Iraqi Gay Activist Murdered in Baghdad

A coordinator of an Iraqi LGBT advocacy group was assassinated Thursday. The 27-year-old university student, known only as Bashar, was assassinated in a barbershop in Baghdad. Militia members burst into the barbershop and "sprayed his body with bullets at point blank range," Peter Tatchell of the U.K gay advocacy OutRage! told the Guardian newspaper.

The student organized safe houses for gays and lesbians in Baghdad, where many seek refuge from militias that seek out and kill LGBT people. Iraqi LGBT, which Bashar led, houses about 40 gay men between the ages of 14 and 28, according to Newsweek.

A United Nations report on human rights, released in 2006, showed that while gays and lesbians are supposed to be protected by law in Iraq, LGBT residents must still live in hiding or face extreme brutality.

Scott Portman, with the human rights group Heartland Alliance, told CNN in 2006 that gays and lesbians in Iraq are often threatened because "homosexuality is sometimes interpreted by people in Iraq as being a Western import. So they can sometimes be targeted by insurgent groups or militias in part because of animosity toward the West and in part because homosexuality is not well-accepted in Iraqi society." (Michelle Garcia, The Advocate)

Reader Comments

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Name: USEyourHEADS
Date posted: 2008-09-27 5:01 PM
Hometown: Bloomington, Illinois/Fairbanks, Alaska

Comment:

For all the Jonboys and Chris S.'s out there who continue to spread the mistaken idea that folks "need to die horiffic deaths" for various things- think about how your attitude not only perpetuates the whacko hate and violence- but how it's also the exact same attitude that the extemists who do a share of the slaughtering, have. To stop the horiffic deaths one needs to lift themselves about the thought process that allows for their acceptance. Clearly your own narrow, self-serving views on religion, Arab nations, and violent crime is just as backward as those who commit "honeor" killings, or cut heads off of reporters in public in front of a video camera in the name of "whatever". You need to grow and mature beyond it, boys- or it's always gonna be. Always. If contemporay priveleged level-headed Americans in 2008 can think like you do- is it any wonder how someone in a dark, ultra-religious, primative, Arab nation with completely out of kelter ideals and beliefs can think it also?

Name: Terry Floyd Johnson
Date posted: 2008-09-27 1:59 PM
Hometown: Long Beach

Comment:

Bashar was truly a man of the world, and the Universe. He is a true humanitarian, who lived and died by his beliefs. Now about the precedent uttered by the head cleric over there; I am a minister- a spiritual guide- and you my friend are not. Your mouth drips hate and that isn't spirituality, but personal vendetta. As a minister, and a spiritual guide, I know make a spiritual codex and say that any religion or person of that religion who practices hate, shall merit the blessings of the truly peaceful and loving- to help transform them from a bastion of hate, to a river of love and gentleness. Anyone who holds hate in their heart as the supreme belief needs blessings to undo their blindness and heal to peace, love and tranquility. It is hard for a congregation or a religion to say it wants love and peace, when hate is what they utter. Let's hope all spiritual people will give blessings to those who hate, to help not only transform them, but transform the world.

Name: CHRIS SULLIVAN
Date posted: 2008-09-26 2:44 PM
Hometown: Chicago, IL

Comment:

"USEyourHEAD" - let me put this so that even a "dude" can understand it. These people premediitatively murdered an innocent man helping other people who live in a constant state of fear and often tortured/killed by their own families/government. People who have the GAUL to attempt to justify these acts in "the name of God". My expression "If there is a "God"... " is a way of using their own "logic" against them... they "use God" to justfy their behavior - my remark was to point out that others can do the same. Wishing they died "truly horrific deaths" - (what they did to this innocent man) is consistent with my personal sense of balance. YOU may not like it - and you know what "dude" - that's your rite - but I don't have to justify my point to anyone. I stand by my statement completely. As far as "putting down a drink" - that only reveals your own naive thought process.

Name: Jonboy
Date posted: 2008-09-25 11:00 PM
Hometown: Winner, SD

Comment:

Sadly, our own government which preaches the philosophy of equal treatment has surely fallen short. Our own military either through orders or apathy ignore the plights of the gay Iraqi. For all the good and high bar our country levels on this planet, it behooves its citizen to make it better. "Bashar" of Iraq did demonstrate courage in the face of such hate and torment of Iraq's gay citizen. I pray his death was so quick he did not know what happened. Regarding the comment from 'UseyourHead' I fail to understand what he means. I agree with Chris, that these murderers, who not only kill 'gays' but any person in Iraq who doesn't fall into their line of thinking should die a horrific death. And I might add one of pain of which they deserve. I am generally against the death penalty, but for these creaps of humanity; they deserve to be eliminated.

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