"Better Off" in Iraq?
Human Rights Watch issued a report ("They Want Us Exterminated", 17 August 2009) with the subtitle "Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq".
From the introduction:
A killing campaign moved across Iraq in the early months of 2009. While the country remains a dangerous place for many if not most of its citizens, death squads started specifically singling out men whom they considered not "manly" enough, or whom they suspected of homosexual conduct. The most trivial details of appearance-the length of a man's hair, the fit of his clothes-could determine whether he lived or died.
We've known, through scattered news reports and smuggled blog postings that this has been going on. The Iraqi government seems uninterested in doing anything about it. The US Government, amidst rumors / reports that US soldiers have been involved in the abuse and murder.
Reporting on the report, the Washington Post wrote
Although the scope of the problem remains unclear, hundreds of gay men may have been killed this year in predominantly Shiite Muslim areas, the report's authors said, basing their conclusion on interviews with gay Iraqi men, hospital officials and an unnamed United Nations official in Baghdad.
"The government has done absolutely nothing to respond," said Scott Long, director of the gay rights program at Human Rights Watch. "So far there has been pretty much a stone wall."
Homosexuality was tacitly accepted during the last years of Saddam Hussein's rule, but Iraqis have long viewed it as taboo and shameful.
[Ernesto Londoño, "Gay Men Targeted In Iraq, Report Says", Washington Post, 17 August 2009.]
We recall vividly, of course, the Bush rhetoric about Hussein used to justify the war, but one is forced now to wonder: are gay men better off in Iraq than they were eight years ago?