Sun 19 Apr 2009 In: International News View at Wayback View at NDHA
The BBC has obtained amateur video footage from Baghdad showing a terrified Iraqi boy being questioned by authorities over wearing women's clothes. Iraq's LGBT activists now claim around 60 gay citizens have been killed since December, in a campaign by police to rid the country of gay people by raiding private homes during events such as gay union ceremonies. "Life has become like hell, believe me, like hell," said one gay man in Baghdad. "Whenever I go anywhere, there are checkpoints, and when they see us, they know about us, they detain us and question us, and they want to touch me, yes, to molest me." But police officials deny they have anything to do with the anti-gay crackdown. "We have no policy of arresting gays just for being gay," Police Criminal Investigator Diah Hussein Sahi told the BBC. "There's no law to justify that, unless the commit indecent acts in public." Amnesty International is demanding urgent and concerted action by the US-backed Iraqi government in the face of the killing of an estimated 25 young gay Iraqi men in the last few months.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News Staff
First published: Sunday, 19th April 2009 - 9:47am