العراق – يجب وقف نزيف الدم العراقي فور
النظام العراقي الحاكم بدعم من قوى الاحتلال الامريكي والبريطاني هو المسؤول عن تفاقم وانتشار العنف الطائفي والمذهبي
غداة دخول قوات الاحتلال الى العراق انتشرت الفوضى والفساد وفقد اي احساس بالامن والامان لدى المواطن العراقي العادي.
ومع ظهور الاحزاب الدينية المدعومة من قبل المرجعيات, وانتشار المليشيات وفرق الموت وتورط الاحزاب في قتل المواطنين وارتكاب الفظاعات من تطهير عرقي على الهوية والخلفية المذهبية .
ولم تستثنى الاقليات الدينية والمذهبية واقليات اخرى مثل مثليي الجنس الذين تم قبولهم واثبتوا انسجامهم واندماجهم في المجتمع العراقي على مر الازمان وخصوصا في عهد النظام السابق.
اما اليوم وبعد ظهور حكومات تستقي قراراتها من مرجعيات النجف, ولعل هيمنة رجال الدين في الحياة السياسية واليومية في الشارع والمشهد العراقي خير دليل على ما الى اليه العراق اليوم.
Is that upsetting to see?
Do you think there's something suspicious here?
Is the new "free" Iraq at all free?
Iraq’s many LGBT victims of the death squads
Here are details of a few of the LGBTs who have been murdered in Iraq in recent months:
● Anwar, aged 34, a taxi driver, was a member of Iraqi LGBT and helped run one of the group’s safe houses in the city of Najaf. He disappeared in January 2007. He was arrested in his taxi after being stopped at a police and militia checkpoint. His body was found in March 2007. He had been subjected to an execution-style killing.
● Nouri, aged 29, a tailor, was kidnapped in the city of Karbala in February 2007. He had received many death threats by letter and phone in the past, accusing him of leading a gay life. He was found dead a few days later, with his body mutilated and his head severed.
Khalid (left), a 19 year old gay man, a college student who lived in al-Kadomya, was kidnapped in December 2006. Three months later, his family was handed his tortured and burned remains.
● Hazim, a 21-year-old man, was taken by police officers from his house in Baghdad in February 2007. He was well-known to be gay. After threats because of his homosexuality, his family was forced to leave their home. Hazim’s body was subsequently found with several shots to the head.
● Sayf, a gay 25-year-old, worked for the Iraqi police as a translator. He was kidnapped in the Al-Adhamya suburb by black masked men in Ministry of Interior security force uniforms who drove a marked police car. Almost certainly they were members of the Badr militia which has infiltrated the Interior Ministry and police. Sayf’s body was found several days later, with his head cut off.
● Khaldon, a 45 year old gay man lived in al-Hurriya, a mainly Shia neighborhood of Baghdad. He worked as a chef. The Sadr militia, the Mahdi army, kidnapped him in November 2006. His decaying corpse was found in February 2007.
Hasan Sabeh (left), a 34 year old transvestite - also known as Tamara - worked in the fashion industry designing women’s clothes. He lived in the al-Mansor district of Baghdad.
Hasan was seized in the street by an Islamist death squad and hanged in public on the holy Shia religious day, 11 January 2007. His body was mutilated and cut to pieces. When his brother-in-law tried to defend him, he was also murdered.
● Four gay friends had been receiving threatening letters at their Baghdad houses. All four were arrested on 26 December 2006 by militia at a roadside checkpoint. They were interrogated about whether they were Sunnis.
Their identity cards showed that three of the men were Shia. These three men were released after several hours of interrogation. The fourth man, Samer, a 26 year old a Sunni who lived in Zayona, was later found with gunshot wounds to his head, his eyes blindfolded and his hands tied behind his back. His body showed marks of torture and many burns. It is not clear whether Samer was executed because he was Sunni or gay or both.
Alan Thomas, was a 23 year old, Christian gay Iraqi who lived in al-Gadeer, a Shia majority district of Baghdad. He received many threats for being gay and was eventually kidnapped and executed by Shia death squads in late 2006.
Alan Thomas, was a 23 year old, Christian gay Iraqi who lived in al-Gadeer, a Shia majority district of Baghdad. He received many threats for being gay and was eventually kidnapped and executed by Shia death squads in late 2006.
‘His older sister spoke to me over the phone from Baghdad; explaining how the murder of her only brother caused the death of their sick elderly mother,” said Mr. Hili. She told me: The new Iraqi evil regime does not provide effective protection to the population of Iraq. Shia militias act in collusion with security force gangs to take revenge on the Sunni’s and other minorities.’”
Occasionally, some victims of the fundamentalists have been able to buy their survival. Hamid A, a 44 year old bisexual man, from the Al-Talibya district. He was kidnapped twice by the Sadr militia. The first instance was in April 2006 when he, his nephew and his brother were kidnapped and tortured. He was released in May 2006 after his tribe members paid a huge ransom to save his life and the lives of his relatives. Hamid was kidnapped for a second time in November 2006 by the same Sadr militia, when an informant reported that he was drinking alcohol and that he was suspected of being gay. He was held in a big office in Sadr city, along with other detainees - most of them Sunnis and Christians. Again, he was ransomed and is now in hiding; a rare survivor of the Sadr militia interrogation centres.
“Heterosexual friends of gays are also executed,” Mr. Hili said.
“This happened to Majid Sahi, aged 28, a civil engineer. He had been helping Iraqi LGBT members in Baghdad. Abducted by the Badr militia from his home, they objected to his association with gay Iraqis.”
His family was advised by the Badr forces that their son’s “immoral behaviour” was the reason for his kidnapping. His body was found in Baghdad, with bullet wounds in the back of his head, on 23 February 2007.
“Despite the great danger involved, Iraqi LGBT has established a clandestine network of lesbian and gay activists inside Iraq’s major cities, including Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala, Hilla and Basra,” reports Peter Tatchell of OutRage!, who is working closely with Ali Hili and Iraqi LGBT.
“These heroic activists are helping gay people on the run from fundamentalist death squads; hiding them in safe houses in Baghdad, and helping them escape to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon,” said Mr Tatchell.
Ali Hili is making an appeal for donations to fund the work of Iraqi LGBT: “Iraqi LGBT needs donations to help gay people in Iraq who are fleeing the death squads.
“We need money for safe houses, food, electricity, security protection and clothing - and to help pay the phone bills of members of the Iraqi LGBT group. They are sending us information about the homophobic killings, at great risk to their own lives.
“Many of the people we are helping had nothing but the clothes on their backs, when they fled the attacks by fundamentalist militias.
“We are also paying for medication for members who are HIV positive. Otherwise, they will not get treatment. If it is discovered that they have HIV, they will surely be killed,” suggested Mr Hili.
■ The UK-based gay rights group OutRage! is working with Iraqi LGBT to support its work. Iraqi LGBT is coordinated by Ali Hili from the safety of London UK. The group does not yet have a bank account.
Operating an Iraqi LGBT bank account in Baghdad would be suicide. For this reason, it has to operate its finances from London. All the group’s members in London are Iraqi refugees seeking asylum. Their lack of proper legal status makes it difficult for them to open a bank account in the UK. This is why Iraqi LGBT is asking that cheques be made payable to:
“OutRage!”, with a cover note marked “For Iraqi LGBT”, and sent to OutRage!, PO Box 17816, London SW14 8WT, England, UK.
OutRage! then forwards the donations received to Ali Hili and Iraqi LGBT for wire transfer to Baghdad.
http://iraqilgbtuk.blogspot.com reports on the ongoing murders of gays in Iraq.
Gay News Blog quotes Peter Tatchell from the UK:
The "improved" security situation in Iraq is not benefiting all Iraqis, especially not those who are gay. Islamist death squads are engaged in a homophobic killing spree with the active encouragement of leading Muslim clerics, such as Moqtada al-Sadr, as Newsweek recently revealed.
One of these clerics, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a fatwa urging the killing of lesbians and gays in the "most severe way possible".
For gay Iraqis there is little evidence of the transition to democracy. They don’t experience any new-found respect human rights. Life for them is even worse than under the tyrant Saddam Hussein.
It is a death sentence in today’s “liberated” Iraq to love a person of the same-sex, or for a woman to have sex outside of marriage, or for a Muslim to give up his / her faith or embrace another religion.
The reality on the ground is that theocracy is taking hold of the country, including in Basra, which was abandoned by the British military. In place of foreign occupation, the city’s inhabitants now endure the terror of fundamentalist militias and death squads. Those who are deemed insufficiently devout and pure are liable to be assassinated.
The death squads of the Badr Brigades and the Madhi Army are
targeting gays and lesbians, according to UN reports, in a systematic campaign of sexual cleansing. They proudly boast of their success, claiming that they have already exterminated all “perverts and sodomites” in many of the major cities.
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Eye-witnesses confirm that they saw the men being led out of a house at gun-point by officers in police uniform. Yes, Iraqi police! Nothing has been heard of the five victims since then. In all probability, they have been executed by the police - or by Islamist death squads who have infiltrated the Iraqi police and who are using their uniforms to carry out so-called honour killings of gay people, unchaste women and many others.
The arrested and disappeared men were Amjad 27, Rafid 29, Hassan 24, Ayman 19 and Ali 21. As members of Iraq’s covert gay rights movement, for the previous few months they had been documenting the killing of lesbians and gays, relaying details of the murders to the outside world, and providing safe houses and support to other gay people fleeing the death squads.
Their abduction is just one of many outrages by anti-gay death squads. lslamist killers burst into the home of two lesbians in city of Najaf. They shot them dead, slashed their throats, and also murdered a young child who the women had rescued from the sex trade. The two women, both in their mid-30s, were members of Iraqi LGBT. They were providing a safe house for gay men on the run from death squads. By sheer luck, none of the men who were being given shelter in the house were at home when the assassins struck. They have since fled to Baghdad and are hiding in an Iraqi LGBT safe house there.
Large parts of Iraq are now under the de facto control of the militias and their death squad units. They enforce a harsh interpretation of Sharia law, summarily executing people for what they denounce as “crimes against Islam.” These “crimes” include listening to western pop music, wearing shorts or jeans, drinking alcohol, selling videos, working in a barber’s shop, homosexuality, dancing, having a Sunni name, adultery and, in the case of women, not being veiled or walking in the street unaccompanied by a male relative.
Two militias are doing most of the killing. They are the armed wings of major parties in the Bush and Brown-backed Iraqi government. Madhi is the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr, and Badr is the militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which is the leading political force in Baghdad’s governing coalition. Both militias want to establish an Iranian-style religious dictatorship. The allied occupation of Iraq is bad enough. But if the Madhi or Badr militias gain in influence and strength, as seems likely in the long-term, it could result in a reign of religious terror many times worse.
Saddam Hussein was a bloody tyrant. I campaigned against his blood-stained misrule for nearly 30 years. But while Saddam was President, there was certainly no danger of gay people being assassinated in their homes and in the street by religious fanatics."
CNN coverage
Gay City News
LA Times
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