With midnight raids and chat-room traps, Egypt launches sweeping crackdown on gay community
Source: The Washington Post
By Sudarsan Raghavan October 18 at 4:00 AM
CAIRO — A crackdown on gay people in Egypt intensified in recent days as security forces raided cafes in downtown Cairo and courts delivered harsh prison sentences, further driving the nation’s LGBT community underground.
More than 60 people have been arrested, said human rights activists, since a concert last month by a rock group where some members of the audience waved a rainbow flag — photos of which went viral on social media and triggered public outrage.
Security forces have also detained people at their homes in the middle of the night and used apps and online chat rooms to entrap those perceived to be gay. Some cafes frequented by the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community have been shut down.
Some of those arrested have endured beatings and other forms of abuse in their prison cells while others have been subjected to forced anal examinations, human rights activists said.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/with-midnight-raids-and-chat-room-traps-egypt-launches-sweeping-crackdown-on-gay-community/2017/10/17/6a8397fc-b03e-11e7-9b93-b97043e57a22_story.html
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Now that the USA has voted against condemnation of gay death penalties and has a VP that, but Trump's own words "Wants to hang'em all," Egyptian officials figure they can do what they want, and the dominant superpower will just watch or maybe aid and abet them in making homosexuality illegal.
Homosexuality was in many ways illegal in the USA scant 50 years ago. The Stonewall riots were in 1969. Making LGBTQ people illegal makes their lives incredibly dangerous. It leads to abuse, violence, murders, arrests, and forcing them underground causes risky behaviour which can lead to spread of disease, and victimization by predators.
Does anyone remember the "Pink Scare" (sometimes "Lavender Scare"
as a subset of the "Red Scare" in the late 40's and 50's? Homosexual men were considered to be a security threat to the USA and denied jobs (esp. gov't jobs) because of this. The real reason they were a threat is because if a Russian operative were to out one of them as being gay, their lives would be over in the USA. They would be arrested, frequently they were married to a woman as "cover" because that was what you did in those days if you were a gay man, and that would be the end of that family. So, this was considered leverage for blackmail to reveal gov't secrets, etc...
