Iraq's gay community facing 'campaign of murder'

Gay men are being murdered across Iraq in a systematic campaign by militia, a human rights group said today.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on the Iraqi government to act urgently to stop the killings, warning that the “social cleansing” poses a new threat to security even as other violence recedes.

The bodies of several gay men were found in Baghdad’s main Shiite district of Sadr City earlier this year with the Arabic words for “pervert” and “puppy” - considered derogatory terms for homosexuals in Iraq – written on their chests.

HRW said the threats and abuses have since spread to the cities of Kirkuk, Najaf and Basra, although the practice remains concentrated in the capital.

“Murders are committed with impunity, admonitory in intent, with corpses dumped in garbage or hung as warnings on the street,” the report said.

Reliable numbers were not available, HRW said, blaming a combination of the failure of authorities to investigate crimes and the stigma preventing families from reporting the deaths. But it cited a well-informed U.N. official as saying in April that the death toll was probably “in the hundreds”.

The campaign has been largely blamed on Shiite extremists who have long targeted behaviour deemed un-Islamic, beating and even killing women for not wearing veils and bombing liquor stores.

Shiite militiamen have for the most part stopped their violence against rival Sunnis after radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s forces were routed last year and declared a ceasefire. But the report indicated they were conducting a less publicised campaign of social cleansing.

“The same thing that used to happen to Sunnis and Shiites is now happening to gays,” said a doctor who had fled Baghdad and was interviewed for the report. The doctor, who is gay, said several of his friends had been killed.

Homosexuals have been targeted throughout the Iraq war, but the killings appear to have intensified as improvements in overall security led gay men to begin going out to cafes in groups and socialising in public, according to the report.

HRW accused authorities of doing nothing to stop the killings and warned that reflected an overall inability to protect the people.

“These killings point to the continuing and lethal failure of Iraq’s post-occupation authorities to establish the rule of law and protect their citizens,” said Rasha Moumneh, a researcher at Human Rights Watch.

The report was based on interviews with more than 50 Iraqi men who identified themselves as gay as well as Iraqi human rights activists, journalists and doctors.

Sadr City, a teeming slum district, is a stronghold of al-Sadr’s militia, which launched several uprisings against American forces after the 2003 invasion.

Iraqi police said homosexuals were afraid of being seen in public while the militiamen were in charge of Sadr City but began going out more as violence declined.

Leaflets warning homosexuals that they will be killed “unless they come back to their senses” were distributed in Sadr City earlier this year and Shiite clerics have frequently called for the “education and rehabilitation” of gays in their Friday sermons.