Militias threaten gay Iraqis with rape, death
”They told me to take off my clothes to rape me or they would kill me immediately. This moment was the worst moment in my life…. I told my family that I was beaten by them, but I did not dare to tell my family that I was raped by them. I could not say it, it’s too much shame.”
”Kamal,” a gay man in Iraq who says he was kidnapped and raped by a militia for 15 days, noting that they figured out that he was gay because he had shaved his chest. [video] (CNN)
”Gay men and lesbians in Iraq face a lot of risks right now, because homosexuality is sometimes interpreted by people in Iraq as being a Western import. So they can sometimes be targeted by insurgent groups or militias, in part, because of animosity toward the West and, in part, because homosexuality is not well-accepted in Iraqi society…. The biggest threats right now are from militia organizations, who will attack and actually sometimes kill gay men and women.”
Scott Portman of the Heartland Alliance, a group that promotes human rights worldwide. (CNN)
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