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Gay Iraqis flee to Lebanon |
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Written by Richard Clarendon
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Wednesday, 13 May 2009 14:20 |
 Gay Iraqi men targeted by fundamentalist death squads in Baghdad are fleeing to the more tolerant city of Beirut in neighbouring Lebanon, The Huffington Post reports.In recent months, videos showing gay and gender-variant men being harassed by Iraqi security forces have surfaced in the international media, with reports suggesting the Iraqi government is turning a blind eye to attacks by the paramilitary Madhi Army against gays and trans people. Having visited Beirut to verify claims that the mutilated bodies of gay men were turning up at hospitals and morgues, Scott Long, the director of the LGBT Rights division of Human Rights Watch, said the intensity and scope of the violence was “astonishing”. Gays who flee to Beirut will find an established but still largely underground scene, which one local lesbian described to the US-based news service Worldfocus as being “big, but people aren’t open about it. You have to know where to go”. Nonetheless, Beirut’s LGBT community is becoming more open. In February this year a demonstration was held to protest the bashing of two gay men by plainclothes police (pictured), suggesting that the gay rights struggle continues to advance in Lebanon.
AP Photo/Hussein Malla
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