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Iraq

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Feral:
Plight Of Iraqi Gays Worsens


--- Quote ---(London) As Iraq continues to spiral closer to all-out civil war the situation for the country's LGBT community worsens by the day a British gay rights leader said on Monday.

Outrage leader Peter Tatchell, writing in the leftist weekly Tribune, says that information reaching the organization points to a "Talibanisation of Iraq"

Citing sources within the country, Tatchell says that some Baghdad neighborhoods, are now under the de facto control of Taliban-style fundamentalist militias.

"Two militias are doing most of the killing," he writes. "They are the armed wings of major parties in the [US/UK backed] Iraqi government. Madhi is the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr, and Badr is the militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which is the leading political force in Baghdad's ruling coalition."
--- End quote ---

Mogul:
The television report by Channel 4 is available at their homepage. It seems that the report is based on the older general informations, with some newer background stories and pictures.

There is little hope that the situation will change in the next years, as the experience of Afghanistan after the Soviet occupation shows. It is very easy to destabilize a country, but very hard to establish public order again. Over the next years, we will probably watch the religious fundamentalism of worst kind winning terrain in even more countries with islamic background (Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia etc).

Watching how one of the most influential leaders of Iraq frankly declares on television that known homosexuals must be immediately killed and their bodies burnt, is a striking experience. There can be never ever any "equality" with straights, because the issue of our "unworthyness" will come over and over again, if not in this generation, than in the next one.

Feral:
Gays flee Iraq as Shia death squads find a new target


--- Quote ---Hardline Islamic insurgent groups in Iraq are targeting a new type of victim with the full protection of Iraqi law, The Observer can reveal. The country is seeing a sudden escalation of brutal attacks on what are being called the 'immorals' - homosexual men and children as young as 11 who have been forced into same-sex prostitution.
--- End quote ---


--- Quote ---Homosexuality is seen as so immoral that it qualifies as an 'honour killing' to murder someone who is gay - and the perpetrator can escape punishment. Section 111 of Iraq's penal code lays out protections for murder when people are acting against Islam.

'The government will do nothing to tackle this issue. It's really desperate when people get to the stage they're trading their children for money. They have no alternatives because there are no jobs,' Hili says.

Graphic photos obtained from Baghdad sources too frightened to identify themselves as having known a gay man, and seen by the Observer, show other gay Iraqis who have been executed. One shows two men, suspected of having a relationship, blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs - guns at the ready behind their heads - awaiting execution. Another picture captured on a mobile phone shows a gay man being beaten to death. Yet another shows a corpse being dragged through the streets after his execution.

One photograph is of the mutilated, burnt body of 38-year-old Karar Oda from Sadr City. He was kidnapped by the Badr Brigade in mid-June. They work with the Ministry of Interior and are the informal armed wing of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, who make up the largest Shia bloc in the Iraq parliament. Oda's family were given an arrest warrant signed by the Ministry of Interior which said their son deserved to be arrested and killed for immorality as a homosexual. His body was found ten days later.
--- End quote ---

What's sad is that I can't even tell if the Observer is reporting a worsening of the already bad situation in Iraq, or just finally reporting on a situation that has been intolerable for a long time now. I suspect the former. The death squads, which always had the tacit cooperation of whoever was in authority, now appear to be operating under official license, their murders re-defined as a "public service."

Mogul:
US occupational forces are simply not in control of the situation - they cannot protect Iraqi gays even if they wished to (which I doubt). Whatever the actual interests of the US administration in Iraq is, it is not creation of a democratic state. Like in many other cases, US diplomacy and intelligence have effectively supported tyranic and inhumane regimes, if only they acted in compliance with (assumed) US interests in the regions. We shall not forget that in the "freed" Afghanistan the islamic law (Sharia) is explicitely mentioned in the constitution as the corner stone of jurisdiction, and this means death to gays and to apostates, with government having actually no means to intervene.


--- Quote from: Feral on Fri, Jun 09, 2006, 04:14 ---"It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, when we're in a fledgling time like this, to go in and say, 'Here's these issues that are going to repel 80 percent of the population and this is what we want to inflict on you,'" he said. "We're trying not to get into too many values judgment type issues and just do the right thing."
--- End quote ---

This clearly means, American troops do not care about "democracy" and "universal values" - they simply must ensure their own safety and functioning ifrastructure in the region - either for the economic or for the military purposes, or both. At the end, this campaign was never meant to be a humanitary action.

K6:

--- Quote from: Feral on Fri, Jun 09, 2006, 04:14 ---In other words, despite the spokesman's protestations to the contrary, the US forces in Iraq know what is going on and are doing nothing.

--- End quote ---

Just like in Vietnam three decades ago,US armed forces are no match for a situation of guerrilla warfare.They are achieving no lasting political goal in Irak.They are not winning and they are thus in the process of loosing.They will eventually be compelled to quit,like they did in Vietnam.They
are not relevant to the situation in Irak for the present and the future.As for the recent past,they are,conjointly with the US government,
responsible for that situation.They have overthrown the previous regime of the late dictator Saddam Hussein,which was *secular* and kept
religious elements and factions quiet.There was no disorder in Irak before the arrival of US forces in 2003.

K6

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