[R-G] I'm Gay and Iraqi: Please Help Me!

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

It seems that Saddam Hussein's reputation has only gone up after his
death. -- Yoshie

<http://www.advocate.com/print_article_ektid80106.asp>
April 22, 2009
I'm Gay and Iraqi: Please Help Me!

The situation for gay Iraqis has never been more dire: With reports of
torture, "anal gluing," and murder coming out of the Middle East, is
the U.S. surge to blame for this sudden explosion of antigay violence?
By Michael Luongo

COMMENTARY: “I am gay and I am Iraqi, please help me.”

A contact of mine told me he came across this comment in an e-mail.
The only thing more extraordinary than the message was the location.
He was sitting in the U.S. embassy in Baghdad when he read it.

My contact said he was reaching out to me because things were “heating
up” for gay men in Iraq. Over the years, he said he'd received several
e-mails from gay Iraqis that came through the U.S. embassy’s website
-- they are a “single source of frustration, because I feel completely
helpless and heartbroken reading stories about an Iraqi that is
sending an e-mail probably just a few miles from where I am sitting in
the embassy, and telling me that there is a militia coming just down
the block and they have a list.”

I traveled to Baghdad in the summer of 2007, during the height of the
U.S. surge, to get a better handle on the situation for gays in Iraq.
During my visit I met with a few gay Americans who worked at the
embassy, all of whom spoke off-the-record when giving me quotes and
providing information.

In recent months, things have certainly been "heating up" -- articles
from The New York Times, the BBC, and the Los Angeles Times, as well
as many other mainstream and gay publications, point to the horrors of
what is happening in Iraq. Each article seems more harrowing than the
last, attempting to make sense of something that's hard to fathom for
the readers who digest these articles from the comfort and safety of
an America where "dont ask, don't tell" and same-sex marriage make up
the bulk of news coverage.

Some outlets -- particularly in the gay press -- point to reports by
Iraqi LGBT, a London-based activist group reporting that gay men in
Iraq are on death row and that they've received a letter from a gay
Iraqi pleading for help, all of which has been next to impossible to
verify. Others point to the reassertion of power by militias,
particularly in Sadr City, a Shia slum within Baghdad where the Mahdi
Army has for years engaged in a reign of terror against locals and the
U.S. military.

In addition to the direct killings of gay men by the militia was the
report of a fire-bombing of a neighborhood café popular among gay men.
Still more articles look to the influence of militias in combination
with family honor killings -- gay men who have been thrown out into
the streets to fend for their safety, or Iraqis who have killed gay
family members.

The most disturbing report comes from the Arab-language news source
Alarabiya, describing the torture and killing of at least seven gay
men who have had their anuses closed using a special glue, with Iraqi
officers having forced them to take a medicine inducing diarrhea and
death. While the English-language media has conflicting reports on
what is happening in Iraq, this report, created by those who speak the
language and have the best resources to interview local political and
religious officials, gives perhaps the best indication of how terrible
the situation has become for LGBT Iraqis.

SCOTT LONG XSMALL (HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH) | ADVOCATE.COMIn the course of
my work, I often come across horrific stories like these. I am a
journalist, not an activist, so the priority is to cover them --
still, people often ask what they can do. The answer is to put the
pressure on Washington -- to show our leaders this is a serious topic
-- one that needs their attention now.

As a child, I grew up in a neighborhood where many of my friends were
the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. Because of the direct
connection to this historical event, it always baffled me when we
would learn in school of American indifference to the 1930s buildup to
that era. Certainly, reading about overseas suffering can seem an
abstraction, whether 70 years ago or today. Yet, whether today or
then, how many people could have been saved by writing letters,
contacting politicians, or by directly sending money to organizations
which aid refugees?

Though what is going on in Iraq with gay persecution is not at the
same level of the Holocaust, the major difference is that the reign of
terror is the direct result of the U.S. invasion, which completely
changed the balance of power, unleashing the situation that exists
today. In addition to the impact on the LGBT community, the refugee
situation in Iraq impacts literally millions of people who have had to
flee their homes since 2003.

My visit in 2007 lasted a month, with interviews in both the safer
Kurdish region as well as Baghdad. Even with a direct visit trying to
look at facts on the ground, it was hard to parse what exactly was
going on. Iraq is a place wracked by violence, where even gathering
information can be deadly. Killings of gay men are often random --
seen as a side effect of living in Baghdad. Signs someone is gay --
long hair and stylish clothes -- are often the signs one is
Westernized, an excuse for murder by those bent on overthrowing the
occupation. It is also apparent that men who are stereotypically gay
are targets for abduction and murder, even at military checkpoints our
own government has established throughout the city.

Scott Long (pictured), who heads the LGBT division of Human Rights
Watch, is currently in Iraq aiding gay men seeking refuge. He told me
via e-mail that “I spoke today to a gay man who escaped Baghdad after
multiple attempts by armed men to abduct him off the street. He was
almost speechless with terror.”

Long added, “There’s obviously an enormous moral burden upon the U.S.
for creating a climate in which violence against all kinds of
vulnerable groups could metastasize with impunity. That doesn't
detract from the responsibility of the government of an independent
Iraq to institute rule of law and protect all its own population.”

As Americans looking into this issue from the relative safety of our
own lives, we must ask what responsibility the United States bears and
what can be done to put pressure on the Iraqi government. Baghdad
under Saddam was a cosmopolitan city with a relative tolerance toward
gays as part of the fabric of society. Saddam even kept a network of
gay spies to sleep with gay foreign diplomats and extract secrets,
perhaps the strongest acknowledgement of gay culture before the
occupation.

But the invasion changed all of that, wiping out the cosmopolitan
society, with gay culture, music, art, women in the workforce, and
other factors under attack as militias and religious leaders asserted
power in the chaos.

Openly gay U.S. congressman Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat, visited
Iraq in early April and found in his discussions by phone with gay
Iraqi men that “many fondly reminisced about life under Saddam.”

He said most gay people are closeted, as they are in places like
Jordan and Syria, where many gay Iraqis, among other refugees, have
fled to escape violence and, in many cases, await asylum. These
countries do not have perfect LGBT rights records, Polis commented,
but “at the very least, [gay citizens] don’t live in constant fear for
their lives.”

Polis’s findings mirror the comments made by the gay men I met in
Iraq. It is not hard to argue that the locus of responsibility for the
deaths of gay men in Iraq lies squarely with the U.S. decision to
invade the country. The occupation changed the political structure of
the country, creating a power vacuum that led to the rise of a
militant insurgency, using Islamic fundamentalism as a cover for its
horrific deeds.

No matter one’s opinion of the war, the question is what to do now.
According to Polis, there are “some friendly elements in the Iraqi
government,” but the “problem is the breakdown of the chain of command
and the failure of duty to protect their lesbian, gay, and
transgendered citizens.” His visit was a way “to make sure our
government is aware of the issue and raise the issue with our
counterparts in Iraq.”

The recent killings reflect a dilemma in U.S. policy. The situation in
Iraq is overall significantly safer than it was during my 2007 visit.
By suppressing the militant and religious elements, the surge created
a more vibrant Baghdad, more akin to the cosmopolitan society that
once existed. Shops have reopened, artists are displaying in galleries
again, women are returning to work, and young couples have begun to
hold hands again in parks that dot the city. But the safety induced by
the surge has also allowed for a more visible presence of Baghdad’s
gay community, and with this has come the resurgence of the
once-discredited militant groups, particularly the Mahdi Army based
out of Sadr City.

According to my contact at the embassy, “our local staff, some of whom
live in Sadr City, have told us that word on the streets is that this
is the work of JAM,” referring to the Mahdi Army. He emphasized these
are “not tribal and not familial disputes.” My contact explained that
since the surge, the security situation has improved and militant
groups have been suppressed, leading to the Mahdi Army saying they are
not “there protecting the virtues of the community; this is why guys
are coming out now -- they’re starting to act more Western, they’re
acting more effeminate.”

"The impression is that these incidents are a way for these JAM
elements to reassert their presence in a way that is culturally
acceptable.” As the surge has discredited them, “they have to take
issues overall that make them look legitimate, and the culture being
what it is in this part of the world, Iraq in this case, in their
minds, this is a legitimate cause, rooting out homosexuality.”

Under the Obama administration, a similar surge will be conducted in
Afghanistan, diverting resources from one occupied country to another.
Ultimately, the United States will leave Iraq. While a new government
exists within the country, how long it will hold up without the U.S.
presence remains to be seen. Perhaps we can look at gays in Iraq as
canaries in a coal mine, an indication of what is to come in a future
Iraq. The absence of American and other international forces may lead
again to the deadly chaos that existed just after the invasion.

The question now for gay Americans is, What can we do? Myriad
organizations are focused on the issue, from Iraqi LGBT to Human
Rights Watch to the San Francisco–based Organization for Refuge,
Asylum, and Migration, whose executive director Neil Grungras said,
“Even if the West is helpless to stop the antigay terror in Iraq, the
U.S. and other enlightened nations can save the lives of thousands of
gays who will otherwise be returned to certain death. In 2008 the U.S.
accepted over 12,000 Iraqi refugees. In 2009 it intends to take in
17,000. We are urging the U.S. and other traditional resettlement
countries to set aside sufficient slots to save these vulnerable
refugees' lives.”

My contact in Baghdad told me that “arguments have been made for
expanding the refugee program, to allow for processing of minority
groups such as LGBT Iraqis at the American embassy in Baghdad. But
there are other minority groups -- Christians, women, Sunnis who live
in and are surrounded by Shiite communities, Shiites surrounded by
Sunnis -- that face just as great a threat and danger.”

He added, “Requests for help that come our way do not go unnoticed or
unheard. But making public any effort to assist gay Iraqis is
precarious because we are operating in what remains -- relative to the
rest of the world -- a very conservative society. It is suspected that
the Sadr City murders carried out earlier this month were by militias
and conservative elements within Iraqi society, which tend to be
anti-American to begin with. If the U.S. government is publicly seen
by these groups as putting pressure on the government of Iraq, that
will, quite possibly, make things worse for gay Iraqis.”

It is clear though that in another occupied country, Afghanistan,
outside international pressure can change things. Afghanistan recently
approved what has come to be called the "marriage rape law,"
interpreted to mean that men can force their wives to have sex with
them and deny them the right to leave the home without permission. It
seemed something that the Taliban would pass, not an elected
U.S.–backed government. An international uproar ensued, along with the
implicit threat that billions of dollars in aid would be denied
Afghanistan if the law were not reexamined.

Polis suggests using those “friendly elements in the Iraqi government”
to work on gay issues. The importance of this ultimately will be
similar to what was experienced in Afghanistan on women’s issues, and
he said, “The eyes of the international human rights community will
judge Iraq by how they treat those who face discrimination in their
society.”

My contact at the embassy told me to let readers of The Advocate know
that “if there is any piece of advice I can give our community and
those who care about the plight of gay Iraqis, it is this: Put
pressure on Washington to do more, put pressure on your government.
The only way our leaders ever know something is serious is when we
stand up and show just how serious we are about it.” He added, “If
these killings in what remains a war zone don't show the world that
people do not choose at their leisure to be persecuted, I don't know
what will.”