New Disappearances in Iraq

By: DOUG IRELAND

Seven gay and three transgendered Iraqis have disappeared in the past month and a half and are presumed to be the latest victims of the lethal campaign of sexual cleansing by anti-gay Shiite death squads, according to the London-based group Iraqi LGBT.

Ali Hili, the 33-year-old gay Iraqi exile who is the founder and coordinator of Iraqi LGBT, which has members, supporters, and informants throughout Iraq, told Gay City News this week by telephone from London, "New reports tell us that the seven gay men were arrested by the police in the cities of Karbala, Najaf, Basra, and Ammara, and no one has been able to obtain any news of them since December 2."

Since its founding in November 2005 by Hili and 30 other exiled gay asylum-seekers in the UK, Iraqi LGBT has documented well over 400 separate cases of LGBT Iraqis who have been murdered by the death squads. Most of these killings have been the work of the Badr Corps, the armed militia of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the largest Shiite political formation and the core of the current US-backed government. The Badr-Corps' spiritual guide, the 77-year-old Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a death-to-all-gays fatwa in 2005.

Last year, the Badr Corps was integrated into the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior, and its anti-gay death squads now wear police uniforms, have full martial powers, and can carry out kidnappings and murders of LGBT Iraqis with impunity.

This reporter also spoke this week with a Colorado Democratic congressional candidate who traveled to Iraq in December. Jared Polis, an openly gay Internet multi-millionaire seeking to succeed liberal Democrat Mark Udall, said he tried to make contact with gay Iraqis, but explained, "I got well over my head. After making some contacts in chat rooms, I eventually spoke to Ali Hili of Iraqi LGBT, who warned me that one of the contacts I had made was considered a probable agent of the death squads. And when I got to Baghdad, the gays I spoke to by telephone told me they were too afraid to be seen entering the Green Zone, where I was staying, for fear of being identified as collaborators. Homosexuality in Iraq is considered a Western import. I was eventually able to meet in person in Amman, Jordan, with some Iraqi gays and lesbians who had fled there in fear of their lives"

"All the gays and lesbians I talked to confirmed that there are security risks to their lives at all levels, and since it seems unlikely they would all share the same unfounded paranoia, I believe them," Polis said, adding that these LGBT Iraqis "all spoke very positively of their lives in the Saddam Hussein era, when they didn't have fundamentalist death squads trying to kill them or scare them into exile."

Polis told Gay City News that he was quite disappointed that Democratic members of Congress have not spoken out against the horrific anti-gay campaign in Iraq that has taken so many lives.

Doug Ireland can be reached through his blog, DIRELAND, at http://direland.typepad.com/direland/ The Iraqi LGBT website is at http://iraqilgbtuk.blogspot.com/. The group is desperately in need of donations to keep open its two remaining safe houses in Iraq, and donations can be made via the secure PayPal account on its site.

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