"They always shoot their gay victims in the rear end, then in the head, because they believe that all gay males actively practice sexual intercourse." - Ali Hili, co-founder of Iraqi LGBT, discussing a common method of how homosexual Iraqis are murdered.
Those of us who opposed Prop 8 in California and who protested its passage are, for the most part, fully aware of the state of gay rights in this nation. Despite our defeat in California and in other states, we are confident that we will ultimately prevail: gays and lesbians will have the right to marry in all fifty states, they will have the right to adopt children, and they will share equal status in all things under the law. However, as we march forward, we should be careful to turn our heads. In other nations, including those where Americans have troops, homosexuals are denied the most basic of rights - including the right to exist. In Iraq, merely the rumor that one is gay can be a death sentence.
It illustrates something about Iraqi attitudes about homosexuality that Ali Hili, a co-founder of Iraqi LGBT, lives in self-imposed exile in Great Britain and uses a pseudonym to protect family members who still live in Iraq. He was granted asylum in Britain eight years ago and hasn't returned to Iraq since, although he visits Syria and Jordan to help spirit other gay Iraqis out of the country. Since 2003, Hili reports, over 450 GLBT Iraqis have been murdered, many in brutal, horrific ways. (The number is no doubt much higher, since families of victims refuse to admit to the motives of the assassins for fear of further retribution.) A mere three months ago, the coordinator for Iraqi LGBT was gunned down in a barbershop by militia members. In a way, he was lucky: since 2005, when Grand Ayatollah Sistani issued a fatwa calling for the death of gays and lesbians "in the severest way possible," those who are targeted by the various militias or religious extremists in Iraq have been subject to far more grotesque deaths, including beheading and being burnt alive.
Who is leading the "sexual cleansing" of gay Iraqis? Religious fanatics, to be sure, but that answer isn't sufficient. Some victims are murdered by family members, considered an "honor crime" and thus not prosecuted. But most are murdered by organized militias comprised of Iraqi police, the army, and the country's major Shiite political party, the Supreme Iraqi Council. In other words, the very people who will take back their nation after we leave. The Guardian stated in September that "The death squads of the Badr organisation [members of the Supreme Iraqi Council] and the Mahdi army are targeting gays and lesbians, according to UN reports, in a systematic campaign of sexual cleansing." The Badr organization and the Mahdi army are, officially or not, holding the nation together, and without the cooperation, would certainly send Iraq into civil war.
Millions of Iraqis suffered greatly under Saddam Hussein's rule, and gay Iraqis suffered with them. However, they were never targeted for assassination during his rule. Hussein's attitude towards gays was largely ambivalent until late in his rule; he didn't outlaw sodomy until 2001. The social void left by Saddam's ouster was rapidly filled by Shiite fanatics who wanted to reestablish a strict version of sharia law, including executing those who they believed committed "crimes against Islam,” particularly homosexuals.
Outside the country, these very public attacks on homosexuals in Iraq get little attention. According to Newsweek, the murders of gay, lesbian, and transgendered Iraqis are ignored not only by the Iraqi government, but even the United Nations’ human-rights office. Likewise, the Bush Administration has done little other than issue a weak State Department response to Representatives Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Barney Frank (D-MA), who had signed a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urging her to demand action from the Iraqi government concerning the murders. Although Britain and other nations have granted asylum for GLBT refugees fleeing Iraq (and other Muslim nations), the U.S. government has done nothing. Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) attempted to address this lack of action by introducing the Responsibility to Iraqi Refugees Act in 2007, which included a provision that would have given gay Iraqis high priority for asylum. Although parts of the bill were passed in early 2008, the provision asylum for gay Iraqi asylum seekers was not adopted.
There is no question that American forces will withdraw from Iraq within a few years, leaving perhaps military advisors at most. There is also no question that organized murders of Iraqi LGBTs will not halt as long as the Iraqi government is not pressured. In the wake of Sistani's fatwa, Iraqi LGBT, with funding and support from the Chicago-based Heartland Alliance and London-based OutRage!, set up five "safe houses" for those in danger. Despite attempts to keep the safe houses secret, they were soon targeted; only two remain today. The Progressive estimates that over twenty-six people associated with Iraqi LGBT have been killed, many of whom were directly involved with the safe houses. Although the plight of homosexuals in other Muslim nations (particularly Iran and Saudi Arabia) is just as bad, Iraq is currently unique among Muslim nations in specifically targeting homosexuals for extermination. Given the fundamentalist fervor in Iraq, GLBTs in Iraq may be in mortal danger for decades to come. In a country where one can be arrested merely for writing a scientific article about homosexuality, the safest (and simplest) way of assisting homosexuals, bisexuals, and the transgendered in Iraq is by getting them out of Iraq.
Seventy years ago, this nation reacted a nation's attack on their "undesirables" with a collective shrug. Our reaction to the attack in Iraq is even more problematic because, to paraphrase General Colin Powell, we "broke" Iraq. If it is our responsibility to fix this nation, we should do our part and take in those with no future in the new Iraq. There are Iraqis being targeted for death as an indirect result of our actions in that nation, and it is our responsibility, our obligation, to rescue them from extermination. Yes, gay rights supporters have a lot of work to do in this country, but we must look outward as well.
