ReligionDispatches.org

In 2005, during the height of internecine violence and resistance to the U.S. occupation, the country’s most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali a-Sistani, issued a religious decree that said that gay men and lesbians should be “punished, in fact, killed.” He added, “The people should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.” According to the New York Times, “The language has since been removed from his Web site.”

When al-Sistani talks, some Iraqis listen!

In early April, the New York Times reported that “The relative freedom of a newly democratic Iraq and the recent improvement in security have allowed a gay subculture to flourish here. The response has been swift and deadly.”

In late May, ABC News reported that “Two gay men were killed in Baghdad's Sadr City slum, and police confirmed they found the bodies of four more men, all killed during a 10-day period after an unknown Shiite militia group urged a crackdown on homosexuals in the country.” A month earlier, commenting about two young men that had been recently killed, a Sadr City official who declined to be named, called the young men “sexual deviants [whose] … tribes killed them to restore their family honor," according to a Reuters report.

Reuters also noted that prior to the murders, “Sermons condemning homosexuality were read [in late March] at … Friday prayer gatherings in Sadr City, a sprawling Baghdad slum of some 2 million people [that] … is a bastion of support for fiery Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army militia.”

"This (homosexuality) has spread because of the absence of the Mehdi Army, the spread of sexual films and satellite television and a lack of government surveillance," said the office's Sheikh Ibrahim al-Gharawi, a Shi'ite cleric.

While homosexuality is prohibited nearly everywhere in the Middle East, homosexual acts are punishable by up to seven years in prison in Iraq.

ABC News reported that “The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs believes as many as 30 people have been killed during the last three months because they were -- or were perceived to be -- gay.”

A Human Right Watch Iraq country report 2009, pointed out that “Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people are also vulnerable to attacks from state and non-state actors.”

Amnesty International, in a letter to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, called for "urgent and concerted action" to end the violence against the gay community, the group reported on its Web site.

In an interview with EdgeBoston, Scott Long, director of Human Rights Watch’s LGBT Rights Program who had been on a fact-finding mission to Iraq, responded to State spokesperson John T. Fleming's statement that “homosexuality is not a crime in Iraq,” by saying that Fleming’s statement "would be an interesting fact if the law, or the rule of law, mattered in Iraq.”

Wayman Hudson of the Bilerico Project recently pointed out that “While statistics have been hard to gather on the number of LGBT Iraqis killed because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, it has recently been reported that at least 25 boys and men have been killed in Baghdad alone because they were either gay or believed to be.”

Now, after months of silence, the United States finally issued a sharply worded condemnation. When questioned by reporters, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said “In general, we absolutely condemn acts of violence and human rights violations committed against individuals in Iraq because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

This is an issue that we've been following very closely since we have been made aware of these allegations, and we are aware of the allegations. Our training for Iraqi security forces includes instruction on the proper observance of human rights.

“Human rights training is also a very important part of our and other international donors' civilian capacity-building efforts in Iraq. And the US embassy in Baghdad has raised, and will continue to raise, the issue with senior officials from the government of Iraq, and has urged them to respond appropriately to all credible reports of violence against gay and lesbian Iraqis.

Iraqi LGBT (“a Human Rights group Supporting Iraqi lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people”) is in desperate need of funds “to assist … efforts to help other Lesbians, Gay, Bisexuals and Trans gender Iraqi's facing death, persecution and systematic targeting by the Iraqi Police and Badr and Sadr Militia and to raise awareness about the wave of homophobic murders in Iraq to the outside world.”

According to the website, “Funds raised will also help provide LGBTs under threat of killing with refuge in the safer parts of Iraq (including safe houses, food, electricity, medical help) and assist efforts help them seek refuge in neighboring countries.”

Tags: human rights, iraq, lgbt, violence