Rather, the raid is treated as an entertaining slip-up.

In its refusal to ask or even acknowledge some of the broader questions relating to the politics of immigration raids, UK Border Force purges any form of context apart from that which the UK Border Agency seeks to portray. That the raid above is based on fundamentally flawed intelligence is irrelevant to the programme because it is unimportant to the officers who carry it out. They simply move on to another target. In Liverpool, enforcement teams raid another restaurant and, this time, catch people. 'It all ends in tears', one officer explains as one of the workers breaks down on camera. 'It ends in tears for businesses who go to the wall because these people undercut them.'

It is this notion of undercutting 'good' business that plays such an intrinsic role in the government's concerted drive to combat undocumented working through criminalisation. It is a simplistic vision in which businesses can be split into 'good' and 'bad'; with the latter employing workers illegally. In practice, this division appears to be underpinned by ethnicity, with the UKBA targeting ethnic minority owned businesses 'whose visibility on the High Street makes them easy targets for a policy driven by numbers' in an ongoing series of raids and operations.[13] The Home Office displays this information proudly, and 'names and shames' businesses that are caught employing people in contravention of immigration legislation. The list of the names of employers and their businesses who have received civil penalties are updated regularly on the Home Office website and, as the Home Office makes clear, these names are also circulated to 'local media organisations, such as local newspapers and broadcast news media'.[14]

What these naming and shaming lists also reveal, however, is that almost no companies who sub-contract labour are brought to public attention. Between May 2008 and January 2009, these lists publicised over 230 businesses, many of which were found to be employing multiple workers.[15] Not once though do they mention companies such as major supermarkets that routinely utilise products made by exploited labour. As stated above, it is the easiest targets that are beleaguered. This is reflected in UK Border Force as immigration officers are frequently filmed entering small businesses. 'Lets rock and roll' asserts one officer before raiding an Asian butchers shop in London. In Essex, people washing cars are caught and officers go to their shared house to check their identity documents. Upon finding an overdue library book an officer 'jokes' that 'if we can't nick him for immigration offences we'll arrest him for his library fine'. Raids are conducted with the use of fingerprint scanners so that an individual's immigration status can be verified immediately on a centralised database. Results come back in minutes.

Where UKBA does raid larger businesses, such as a chicken factory in the Midlands, officers uncover torrid conditions. Sixty workers are found and they have their mobile phones taken from them to ensure that 'protesters can't cause a nuisance'. Nineteen people are arrested. At a spring onion farm in Worcestershire elderly workers employed by an agency are found in, as one immigration officer states, 'conditions you wouldn't keep an animal in'. Two of the people tell how they sold their house and land to get to the UK. Undocumented working is frequently exploitative, and often involves working in conditions where injuries are high and mechanisms of redress are practically non-existent.[16] Yet, as the commentary for UK Border Force accurately explains, 'Although employment regulations are being broken, the enforcement teams job is to identify and remove "illegals''.' Indeed, at the same time as resources and manpower targeted at arresting 'immigration offenders' there has been a withdrawal of agencies involved in the investigation and prosecution of breaches of health and safety law.[17] Undocumented workers are investigated, portrayed, and 'processed' (in the language of UK Border Force) quite simply as offenders; with little reference to the reasons why they are working in such conditions, or their role in an increasingly 'flexibilised' labour force that the government so readily demands.

Research by the Institute of Race Relations has revealed an increase in deaths caused by immigration raids in 2008.[18] And history has shown that such activities have frequently led to injuries and harm. Yet in a remarkable feat of self-censorship these concerns are omitted completely by UK Border Force. This is despite the use of footage of enforcement teams involved in openly discriminatory 'street operations'. These operations have been ongoing since 2006, and the programme tells us that in London an average of three are carried out a week. They are based, quite unequivocally, on coercion. Enforcement teams travel to busy locations (such as train stations) and stand visibly so as to gauge, in the words of one officer, 'how people react to our presence'. According to UK Border Force the operations are designed to focus on 'anyone who looks suspicious', and any person who reacts nervously to the presence of Enforcement Teams; or, judging by the footage, anyone who is not White, may be stopped and made to verify their immigration status. 'These type of operations, we don't come away with an empty van', remarks one immigration officer. One man is chased by the Enforcement Teams, held down to the floor in full public view, and told he is 'under arrest under suspicion of entering the country illegally, or committing an immigration offence'. When a Black member of public confronts the officers he is told by one of them to 'get your hands out of my face'. In turn, he is put in handcuffs himself and released later on. At Stratford station, two arrests are made in the first hour of an operation and seven throughout the day. One of the arrests is of a Nigerian man who overstayed his visa working at a charity. 'Viewers are told that '[t]he life he made for himself in this country will soon be over'.

State propaganda?

There can be little doubt that UK Border Force acted at the very least as a wholly favorable public relations exercise for the UK Border Agency. This is a remarkable achievement, given that the footage displayed (at different times) immigration officers shattering people's dreams, shouting in peoples faces and smashing through peoples doors. What is equally remarkable, however, is the fact that the media can act so readily as little short of government propaganda. It would be naive to suggest that this was solely as a result of financial backing (the money, after all, was actually returned); or indeed because of editorial control by the Central Office of Information. Rather, UK Border Force portrayed an alliance of shared political and media visions of the work of the state.[19] The programme showed UKBA as UKBA (and no doubt Sky) wanted it to be shown. In turn, it generated high viewing figures of nearly a quarter of a million in its first episode alone.

Some of the immigration officers shown on the programme evidently enjoyed their work. An immigration officer interviewed by The Metro last year explained quite simply that she 'liked the idea of going out and using our power of arrest' and that 'raids are fun'.[20] Others openly displayed sympathy for those whom they removed from the country, but removed them anyway. The point is that whether administered enthusiastically or sympathetically the end result, often, was the same. UK Border Force shows, but never questions that through the edicts of immigration and asylum law and policy global inequalities are maintained at a cost of human misery. Instead, ultimately, such workings of the state are on television as a macabre form of human entertainment.

At the time of writing, UK Border Force is currently re-running on Sky (Freeview), and a second series is in production.

Footnotes: [1] Steadfast Television was set up as part of Apace Media PLC in 2005 and its programmes include CCTV: you are being watched, Sky Cops, Cars Cops and Criminals, and Brit Cops: Frontline Crime. [2] Sky, 'UK Border Force: The Front Line', Sky TV, (Downloaded 27 April, 2009), http://sky1.sky.com/uk-border-force-exciting-new-series-takes-you-behind-the-scenes [3] Steadfast International, Border Force, (London, Steadfast International, 2008). [4] UKBA was established in April 2008, bringing together the work of the Border and Immigration Agency, and parts of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. [5] Liam Byrne, 'The case for a new migration system', Speech to the Local Government Association, (6 February, 2008), http://press.homeoffice.gov.uk/Speeches/sp-lb-lga-feb-08 [6] Darren Davidson, 'Sky hands back Home Office payment for AFP series', Brand Republic, (15 September, 2008), http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/845936/Sky-hands-back-Home-Office-payment-AFP-series/ [7] Ibid. [8] UKBA Central Stakeholder Team, Update on key migration &border issues of interest to stakeholders, (London, Home Office, 2008). [9] Sile Reynolds and Helen Muggeridge, Remote Controls: How UK border controls are endangering the lives of refugees, (London, Refugee Council, 2008), p. 38. [10] Charles Clarke, 'Foreword', in Home Office, A Points Based System: Making Migration Work for Britain, (London, Home Office, 2006). [11] Cited in Home Office, Selective Admission: Making Migration Work for Britain, (London, Home Office, 2005), para. 4.8. [12] The Home Office encourages individuals to contact them if they suspect that a person's presence in the UK breaks immigration law, or if they suspect that a business is employing people who do not have permission to work. [13] Frances Webber, 'Crusade against the undocumented' IRR News, (5 February, 2009) http://www.irr.org.uk/2009/february/ha000011.html; See also Migrants Rights News, 'Special Bulletin', Migrants Rights News, June, London: Migrants Rights News, 2008). [14] UK Border Agency, Publication of non-compliant employer details, (London: Home Office, 2008). [15] See http://ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/documents/employersandsponsors/listemployerspenalties/ [16] Jon Burnett and David Whyte, The wages of fear: risk, safety and undocumented work, (Leeds and Liverpool, PAFRAS and the University of Liverpool, 2009, Forthcoming). [17] Steve Tombs and David Whyte, The Crisis in Enforcement: the decriminilsation of death and injury at work, (London, Crime and Society Foundation, 2008). [18] Cited in Frances Webber, 'Crusade against the undocumented' IRR News, (5 February, 2009) http://www.irr.org.uk/2009/february/ha000011.html [19] Sky TV broadcast the programme and has frequently pressurised governments to pursue the political objectives of its founder, Rupert Murdoch. See for example Nick Davies, Flat Earth News, (London, Vintage Books, 2009), pp. 20-1. [20] Cited in A Williams, (2008) 'My life on the border', Metro, (23 September, 2008), p. 17.

The Institute of Race Relations is precluded from expressing a corporate view: any opinions expressed are therefore those of the authors.

Source

Iraq's Sadr wants 'depraved' homosexuality eradicated

Image via Wikipedia

BAGHDAD - Radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr has ordered the "depravity" of homosexuality be eradicated but warned against the anti-gay violence that has recently erupted, a spokesman said on Friday.

"The purpose of the meetings is to fight the depravity and to urge the community to reject this phenomenon," said Sheikh Wadea al-Atabi, referring to a Thursday seminar attended by clerics, tribal leaders and police.

"The only remedy to stop it is through preaching and guidance. There is no other way to put an end to it," he said, stressing that the movement could not resort to violence after a series of killings of gay men in Baghdad.

"Al-Sadr rejects this type of violence ... and anyone who commits violence (against gays) will not be considered as being one of us," Atabi said.

In the sprawling Baghdad Shiite district of Sadr City, police last month recovered the bullet-riddled bodies of three men said to have been homosexuals.

Another three men were found dead on the outskirts of Sadr City, with police saying an additional four men were found tortured but alive.

Also in April, a group calling itself "Brigades of the Righteous" posted signs around Sadr City listing alleged homosexuals and threatening to kill them.

The recent persecution prompted rights group Amnesty International to write a letter to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki last month urging government protection of homosexuals.

It said that as many as 25 boys and men had been killed in Baghdad alone because they were either gay or believed to be amid concerns that religious leaders may be inciting violence against Iraq's gay community.

Homosexuality is forbidden in Islam, frowned upon in Arab society and illegal in many Middle Eastern countries. Iraq has no law against homosexuality but prominent religious authorities have harshly condemned it.

At Thursday's seminar, which was held in Sadr Cirty, Al-Sheikh Dawud al-Enezi, a Sadr movement leader, said "we must correct the morals of the nation. Homosexuality "is a disaster that has come to the community."

Abu Hussein, a tribal leader in Sadr City, said: "Everybody has to work to preserve the morals of young people from the corrupt phenomena of the West."

Source

Being Gay in South Africa, Lesbians Fear 'Corrective' Rape

Source: ABC

By Dana Hughes

South Africa is considered the most progressive country in Sub-Saharan Africa. The country boasts a developed economy, and has a post-apartheid constitution that stresses equal rights for everyone.

It's one of the few countries in the world with a specific provision in its constitution prohibiting discrimination against gays and lesbians.

It's also the only country in Sub-Saharan Africa where there are openly gay bars.

But behind the gay-friendly exterior of South Africa, lies the reality: a society that remains, for the most part, virulently homophobic.

Like much of the rest of the continent, attitudes towards homosexuality range from being viewed as unnatural or "un-African" to people calling it "a condition" that comes from and is encouraged by the West. Nowhere is this more evident than in the practice of "corrective" rape: men raping women who have come out as lesbians in an effort to "turn them straight." Many of these woman end up being murdered.

"Corrective rape is a horrific confluence of two things in South Africa: violence against women and a rising tide of homophobia and hatred against homosexuals," Laura Turquet, a women's rights advocate, told ABC News.

Turquet researched and authored a recent report for ActionAid, an international anti-poverty organization, focusing primarily on women's rights. The report found that in the last 10 years at least 31 women had been killed in sexual-orientation hate crimes.

But human rights groups say that number is deceptive. Even though the South African constitution specifically prohibits discrimination against homosexuals, crimes against gays and lesbians are not categorized as hate crimes under the legal system, so violence against lesbians is often not recorded.

"Some of the women we spoke to said that when they went to the police to report being abused sexually, they told us that the police were more interested in asking the women why they were lesbians than investigating the assault," Turquet said.

To date, of the 31 reported cases of corrective rape and subsequent murders, only one person has been convicted. One man pleaded guilty to the rape and murder of Eudy Simelane, a one-time national soccer player and outspoken gay right's advocate. She was murdered in 2007, found gang raped with 25 stab wounds throughout her body. Four other men have been charged.

The trial for three of the men, who have pleaded not guilty is under way. But despite friends' testimony that Simelane had endured constant threats for being an out lesbian, the judge in her killer's case refused to acknowledge that it was a motivating factor, reportedly saying during sentencing that her sexual orientation had "no significance" in her murder.

Police No Help to Victims of 'Corrective Rape'

Many victims of corrective rape said they often don't even bother going to the police. Phumla, a resident of the Soweto township outside of Johannesburg said she was raped by men she trusted after accepting a ride home from soccer practice. Instead of taking her home, they took her to a house where another man awaited and raped her. She said they repeatedly told her they were "teaching her a lesson" throughout the attack.

"When it happened to me, 'corrective' rape felt like the worst kind of violence that someone could have inflicted on my person," said Phumla, "As lesbians, we know we are in danger, but we still let those guys drive us home. So I didn't report it to the police because I felt like we couldn't."

Rape, in general, is a pervasive problem in South Africa. There were more than 50,000 reported rapes last year, but women's rights groups estimate only one in nine in rapes are reported. Some statistics run as high as 500,000 and estimate that a woman in South Africa is raped every 26 seconds.

Yet most rapists continue to go free. A study conducted by Tshwaranang, a legal advocacy center focused on ending violence against women in South Africa, showed that in the Johannesburg area, for every 25 men who are tried for rape, 24 go free.

Even the country's new president Jacob Zuma has faced allegations of rape. Three years ago, Zuma was acquitted of raping a family friend and anti-AIDS activist. He was criticized by women's rights organizations for comments made during his testimony. He told the judge that his accuser wore a mini-skirt to his house and revealed her thigh, indicating that she wanted to have sex with him. He said that, according to the Zulu culture, the tribe from which he belongs, his accuser was aroused and he was obligated to have sex with her. "In the Zulu culture, you cannot just leave a woman if she is ready," he testified.

Despite the outrage from South African human right's groups, his insistence that he was simply behaving as an African man -- even testifying in his native Zulu, just increased his popularity with the general population.

Turquet says, in spite of South Africa's progressive constitution and legislation regarding women and homosexual rights, the legal system still reflects cultural values and "is lagging behind."

Women's Bodies Have Become War Zones

As president, Zuma has selected more women than the previous administration for Cabinet positions and has pledged his commitment to protecting the rights of women, but there are signs that attitudes toward rape and homosexuality throughout the population remain the same.

Last year the South Africa Human Rights Commission issued a report on primary and secondary school violence. One of the findings pointed to "a growing phenomenon" of the acceptance of corrective rape from the next generation of South African men.

Phumi Metwa, director of the Gay and Lesbian Equality Project, says she thinks the violence is actually getting worse. Her organization has tried to educate women and men on gender and sexual orientation sensitivity. But she says as a lesbian, she often feels threatened herself, like a "time bomb" could go off at anytime, making her a victim. "Women's bodies have become war zones," said Metwa. "We are trying to say that if women work together, we can change attitudes, but for now, we live in fear every day."

Interview with Abdellah Taia

The Moroccan writer Abdellah Taia talks about his book, Salvation Army.

Interviewed by Brian Whitaker in Paris, January 2009.

Your book, L’Armée du Salut (“Salvation Army”), is shortly going to be published in English in the United States. How did that come about?

I think it started in June 2007. Hédi El-Kholti, from the American publisher Semiotext(e), was in Morocco when Tel Quel (it’s like Time or Newsweek) put me on the cover of their magazine with the title: “Homosexuel envers et contre tous”. When he went back to America he contacted my French publisher, Le Seuil, and bought the rights to translate the book into English.

Salvation Army received the 2009 French Voices prize in America. In order to attract more attention for the book we asked the American writer Edmund White to write a preface. He said yes. And I am very happy for that because I like him and admire his work.

L’Armée du Salut is officially my first novel. In France one is considered to be a writer only when one publishes a novel. To write short stories or a book of short texts is like a hobby – it’s not really serious.

When Le Seuil became my publisher – before that I was published by Séguier – they told me to write a novel. So I said OK and I chose three moments from my life and I wrote a novel, not in a classical way, because I don’t think my books are classical in the French sense, or even in an Anglo-Saxon style – until now everything I have written and published is fragments of my life …

But there is a story there too …

Of course. There’s a link between the three fragments, which is transformation: my own transformation. The transformation of my body, but also of me as a person, discovering myself and becoming aware of who I am and the sexual contradictions I have inside me. And, at the same time, to talk about me – to speak, to say something coming from inside myself.

The first part of the novel is about my early life, with my family in the small house – three rooms - where I lived in Morocco in the town of Salé. One room for my six sisters, my mother, my little brother and me. The other room was for my big brother and the last one for my father. What I try to show is what it’s like being in the middle of this group and being influenced by the bodies of these people that I was so close to. I was attracted to some of them but of course there were barriers which I couldn’t cross.

I am still aware of those barriers but every day I try exploring/exploding them. The barriers are of course mostly sexual. The first part of the novel is about the origin, not only of my sexuality, but the sexuality of my entire family. The way my parents used to have sex influenced my whole family because my mother used to sleep with us in the children’s room and, once a week, went to have sex with my father or my father used to join us in our room and tried to seduce her. So I witnessed all these sexual strategies at work and, as children, we knew everything. They knew we knew and they behaved as if we didn’t know. So there was a kind of primal atmosphere inside the house. It was as if tradition, religion, Islam – all these things so important in the Arab world – didn't exist.

We were in the kingdom of bodies. It was only bodies because we were so close that there was no other space. No privacy. I didn't think of it at the time, but that is how it was. You don't think you need some room for yourself. I never thought of that either at the time. A body is something alive which reveals many signals and one relates to those. And it's very sexual. It's not sexual in the sense of “having sex” but the whole atmosphere, the vibes … Next to my brothers and sisters I saw and experienced many things, exciting and frightening things.

And you developed these feelings towards your big brother.

This is the second part of the book. My older brother was the king of the family, not my father. My father was a fallen king. My big brother was the king, a silent king, because he hardly spoke. He was the first child and after him there were six girls and then I was born. I was the other boy my parents were waiting for. But I definitely was not the sort of boy they were hoping for.

You say this kind of thing was taboo but in the book I don't find any sense of guilt about your feelings.

No. Even today I feel no guilt. I had some periods of guilt but deep down there was always this feeling of "c'est naturel" – yes, I was aware that these feelings were forbidden but at the same time I just did nothing to avoid them.

My brother, Abdelkébir, was always bigger than me. I have no image of him as a child or adolescent. He had a moustache and a room filled with books. Beautiful books and recordings of music – David Bowie, Oum Kalthoum and Woodstock. He loved Woodstock. Later he got a TV and a video player, he bought us the fridge and gave us money to make the house bigger …

What was his job?

He was a good student and after that he became haut fonctionnaire – an important government official. He became mayor of a small town and later he worked with the minister of information. He became more important year after year.

But at first he was still poor like us, he was for us. We were all proud of him. I was fascinated by him. His room was big but there was only a small bed and he used to put me with him in bed – and sometimes my little brother as well. Not in a sexual way at all – just this closeness. Being so close to the body of your big brother, it makes you feel something – well, at least it did for me. It made me proud to be his little brother. So he quickly became a sort of role model for me. I wanted to be like him, I wanted to read like him, to read his books, to see the movies he loved. He also used to give me his clothes, his shirts, his underwear, when they were old. I wore them happily even though they were too big for me.

Besides the intellectual thing, I wanted to be with him, in his presence – the smell of him, the way he was, the way he walked, and how he ate. He used to eat more meat than the rest of family. We were all OK with that. I think I wasn’t the only one in the family to be sort of in love with him. Of course I knew he was my brother but what could I do? Maybe the fact that he was my brother makes it more ... more exciting. The idea of transgression – I think I learned that from being with him: you are attracted to someone you can't have and at the same time you don't care about other people’s reactions or religion or traditions. I understood somehow that all those rules were invented by humans, but not by me. I'm not obliged to respect them – traditions, religion…

Your feelings towards your brother started with admiration but became over time more sexual, I think ...

I don't know. This started so early on that it's confused in my mind. The admiration came with the movies because he was the one who took me to see films and he was the one who had movie magazines. This element is very important. He showed me the direction to follow: cinema.

But at some point a sexual element came into the attraction as well?

Yes. For instance, I wrote in the book that twice a week I used to help him to wash his hair. Just a little boy putting water on his big brother’s head and forgetting that that man is his brother. I wanted to do so many things with him, to touch his neck, to play with his hair, to dry him, to kiss the clean skin of his hands . . .

Has he read L’Armée du Salut?

Yes, I think so. In my second book, Le Rouge du Tarbouche, there is a story about “l'unique miroir” – we had only one small mirror in the house, so everyone used it. Me, my father to shave, my big brother… And when I became adolescent I used to take this mirror into my brother’s room and look at myself and masturbate surrounded by his things and thinking of him. I even imagined I was him

So he read Le Rouge du Tarbouche and he told my mother to tell me to stop writing this ... this nonsense. He's not the kind of person you can have a real conversation with.

So, when I think of it, of course he is not OK with what I write in my books. It’s not a problem for me. I understood several years ago that I should not ask permission from anyone about my writing or my projects or my plans, because in Morocco no one would understand … They all know better than you – your life, what you should do…

Even now, here in Paris, I don't tell anyone what I do. I don't ask anyone's advice, because even among groups of friends here in Paris it's always the same question of power and control.

The second transformation in the book comes when your big brother takes you and your little brother on a trip to Tangiers. But your feelings towards him are suddenly jolted when you discover the real purpose of the trip: that he’s planning to get married.

It was my first and only holiday in Morocco. We were all staying in the same cheap hotel room so I was able to see what he was like 24 hours a day, for an entire week. The beginning of this vacation was like a dream. But when it became clear that he was attracted to this girl and that he was going to abandon us to see her, I was overcome by violent jealousy and even became cruel! Of course, I'm aware of the craziness of the situation but what could I do? I still remember clearly how he came and told us about her and his plans to marry her ... I still remember how angry I was with him, I even invented a plan to ruin his project.

So this second part of the novel is also about paradise (to have my big brother only for me) and hell, which is represented by the moment when you lose someone … This vacation in Tangiers was the end of an era, a revolution. I lost my big brother and my role model whom I was in love with. This loss was overwhelming … He had the books, he had David Bowie. Years after that I understood who David Bowie was and I said “Wow!” If my brother used to like David Bowie – especially at that time in the seventies – it meant that somehow he was open-minded. Of course, I adore David Bowie.

And the third big moment is when you travel to Switzerland to continue your studies and the man who you think is your friend, who has promised to meet you at the airport and provide somewhere to stay, is not there to meet you and is not answering his phone.

This is the last transformation, when I leave this Moroccan world at the age of 25 for western civilisation in Geneva, and experience this first deception, this disappointment. I had dreamed for years and years about western civilisation – and from the very beginning there was betrayal. I discovered that the books and films were only part of the reality of this European dream which wasn’t at all welcoming at first.

From the moment of my arrival in Geneva, it was as if I had to start all over again – another transformation was necessary. I had left the Moroccan world where the group mentality was dominating and crushing me to come to Geneva where suddenly I felt completely alone and sensed that life would be like this from now on.

It's a very big contrast from the collective society of Morocco – all these people packed into small houses – and your isolation. It's a very bleak scene.

Yes, because the friend of this man I met in Morocco who was supposed to meet me at the airport was not there and suddenly I found myself on the streets. I had no money and I had to find some place to stay. So after wandering around for awhile, I talked to a taxi driver who told me there was a Salvation Army refuge not far from the train station. This last part of the book is about the passage from dream to reality. Even though I didn’t understand it at the time, this betrayal was a new beginning.

How do you think this book fits in with other – shall we say – gay literature? In the way it presents homosexuality, for example?

It's a melancholic book, it doesn't give an optimistic or positive view of homosexuality. But it was never my idea to give a positive view. I never think of it in terms of positive or negative. In Morocco, when I discovered that I was homosexual, men always expected me to behave like an effeminate boy, doing the female role. So I stopped seeing them immediately. I was 13 at the time and living the tumultuous feelings of adolescence. I stopped seeing those people and entered another period of my life. All was completely silent and filled only with studying and movies because as a homosexual I knew that Moroccan society would only destroy me.

I knew for sure that I was homosexual and would never be able to do what they wanted me to do – to marry a woman for instance. So my only choice was to avoid those boys who knew about me and with whom I had played sexual games as a child. Even though I still lived at home, I couldn’t speak to anyone about myself and for years and years I had no sex, from the ages of 13 to 22. I had to make all my own decisions.

Those years of silence were very difficult but at the same time it was the beginning of my big dream: to become a film-maker. The homosexual in me, and this desire to be creative or to write something – they both go together. But neither were accepted.

So in a way it was not positive at all …I have to confess though, that this isolation gave me the possibility of developing a certain way of viewing society – seeing how it works, what to say, what not to say, and allowed me to analyse things. I also remember a lot of suffering and crying all the time, but somehow I was not traumatised by the experience. Maybe it's my nature and psychology ... I can easily analyse how Moroccan society functions, how it deals with sexuality, but I still have … I don't know, I don't reject this Moroccan society.

I'm thinking also about the portrayals of homosexuality in Switzerland, which seems to me realistic without trying to be positive or negative. The scene in the public toilet for example …

… with the orange ...

It’s curious because it's fairly positive in some ways ...

I think this passage also comes from the French writer Jean Genet (I adore him) because he talks a lot about casual sex in his books, and somehow Genet influenced me on that. I am very fascinated by public toilets – they always seem to be full of desire...

It's not a shocking scene in the way it’s described.

I hope not.

No it's not, which in a way is quite surprising, particularly coming from an Arab writer.

I am an Arab but for many things I'm not like an Arab at all. I'm not only coming from Islam, not only from Arabic society, there is this homme primaire – a primal man – inside of me who is still alive.

The incident in the toilet shows this part of myself. It also shows my own idea of homosexuality, this possibility of meeting strangers and the possibility of poetry. For most people a public toilet is just dirty, but still ... there is this possibility of poetry between two people who don't know each other at all, just for a moment of pleasure. But it's not only about pleasure or sex, it's always more than that – at least for me.

When people think about homosexuals they tend to see only two people of the same sex. But, for me, to be homosexual is also the way you relate to someone whose body is like yours. You belong to the same sex and there are no rules – you invent rules. It's because homosexuality is forbidden, not seen in a positive way by many people. It doesn't mean these rules will always be the same when you meet someone. This is what I like, this inversion: condemnation and prison become freedom. For me there is no specific sexual role, top or bottom – there is invention.

A lot of people do see it in terms of male/female roles.

Yes, but it's not for me. Maybe that's why I’m always disappointed! The scene in the public toilet is about that inversion, especially when the man gave me an orange. The orange represents Morocco. That's what I mean about inversion. Even in dirty places something beautiful and poetic can happen.

As far as I’m aware, you’re the only Moroccan to have come out publicly and talked about your homosexuality in the media. How did that happen?

My second book, Le Rouge du Tarbouche, became successful in Morocco in 2005 and I was invited to appear on TV etc, etc. One of the journalists from Tel Quel had read the book thoroughly and saw that one of the themes was homosexuality. She saw that I was talking freely about homosexuality.

Subsequently she interviewed me in the Café de France in Casablanca. She asked me: “Why did you choose this cafe for the interview?” I told her that four or five months previously I had been here with a friend of mine – a French photographer – and we had been working on an article for Paris Match. A boy came in and introduced himself to my friend and they instantly fell in love. I had witnessed something incredibly beautiful. His name was Said, he was from Tangiers and he was spending the weekend in Casablanca. After I finished the anecdote, she asked: "So you don't mind if we talk only about homosexuality in the paper?"

Well, of course I was a little bit afraid, afraid for two or three seconds, because I knew what I was about to do. But I told myself I had already talked about this in my books. I didn’t want to keep up the hypocrisy and schizophrenia like other Moroccans and Arabs. I had to go along with my own truth.

So I said yes and we talked about homosexuality. We analysed how Moroccan society tries to make us shameful about ourselves in general by forcing people into submission all the time. She wrote an article about that, and it was published while I was in Morocco. I was doing a promotional tour for the book, Le Rouge du Tarbouche, at the time. I was in Tangiers. But I was still afraid when I read the article. I was staying in a hotel and I was really scared. I told myself: “This is Morocco, there are secret police and they are one of the best in the world, they say, after the Mossad in Israel and if they want to get to me it's easy.” In the middle of the night I put chairs and a table against the door of my hotel room, just in case…

I don’t think that would have stopped them.

Of course not, but it's more about the fear inside.

After the article was published, another magazine asked me for an interview in Arabic, and that's where the problems started with my family. My sister discovered the magazine on her desk at work. Somebody had put it there anonymously – which is how Moroccan society functions. Even if you want to be yourself all the time there is always someone to stop you. So they put the magazine – open, with my interview, on her desk where she works in administration. Of course, she was upset. She told my mother and my mother called me. It was in May 2006 and she said: "What did you say? We are not like this ... we are good people."

I didn't have an answer except to say that it's not only about me, it's also about Moroccan society. This was the only defence I could find.

What was more interesting in her reaction was that she never condemned me on the phone. She never said "You're not my son any more." No.

My sister had read the whole interview for her because my mother is illiterate, and one of the questions was: "What do you think of gay marriage?" I answered that I don't like marriage at all, hetero or gay, and I explained why, that the whole image I have of marriage in Morocco is disastrous. For me marriage just destroys individuals – you have one family, then when you marry, you have two families controlling you. I said I would never get married. Everyone is free to do what they want. But personally, I am against marriage.

My mother was more shocked by this than the gay thing, I think because homosexuality doesn't represent very much in her mind, but not to be married does represent something. Knowing that I'm not going to be married – it was unbelievable for her, it was inconceivable.

So, in the end, and this is really what I like about some people in Morocco, before she hung up she said she was praying for me, she said: “I only want a good life for you.” After that call, I think I cried for two weeks because it was the point of no return. I was completely naked.

How do you feel about that?

In the beginning I felt guilt, maybe for two or three days, because the consequences of my lifestyle are not only for me but for my family. But after a few days I realised that no one called me to ask me how I was, how I had managed to live all these years with the fact that I am homosexual ... No one cared. I realised that, again, it was about them, about their names and reputations, not about me. It was about what my sister’s colleagues would say, what the neighbours would say.

And, I remembered Douglas Sirk’s masterpiece film, All Heaven Allows, and how he shows that society tries to destroy the love between the characters played by Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson. So, during those two weeks of feeling completely naked, I bought the DVD of this film and watched it several times, maybe ten times. And it helped me a lot to become strong again. To be free without tears. Again: cinema saved me as it did when I was a child and had no place to go and cry, except the cheap movie theatres in my poor town, Salé.

Of course, I understand that my family in Morocco can't speak about homosexuality but I thought, still, I am their son and they know that I'm not someone bad. Until now, no one [in my family] has spoken about it. And I realise that I may have caused a scandal for them but there are always scandals in Morocco. In two weeks’ time they had forgotten. I wasn’t doing this for my family, it was much bigger than that.

These articles started a buzz and it changed my status from “the new hip Moroccan writer” to the “new hip gay Moroccan writer”. At first people were talking only about the books and after that they were talking the books and homosexuality. One year later the magazine Tel Quel put me on the cover with the word “homosexual” in big letters and the recounted the whole story. They came and interviewed me. I knew that they were going to put me on the cover. I did it because it was necessary to speak out. Just to name things, for some people, is dangerous – it's revolutionary.

But I can't be explaining this all the time because it gets tiring. I just have to move along – to go in the way I choose. If some people are OK with that, fine. And if they’re not, that’s fine too. But it's not only about me. That is what is important.

So if it’s not only about you, what is it really about?

Other people. You understand this very quickly when you publish books, because you get some response. It's not only about homosexuality – it's about individual freedom. The feelings you are expressing, the words you are putting in your books. A lot of people relate to that and it becomes like a mission for you.

Morocco is changing. A lot of taboos are being broken one after another, and that's why I'm saying it's not only my revolution, it's also a revolution in Morocco and the Arab world. That’s why I continue to write. To be part of this revolution with literary arms.

Gay Pledge from Green Party for Euro Poll

The Green Party is today launching eight pledges for equality for LGBT people. Joseph Healy and John Hunt from London, Lesley Hedges from Yorkshire and Humber and Chris Williams from West Midlands are standing as openly gay and lesbian Green Party candidates in the European election.

Joseph Healy introduced the manifesto: “We are proud of the record of our Green MEPs on LGBT issues, proud to have so many LGBT candidates standing and because we think that the opinions of the LGBT communities are incredibly important in this election we are also proud to launch our own specific LGBT election manifesto.”

The LGBT Greens European Election Manifesto

The Greens will continue to campaign for:

--full LGBT equality, including full partnership, insurance, pensions, employment, and housing rights. This includes campaigning to rid ALL EU member states of homophobic and transphobic discrimination in access to goods and services, such as insurance and mortgages.

--all EU member states to comply with the EU directive outlawing discrimination against lesbians gay men and bisexuals in the workplace.
--equivalent and specific protection in society and in the workplace for trans citizens.

Greens will press for policing which reflects the diversity of the LGBT communities in the EU particularly in the new Eastern states, ensuring that homophobic behaviour by police officers is considered an explicit offence which can be remedied with disciplinary action. Also working with the police in deepening their relationship with the LGBT community, including LGBT organisations: improving the rapport between police forces and the LGBT community; addressing the continued under-reporting of hate crimes, and working with authorities to bring hate crime culprits to justice.

Greens will work to legalise same-sex marriages and registered partnerships across the EU, particularly in asylum legislation

Greens will campaign to
--extend the EU definition of "family" to include LGBT partnerships
--campaign for lgbt equal access to parenting and fertility treatment.

Greens will continue to lobby Police on non-prosecution of consenting, victimless gay offences, such as cruising. Police resources should be concentrated on violent, corporate and hate crimes and active, sustainable measures to create safer communities.

Greens will support a pan European HIV Action Plan:
--to improve safer sex education.
Greens will also campaign to
--cut transmission rates by remedying the financial hole in HIV services and large inadequacies in the provision and scope of HIV services
--upgrade the standard of treatment and after-care for people who have transmitted HIV. This will include pressing the UK government to resolve the under-funding and under-staffing of sexually-transmitted infection (STI) clinics.

Greens through their MEPs will lobby the European Commission to-
require all companies doing business with the European Union, or governments and local authorities within it, to be required to have equal opportunities policies that prohibit discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and HIV-positive people; thereby enabling local authorities to take a proactive role in encouraging businesses to end homo, bi and transphobic discrimination.

8. Greens propose to celebrate queer culture and history, for example by proposing the establishment of more Lesbian & Gay Museums.

Joseph Healy continued: “It is vital that lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people have MEPs representing our rights in Europe. Jean Lambert, our London MEP, and Caroline Lucas our South Eastern MEP have worked hard in Europe for LGBT rights to be understood as human rights.

“The European Elections are important, because so much of UK human rights policy tends to follow European directives on issues like the age of consent and anti-discrimination laws in employment.

“It is also important that the more progressive nature of Western European attitudes to LGBT people spreads into Eastern Europe. Gay Prides in Europe have been prevented or attacked in the past but this is slowly beginning to change.

“The far right is challenging the progress that has been made and we need strong voices to protect us across the whole of the European Region.

“The EU is in a strong position to give us a strong voice to oppose homophobic persecution and judicial murder across the world.

“Green Party actions are not just paper policies. Darren Johnson led the way for civil partnerships by being instrumental in introducing the London register which predated the Civil Partnership Bill and showed that there was a demand and that it could be done.

Joseph concluded:
“Jean Lambert Green MEP for the London region is a member of the European Parliament’s Intergroup on Gay and Lesbian Rights and works to ensure that LGBT people are treated fairly across Europe. She has spoken out against the deportation of gay and lesbian asylum seekers, to their almost certain death, which shamed the Labour government into allowing them to stay in the UK. She continues to oppose homophobic oppression in Europe and throughout the world.”

Lesley, meanwhile is the National Female Spokesperson for LGBTGreens. She is active in her local LGBTIQ community and works to improve public services, including health, for LGBTIQ people. “We deserve fair and equal treatment but surveys show that LGBTIQ people have less satisfaction with health and other services. We can be more open about our sexuality than ever before, yet some still face vilification in their access to health often when they are at their most vulnerable.

Lesley concluded: “We need strong laws across the European Union that make sure the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans communities are treated fairly. That is all we are asking for yet it seems to be a step too far for some services to tackle staff who display homophobic attitudes. Our young people are subjected to bullying in schools resulting in low confidence, poor mental health and even self-harm and suicide. This has got to end.”

Source

Saudi Gay Scene: 'Forbidden, but I can't Help It'

By Lara Setrakian

For Samir*, a 34-year-old gay man living in Saudi Arabia, each day is a denial. He lives in Mecca, the holiest city according to Islam, and is acutely aware of the stigma that surrounds his gay lifestyle.

"I'm a Muslim. I know it's forbidden, but I can't help it," he tells ABC News, clearly conflicted.

"I pray to God to help me be straight, just to avoid hell. But I know that I'm gay and I'm living as one, so I can't see a clear vision for the future."

Samir, like many gay men in the Arab world, guards his sexual orientation with a paranoid secrecy. To feel free he takes long vacations to Thailand, where he has a boyfriend, and spends weekends in Lebanon, which he regards as having a more gay-tolerant society.

But at home in Saudi Arabia, he is vigilant. Samir's parents don't know of his lifestyle. He says his mom would kill herself if she found out. They constantly set him up with women they consider potential wives. At work, Samir watches his words, careful not to arouse the suspicion of colleagues.

"You can't let a word slip that makes you seem gay-friendly or gay," he says. "Before you make a move you have to think."

Samir occasionally goes to Saudi cafes known to be popular gay hangouts, but his public engagements stop there. He and his friends are constantly wary of officers from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the kingdom's religious police, who patrol for and punish men they suspect of being gay.

Homosexuality is illegal in Saudi Arabia, but the charge calls for four witnesses to make a case. Arrests by the religious police are far more arbitrary. In a recent case they apprehended one man at a Jeddah shopping mall, suspecting he was gay from his tight jeans and fitted shirt.

"I've been invited to private parties for gay men in Jeddah, but I never go because I know what would happen if we were caught," Samir told ABC News.

"Unless it's a VIP house -- if the party is at the home of one of the princes or one of the sheiks then you're protected."

In Saudi Arabia, where men and women are strictly separated, there is some space for gay life. Gay men can go cruising -- a term for picking up partners -- and socialize in male-only sections of cafes and restaurants. In line with sex-segregated social norms, gay lovers can often spend intimate time together without arousing suspicion.

But gays and lesbians in Saudi Arabia still need to accommodate the pressures of public life, in some cases pairing off to accommodate a freer lifestyle.

"There is a gay group of girls in Saudi looking for gay men to marry. It's the perfect solution," says Samir, adding that he wouldn't mind a lesbian wife of his own.

Online Freedom but With Entrapment Risks

For Samir, the dozens of emerging Web forums for gay Arab men are a freer alternative to the offline Saudi society. I met him in one such forum, called Arab Gay Love, e-cruising for new friends and partners. Some of the users there surf with screen names that specify their sexual role: "top" or "bottom." Among Arabs, it seems, a mix of stigma and machismo steers gay men toward the former.

"The more masculine you are, the more likely you are to label yourself as a 'top.' It re-enforces this feeling that you're not really gay," said Ahmed*, a gay Palestinian born in Kuwait. "They're more comfortable with being tops, because it's easier to negate [the gay stigma]."

Gay Web Sites Blocked in Many Arab Countries

Web forums like arab-gay.com and manhunt.net are inaccessible in many Arab countries, blocked by state-run web filtering software. Using proxy servers men can get around the bans to the blocked sites, connecting with potential dates and building a knowledge base for gay life in the Arab world.

One blog from Syria, largely considered a repressed society, details a tourist's guide to gay hangouts in Damascus and Aleppo.

"You could almost pick up guys everywhere, you just need to have a good gaydar. ...There are four hammams in Damascus where you could play safely, but always be careful," he writes, then listing the most popular "hammams," or bath houses. He goes on to name the Safwan Hotel in Lattakia as "the most famous gay-friendly hotel in the region."

From his home in Mecca, Samir can surf the web forums and Facebook groups that connect him to the gay Arab world. But he does so with care, fearing that authorities will follow and flag gay activity online.

"You cannot be safe and intimate online. ... he government can track everything. If they have their eye on you, they can follow your every move," he says.

If Samir's approach seems paranoid, it's conditioned by horror stories of harsh crackdowns by Arab governments on gay life. In Egypt, where police have systematically arrested and tortured suspected homosexuals, vice squads have logged on to chat rooms posing as gay men. Forming friendships under a false identity, the police set up an expected first date, then meet their "suspects" with a brutal arrest.

"I was waiting for that guy I chatted with on the Internet a couple of days before that day, right in front of McDonald's [in] Heliopolis. & It was almost 1 p.m., when I found four big guys surrounding me," one victim of police brutality told Human Rights Watch after being set up on a false date.

"I was fighting and yelling in the street. I was dragged, almost carried to the police car ... taken to [the station], the 'Adab' Section, which takes care of prostitution, raping and, recently, homosexuality." Human Rights Watch documented dozens of Web-based entrapments -- men arrested by Egyptian police then tormented with beatings, electrocution and anal examinations.

The vice squad's practice of covertly hunting gay men in chat rooms cooled once the teeming gay Internet scene in Egypt slowed down. Fear and suspicion effectively shut down one of gay Egypt's few free outlets. At one point online entrapment was yielding one arrest per week, according to Human Rights Watch.

The Web was part of a greater crackdown in Egypt, a country that was once a liberal environment for homosexuals. (One gay Palestinian who has studied Arab homophobia described 20th century Egypt as the "San Francisco of the Middle East.") Social and authoritarian attitudes toward homosexuality began to change after the Egyptian Revolution in 1952, and grew steadily harsher through the 1990s as the secular state gave way to a growing Islamic puritanism.

Government-led assaults on homosexuals intensified in 2001. The pivot point was a mass arrest known as the "Queen Boat" incident. In the early morning hours of May 11, 2001, police raided a floating nightclub called the Queen Boat, a then-popular gay hangout moored on the Nile River. Suddenly surrounded by uniformed and undercover members of the Cairo Vice Squad, dozens of gay men were arrested, detained and tortured.

U.S. Government Has Been Quiet About Gay Crackdown in Iraq

What ensued from the Queen Boat arrests was a show trial -- forced confessions, some extracted under torture and a media circus designed to amplify public fear and maximize the government's political gain from the arrest. Though Egypt claims to have no law against homosexuality, it routinely criminalizes and prosecutes gay men under a law prohibiting "juhur," or debauchery, a charge originally levied for prostitution.

In the heat of the case, one article in the state-owned Al-Gomhoureya newspaper gave full names and identifying details of the accused, depicting the arrested homosexuals as part of an underground religious cult. The paper ran one headline, "Satanist Pervert Surprises: They Called Themselves God's Soldiers and Practice Group Sex in Private and Public & Meetings Every Thursday at Queen Boat," cited in the Human Rights Watch report.

Analysts point out a number of ways the Egyptian government gains from crackdowns like the Queen Boat raid. News pages full of homophobic rants are a useful distraction from issues like a faltering economy and rampant corruption, which erode government support. In the same stroke, the state gains ground against its Islamist opponents by attacking homosexuals -- trumped-up offenders against Muslim values. "They want to reassert their relevance and position themselves as defenders of morality is one way to do it," said Scott Long, an expert who helped produce the Human Rights Watch report.

"One of the ways [Arab authorities] prove they're bona fide is by cracking down on people that everyone hates. Hardly anyone is going to stand up and stick up for homosexuals," he said.

Long applies his analysis to other governments in the region. In 2005, authorities in Abu Dhabi, part of the United Arab Emirates, arrested more than two dozen men in the desert town of Ghantout at an event state officials characterized as a mass gay wedding. The UAE announced the men would receive lashings, jail time and forced hormone and psychological treatment. The case was eventually overturned on appeal, after news of the trial drew criticism from human rights activists and the U.S. State Department.

The U.S. government has been comparatively quiet, though, through a more recent and more deadly crackdown in Iraq. In attacks that accelerated last February, Shiite militiamen have carried out a series of beatings and assassinations of gay men, occasionally with the help of the Interior Ministry, according to Scott Long of Human Rights Watch. Al Qaeda in Iraq, a rival Islamist group, has also reportedly attacked gay men in Iraq, in what human rights activists call a clear moral cleansing campaign.

"The easiest group to attack are gay people, both politically and in regards to the militias' Islamist aims. & They can't stop women from going to work, they can't stop couples from being together in public, but they can attack gay men," said Michael Luongo, a gay rights expert and author of the book "Gay Travels in the Muslim World."

"If you want religious credibility you attack gay people," he said of the Islamist brigades. The recent spate of attacks followed a succession of sermons in Iraqi mosques, attacking the scourge of homosexuality. As in the case of Egyptian arrests, suspected homosexuals were detained, tortured, and forced to give names of other gay men for authorities to pursue.

Small Space for Gay Pride

Long recently traveled to Iraq to document the attacks and advocate for gay Iraqis under attack.

"There's a campaign to kill them," he said, describing how homosexuals have learned to protect themselves by keeping a low profile. "They hide. People turn off their phones, change their e-mail addresses, and stay home."

Outside the spaces of hostile discrimination, homosexuals in the Middle East do manage to form a community and enjoy a freer lifestyle.

Israel, perhaps the most tolerant state in the Middle East, has a thriving gay community. Last year thousands attended the annual gay pride parade in Tel Aviv, though the event has drawn right-wing protests and attacks. A similar parade in Jerusalem, a more socially conservative environment, took place with police protection along the parade route.

Up the coast in Lebanon, a relatively liberal Arab society plays host to the first gay rights group in the Arab world. Members of Helem, an acronym in Arabic for "Lebanese Protection for Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgenders," are activists at their own peril. In a country that moves back and forth between secularism and religious politics, the group and its gay community center are creating a space for their freedom.

In other parts of the Arab world gay life has to fit into whatever space is provided, and the borders are constantly moving. In Dubai, arguably the most modern city in Arabia, gay expats have little trouble living and loving freely. Rashid, a young Lebanese expat who lives with his partner in Dubai, knows he has it better than most. Unlike many gays in the Gulf, Rashid has come out to his parents, and felt comfortable meeting men and dating as he grew up in Abu Dhabi.

Locals, he says, have a harder time. "The Europeans and Westerners are more comfortable with their homosexuality. The locals, the Saudis and Bahrainis, are less open about it," Rashid told ABC News.

"One friend, an Emirati, was discovered to be gay at 1999 and his family disowned him. Last we heard he was deported, he can no longer come back to the UAE, and lives in France."

The mix of tolerance and discrimination across the Middle East creates little opportunity for a cohesive gay rights movement. Moreover, the local take on homosexuality is out of line with the Western norm, a notion of being gay as a recognized minority group.

"The phrase 'to be is not to do' is how I explain it," said Luongo of homosexuality in the Arab world. In other words, being gay is an act, not an identity. When gay pride does emerge, it is associated with the West, and an invading cultural colonialism. The pushback on any budding gay rights movements will likely continue, part of ongoing discrimination against homosexuals in the Middle East. There, gays will continue their negotiated lifestyle, knowing that they live and love under scrutiny.

*Name changed to protect identity

Source

Report: The Iraqi anti-LGBT pogrom

Photo Bill Wilson Copyright © 2009

The following report - sourced from all media reports, agency, organisation and representative statements concerning the pogrom - is made available for reuse under a Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons license.

Issues

The anti-gay pogrom

Iraqi gays report that their lives are in danger, that they live in continuous fear of people finding out that they are gay.

Gays are being sadistically tortured, mutilated and murdered, some by the method of sticking a special glue (which can only be removed by surgery) up their anuses then forcing diarrhea. This method is being employed not just in Baghdad but in smaller town and cities all over Iraq. Videos of this form of torture are being distributed on mobile cellphones in Iraq. There are reports of hospitals turning away gays with glued anuses.

Attacks against gays have been abundant in Shiite neighborhoods, especially poor regions and remote areas such as the southern provinces and the Hurriya, Sho’la and Sadr neighborhoods in Baghdad.

Although gays could be tried and imprisoned under the Saddam regime Iraqi gays report that "now they kill people like us."

The campaign started in 2004, following the religious decree of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani that said gay men and lesbians should be “punished, in fact, killed .. The people should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.”

Since then Iraqi LGBT has received reports and information of over 600 LGBT people killed.

But Iraqi gays and media reports say that the killings have massively escalated since the end of 2008.

Iraqi LGBT has received reports of 63 killings in the last four months but does not have correspondents or members in large parts of Iraq and believes that the actual number of gays killed since December 2008 is much higher.

Amnesty International says that 25 boys and men were killed in Baghdad this spring "following calls from religious leaders to eradicate homosexuality."

There are reports that religious leaders, both Sunni or Shiite, have used Friday sermons and satellite channels as a platform to incite hatred and violence toward homosexuals.

Reporting about the murders by anal glue of gays in Sadr City in April by Iraqi daily newspapers and many television stations branded gays as 'perverts' and 'terrorists who are undermining the moral fiber of Iraqi youth'.

Posters and leaflets distributed in the Baghdad neighborhoods of al-Shola, al-Hurya and Sadr City contain orders to "cleanse Iraq from the crime of homosexuality."

Lesbians are reported as being burned to death in Kadhimiya, Hurriya Al-Olaa, Hurriya Al-Thaniya, Dolaai and Dabaash.

Baghdad US Embassy workers are reported as saying that the killings are not tribal or familial disputes.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees says that homosexuals are a specific group which have been identified as at risk of violence.

State involvement and lack of action

Human Rights Watch says that Iraqi LGBT are vulnerable to attacks from both state and non-state actors.

Mobile phone footage circulating in Baghdad shows uniformed police harassing LGBT. There are reports of police extracting bribes.

Police have been quoted as waging a campaign to "clean up the streets and get the beggars and homosexuals off them.”

Iraqi LGBT has received reports that police and the Ministry of the Interior are behind some of the murders.

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) says that despite the legal obligations of the Iraqi government to protect all citizens, crimes committed against LGBT Iraqis and those believed to be homosexual are not properly investigated or prosecuted.

US Vice President Joe Biden is reported to have said 'the Iraqi .. government is either too ineffectual to act, or is afraid of offending the religious zealots who perpetuate the attacks'.

The US State Department, following representations by Rep. Jared Polis and the Council for Global Equality, is investigating reports of trials and executions of LGBT, including for membership of the Iraqi LGBT group, as well as reports of arrests, beatings and rape by Ministry of Interior security forces. Polis says that at least one gay man has been executed by the government for 'membership of a banned organization' and that "gregious human rights violations ... [are] being carried out by Iraqi government officials from the Ministry of the Interior."

Amnesty International has expressed concern at the government’s failure to "publicly condemn the killings." It urged the government to make sure that the killings are "promptly and effectively investigated, and to see that the perpetrators are brought to justice." They also condemned police statements that,"appear to condone or even encourage the targeting of members of the gay community in Baghdad."

The Australian government has questioned the Iraqi Ambassador to Australia and Australia’s Ambassador to Iraq has questioned the Iraqi government over the pogrom.

On April 8, 2009, IGLHRC and Human Rights Watch submitted an urgent appeal to the Special Procedures of the United Nations to ask for an investigation.

Sources

• Human Rights Watch: Iraq: Events of 2008
• Iraq: IGLHRC Asks the Iraqi Government to Protect LGBT People
• Comments from US Vice-President on Iraqi gay pogrom
• US State Dept: Iraq Status Report (PDF)
• Alarabiya: Bodies of 7 Gays in Baghdad Morgue
• Gay City News: Iraqi Gays Face Gruesome Torture/ Murder Technique
• NBC News: ‘They kill people like us,’ says gay Iraqi
  
• Reuters: Gays killed in Baghdad as clerics urge clampdown
• BBC News: Iraqi Gay Men Face 'Lives of Hell'
• Independent: Dozens of young men and boys killed by death squads in Baghdad
• New York Times: Iraq’s Newly Open Gays Face Scorn and Murder
• Denver Post: Congressman takes Iraq to task over attacks on gays
• The Advocate: I'm Gay and Iraqi: Please Help Me!
• Human Rights Campaign: Gay advocacy groups call for the end of violence against LGBT people in Iraq
• Sydney Star Observer: Australia raises Iraq’s gay killings
• Baltimore Gay Life: Polis: Iraqi GLBT Executions have Begun
• GayCityNews - Iraqi Gay Murders Surge; World Finally Takes Note
• US Rep. Jared Polis: letter to Patricia A. Butenis (Charge d'Affaires ad interim of the US State Dept) [PDF]
• UK Gay News: Member of Iraqi Gay Group Pleads for Help “Before It’s Too Late”
• LGBT Asylum News: Los Angeles City Council opposes Iraqi gay pogram
  

Statements by Iraqi LGBT

This letter was written to Los Angeles councillor Bill Rosendahl in response to the passage by Los Angeles City Council of a resolution in opposition to the Iraqi gay pogrom.

I’m a 25 year old graduate student from Baghdad and my name is Ahmad.

I want to thank you very much for caring about me and my problem. Finally, after many desperate years of hopelessness I found a group of people that understand and care about me.

My problem is that I’m a gay, and as a gay man I can’t live a normal life in Iraq because:

• My life is in danger. I live in continuous fear of people finding out that I’m gay.
• I can’t express my deepest emotions. I can’t love...I can’t tell those who I care about that I love them... It is like being tortured from inside.

In the past few months I have heard of many cases of violence against gay men, including killing, torturing, and public humiliation of us. The religious vigilantes (known as Maghawer) have kidnapped many men suspected of being gay. No one knows anything about the fate of those gays.

The Maghawer’s most popular method of torture for homosexuals is putting silicon glue on their anus to shot down their digestive system and then force them to take laxative drug to make them suffer.

Every time I walk on the street I wonder what may happen to pen to me today. To protect myself, I have to lie to everyone and pretend that I am a straight person. It is really hard to be a 24/7 liar out of the fear of death…I keep asking myself if this is going to be MY LIFE!!!

I have no one to turn to. Not even other gay men or my family members. Recently I have been blackmailed by men I had sex with in the past. They told me either I have to have sex with them again or they will out me to my family, neighbors and even classmates. I had to choose between scandal and public humiliation and prostitution. But I decided that I can’t have sex with people I don’t love … so I decided to transfer to another college in Northern Iraq.

My family doesn’t know about my homosexuality…if they find out, they will disown me because I will become a disgrace to them. They may even try to kill me to protect their honor. I always have to pretend in front my family that I ‘m “normal”…but like any other straight man, my family wants me to marry a woman … I try to avoid that conversation as much as I can but there is a lot of pressure on me to get married.

I am not happy with myself. I am not proud of who I am.

A while back I went to a psychologist to see if he can treat me. I told him about my problem…he told me that homosexuality has no treatment in Iraq and only experienced doctors in developed countries can give me therapy.

The news made me so depressed that I started thinking of committing suicide. I feel even without vigilantes killing me, I AM ALREADY DEAD FROM INSIDE.

I just want to know what wrong I have done. Do I have a choice to be gay? Do I want to humiliate myself? Do I want to live in constant fear and anxiety? Do I want my family & friends to hate and abandon me if they discover my truth? Do I want myself to be killed on the hand of uneducated people for something I didn’t choose?

I don’t want to make it long for you…but I want to let you know that I have already suffered too much and I don’t have the power to go through more pain and suffering.

And finally I want to thank you for your support and help…

My Regards and Best Wishes to ALL of YOU…

Comment by Hasan given to The Independent

My boyfriend was killed by the police because of his sexuality.

Policemen came to his house, 10 minutes away from mine, put him in a police car, arrested and killed him.

They told his parents it was because of his job. He was working for Iraqi LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender). For six months I didn't go out, I didn't do anything – just grieved for him. He was killed because of who he is.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, we – the gay community – were very optimistic. We thought that we would live in a democracy and felt safe with US troops around. So we started to print leaflets that promoted freedom for gay and lesbian people.

But members of our group started being arrested for it. The leaflets weren't political, they were just spreading gay rights.

We have the right to exist and be who we are, but this offended the government. The leaflets had our email addresses and telephone numbers, so the government and the militias came to find out who was distributing the leaflets.

In 2004, the situation got much worse. People began to be killed in the streets, burnt alive and mutilated for being gay. We were a target for the government and militias. I fled to the UK; I feel very safe here but get emails every day about more killings in Iraq. And the problem is that the UK Government doesn't allow us to stay with refugee status even though Iraq is one of the most dangerous places on earth for homosexuals and a war is being waged by the parts of the Iraqi government on gay people. In the UK, I can't work or study because I've been denied the right to asylum, but my only option is to go back to Iraq, face my family and my community and be killed.

Four members of our organisation have already been deported. I am fighting for my right to stay by re-applying for asylum with the help of Iraqi LGBT. Otherwise, I have no future. On Thursday, we will protest outside the Home Office to highlight the homophobic killings. I wish someone would listen and help us; this has been going on in Iraq for years and no one cares.

Hasan, 26, is gay. He moved to the UK nine months ago from his home in Babel province, south of Baghdad, after receiving death threats. His boyfriend was killed because of his sexuality.

Call for help

My name is [name and address removed], Baghdad, Iraq.

I was detained at my residence December 15, 2008 after midnight, by the Ministry of Interior. During the detention process, they hit me on the head and my rear end to make me confess that I am a member of the Iraqi-LGBT. Later on the Ministry of Interior transferred me to the criminal justice court in al Karkh, and after a short trial I was sentenced to death.

I was sentenced without given the chance to defend myself or to hire an attorney. Two days later I was returned to the same place and was told that the execution will take place in two weeks.

Please pass this message to [my friend] in London. I just wish to tell him not to forget about my mother and siblings, I was their only supporter.

I am all hopeful that Allah will show Iraqis a life with no death sentences. And lastly, I ask you for help. Is there anyone to help me before it is too late?


Addendum

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) advises favourable consideration for people belonging to specific groups from these areas which have been identified as at risk, including members of religious and ethnic minorities; Iraqis perceived as opposing armed groups or political factions; Iraqis affiliated with the multinational forces or foreign companies; media workers; UN and non-governmental organization (NGO) workers; human rights activists; and homosexuals.

Improving security prompts UN to revise guidelines for Iraqi asylum claims


What you can do

There are a number of ways in which you can take action.

Support Iraqi LGBT through fund raising and donations

This support is desperately needed and will be put to good use both inside Iraq itself and to support the exiled movement. The group needs £10,000 a month in order to keep its safe houses and other support for beleaguered LGBT inside Iraq going.

You can find out how to do this on the Iraqi LGBT website http://iraqilgbtuk.blogspot.com

Alternatively, in the USA, tax-deductible donations can be made at http://rainbowfund.org

Contact your local representative to urge them to ask for your government's pressure on the Iraqi government to take action

In the USA -
You can get contact information for Representatives and Senators on this website http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/
The only statement so far from the State Department is carried in this post http://madikazemi.blogspot.com/2009/04/does-hillary-know-this-man.html

In the UK -
Contact your MP through this website http://www.theyworkforyou.com/

Suggested letter

The following is a letter for a UK MP which you can adapt for your locality

Dear XX XXXXX

I write to draw your attention to the pogrom of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people which is currently taking place in Iraq.

Although this has yet to draw much mainstream media attention the reports are truly horrifying and escalating. They have draw the attention of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and US Representatives.

However the UK Foreign Office does not appear to be taking any action.

I refer you to the statement of Bill Rammell [http://madikazemi.blogspot.com/2009/04/millibands-fco-joins-smiths-home-office.html].

The following report covers the pogrom:
http://madikazemi.blogspot.com/2009/05/report-iraqi-anti-lgbt-pogrom.html

I would urge you to ask the Foreign Office why they are not taking stronger action in this matter.

Sincerely

XXXXXXXXX

Please take action today!