Peterson Toscano's A Musing

Fatal Attacks on Iraqi Gays

On the Democracy Now radio program today I learned about the shocking attacks by Shia Death Squads agains Gay Iraqis.

Shiite death squads in Iraq have been systematically targeting gay Iraqis for persecution and execution. The attacks follow a death-to-gays fatwa issued by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani last October. In a question and answer section of his website, Sistani says homosexuality is "forbidden" and calls for the killing of gays in the "worst, most severe way."

Host Amy Goodman interviewed Ali Hili, a

...gay Muslim Iraqi living in exile in Britain. He fled Iraq two years ago. Five months ago he founded the Abu Nawas Group to support persecuted gay Iraqis. He joins us on the line from London. He does not want to expose his face as he has received several death threats.

Hili states,

It's a very dark age for gays and lesbians and transsexuals and bisexuals in Iraq right now. And the fact that Iraq has been shifted from a secular state into a religious state was completely, completely horrific. We were very modern. We were very, very Western culturalized -- Iraq -- comparing to the rest of the Middle East. Why it's been shifted to this Islamic dark ages country?

To read a transcript or download an mp3 of the program click here.

Also interviewed was Doug Ireland, the writer who broke the story for Gay City News.

Last night I watched the powerfully presented PBS Frontline's The Ghosts of Rwanda, and learned afresh how the international community did virually nothing while a genocide occured in Rwanda. The Rwandans cried out for help and within a few weeks over 800,000 were butchered. We see horrors in Darfur and in Iraq--people crying out for justice for safety for life. We must do something.

posted by Peterson Toscano @ 3:53 PM