Torture and execution of Iraqi gays on rise

BEIRUT (AFP) - Iraqi militias are increasingly torturing and executing men suspected of homosexuality but the authorities in Baghdad are doing nothing to stop the violence, Human Rights Watch said on Monday.

"This report... documents a campaign of violence against men in Iraq who are suspected of being gay or who simply don't act masculine enough in the eyes of their killers," said Scott Long, director of HRW's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Programme.

The New-York based group said hundreds of men have been kidnapped, tortured and killed this year in a wave of violence that began in the Sadr City stronghold of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia in Baghdad.

The report, entitled "'They want us exterminated': Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq'," said it is almost impossible to calculate how many men were killed, but estimated the figure in the hundreds.

Mahdi Army spokesmen have suggested that violent action was the remedy for the "feminisation" of Iraqi men, according to the report in which survivors are quoted as saying militiamen invade homes and interrogate victims before killing them in order to identify other potential victims.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/090817/world/iraq_gay_rights

Nothing like bringing freedom. :eyes:

Those Shi'ite extremists are crazy butchers. Look how many Marxists Khomeini slaughtered in Iran.