Iraq: Badr Organization Targeting LGBTs for Murder
Sunday March 26, 2006
Category: Gender and Sexuality | International Human Rights
Freelance journalist Doug Ireland reports that the Badr Organization, which represents the theocratic strain of Shi'ite Islam in Iraq, is targeting gays and transgender persons for murder throughout Badr-dominated southern Iraq. For those familiar with the Badr Organization's history--which includes a fatwa issued by its leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, stating that all gays "should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing"--this is not an exceptionally difficult claim to believe, but it is worth mentioning that neither Amnesty International nor Human Rights Watch have reported, as of yet, on the most recent allegations. I'll follow up when they do.
This would not be the first example of state-sponsored or party-sponsored violence directed against Iraq's gay and lesbian population. In 2001, President Saddam Hussein--in a ploy to appeal to the same radical leaders who now make up the core of the Badr Organization--signed a law mandating the death penalty for homosexuality. The law was revoked in 2003 under the interim government, which abolished the death penalty altogether, but a February 2006 study conducted by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs uncovered substantial evidence of violence directed against gay men in Iraq, committed in large part by family members as "honor killings" (in which one family member murders another, usually a woman, for "immodesty" or perceived sexual immorality in order to protect the reputation of the family). The original 1969 Iraqi Code included a sodomy law with a three-year prison sentence attached, and specified that any Iraqi who wishes to kill a gay male family member as an "honor killing" may do so with impunity.
The impact of the new Iraqi Constitution (which I will review later this week) may be positive, depending on how Article 17--stating that "each person has the right to personal privacy as long as it does not violate the rights of others or general morality"--is enforced. The "general morality" clause is troublesome, though it is significant that more explicitly anti-gay language, specifically stating that the clause may not be applied to "deviants," was quietly removed from the Constitution before it came up for a vote.
Freelance journalist Doug Ireland reports that the Badr Organization, which represents the theocratic strain of Shi'ite Islam in Iraq, is targeting gays and transgender persons for murder throughout Badr-dominated southern Iraq. For those familiar with the Badr Organization's history--which includes a fatwa issued by its leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, stating that all gays "should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing"--this is not an exceptionally difficult claim to believe, but it is worth mentioning that neither Amnesty International nor Human Rights Watch have reported, as of yet, on the most recent allegations. I'll follow up when they do.
This would not be the first example of state-sponsored or party-sponsored violence directed against Iraq's gay and lesbian population. In 2001, President Saddam Hussein--in a ploy to appeal to the same radical leaders who now make up the core of the Badr Organization--signed a law mandating the death penalty for homosexuality. The law was revoked in 2003 under the interim government, which abolished the death penalty altogether, but a February 2006 study conducted by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs uncovered substantial evidence of violence directed against gay men in Iraq, committed in large part by family members as "honor killings" (in which one family member murders another, usually a woman, for "immodesty" or perceived sexual immorality in order to protect the reputation of the family). The original 1969 Iraqi Code included a sodomy law with a three-year prison sentence attached, and specified that any Iraqi who wishes to kill a gay male family member as an "honor killing" may do so with impunity.
The impact of the new Iraqi Constitution (which I will review later this week) may be positive, depending on how Article 17--stating that "each person has the right to personal privacy as long as it does not violate the rights of others or general morality"--is enforced. The "general morality" clause is troublesome, though it is significant that more explicitly anti-gay language, specifically stating that the clause may not be applied to "deviants," was quietly removed from the Constitution before it came up for a vote.
Comments
No comments yet. Leave a Comment