UNHCR's ELIGIBILITY GUIDELINES FOR ASSESSING THE ...

evidence that over forty people had been killed based on their sexual orientation or
identity. 685 UNAMI HRO reported that in the first week of December 2006 alone, at least
five homosexual males were allegedly kidnapped from Sha’ab District in Baghdad.
Reportedly, their personal documents and information contained in their computers were
confiscated. The mutilated body of one of the kidnapped individuals was found a few days
later in the same area. 686 The activist group to which the kidnap victims belonged also
reported that two lesbian members providing a safe house for gay Iraqis and children
seeking to escape the sex trade were killed by extremist militia in June 2006. 687 Iraqi gays
speaking to UNHCR in host countries indicated that anti-gay incidents are drastically
underreported since families may be implicated in anti-gay violence or are unwilling to
admit that slain members were homosexual.
Militias have reportedly been threatening families of men believed to be gay, stating that
they will begin killing family members unless the men are handed over or killed by the
family. 688 Residents of Baghdad’s Al-Amiriyah and Al-Jamia’a neighbourhoods report the
public killing of gays and the targeting of their relatives. 689 Family members have also
reported community vindication for killing their gay sons. A Baghdad father stated that he
was released without trial to social approval once he explained that he had hanged his son
upon discovering he was gay. 690
“Muslims believe that homosexual behaviour is an offence against Islam and anyone who
behaves in this way should be sentenced to death without compassion”, Sheikh Ali Amar,
a Baghdad cleric, told IRIN in February 2006. 691 Shari’a courts are reportedly operating in
predominantly Shi’a towns, including Al-Amarah and Basrah, and in Baghdad’s Shula,
Hurriyah and Sadr City Districts, and are extra-judicially and unofficially trying, convicting
and executing gay Iraqis. 692 Such courts have reportedly been operating in militiacontrolled
areas of Iraq, trying and executing perceived political opponents as well as
numerous classes of persons seen as engaging in offences against Islam. 693 A clerical judge
in one such court stated that he believed that homosexuality was on the decline in Iraq,
since “most [gays] have been killed and others have fled.” 694
685
David France, Dying to Come Out: The War on Gays in Iraq, Gentlemen’s Quarterly Magazine, February
2007, http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_5304.
686
UNAMI HRO, December 2006 Human Rights Report, p. 26, see above footnote 10.
687
Tris Reid-Smith, Iraq Police Abduct Gays at Gunpoint, Pink Paper, 29 November 2006,
http://www.globalgayz.com/iraq-news.html#article19.
688
McGrory, see above footnote 684.
689
IWPR, Baghdad Gays Fear for Their Lives, Iraq Crisis Report No. 199, 20 October 2006,
http://www.iwpr.net/?p=icr&s=f&o=324756&apc_state=heniicrd6201b571b0dd9ebc3b068b94ab0b968.
690
IRIN, Iraq: Male homosexuality still a taboo, 5 February 2006, http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?
ReportId=26110.
691
Ibid.
692
IWPR, Baghdad Gays Fear for Their Lives, see above footnote 689.
693
Ellen Knickmeyer, “We Don’t Need a Verdict,” One Commander Says, The Washington Post, 25 August
2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/24/AR2006082401721.html.
694
IWPR, Baghdad Gays Fear for Their Lives, see above footnote 689. See also “Persons Accused of “Un-
Islamic” Behaviour”.
127