Authorities ‘fail to act’ as militias target Iraqi gays

IRAQI militias are increasingly torturing and executing men suspected of homosexuality, but the authorities in Baghdad are doing nothing to stop the violence, Human Rights Watch said yesterday.

“This report... documents a campaign of violence against men in Iraq who are suspected of being gay or who simply don’t act masculine enough in the eyes of their killers,” said Scott Long, director of HRW’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Programme.

The New-York based group said hundreds of men have been kidnapped, tortured and killed this year in a wave of violence that began in the Sadr City stronghold of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia in Baghdad.