Gay Flight Attendant Kicked Out of Qatar Amid Anti-LGBTQ+ Crackdown

A year after Qatar hosted soccer's World Cup with promises to improve the situation of LGBTQ+ people in the country, that situation is actually deteriorating.

Gilbert Ignatius, a gay man who was deported to his home country of Indonesia last summer, recently told his harrowing story to British newspaper The i.And Qatari LGBTQ+ activist Nas Mohamed, now living in the U.S., says there are many stories that are similar or worse.

Ignatius was celebrating his 32^nd birthday May 14, having a drink with friends in a bar in a hotel in Doha, the capital city of Qatar, when he and his companions were summoned by police. He had lived in Qatar since 2016, working as a cabin crew member for state-owned Qatar Airways.

A security guard told the group that officers from the Criminal Investigation Department, which is part of the nation’s police service, wanted to speak to them. They were taken to a room near the hotel’s entrance, where the officers wiped the faces of Ignatius and others, finding some were wearing tinted moisturizer. Then the officers confiscated their phones and ID cards and took them to a police station.

There, officers said Ignatius must be a sex worker because of his expensive accessories, which they doubted he could afford on his airline salary. “The first thing they asked me was, ‘How much do you earn every night? How much if you f*** him and how much if he f*** you? I know what you’re doing,’” he told The I. He protested that he had no need to engage in sex work, which is illegal in Qatar, as is gay sex, both because of his job and because his parents own a business in Indonesia.

But the officers used the tinted moisturizer and a picture from Ignatius’s phone, of him attending Pride in Bangkok, as evidence that he was gay and a sex worker. He was forced to sign a paper written in Arabic, a language he does not speak or read, as was one of his friends who also worked for Qatar Airways. The next day they lost their jobs, and in June they were deported.

“It’s left me traumatized,” Ignatius said. He has a new job with JetStar Airways of Australia, but memories of his detention and deportation still give him anxiety attacks. Since the World Cup, many other LGBTQ+ people in Qatar have had experiences similar to his, he said.

“There were lots of undercover police doing this in shopping centers, restaurants, clubs, and bars, targeting mostly people from emerging countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand,” he said. “They’re wiping people’s faces, and those found using foundation or anything that is tinted are taken into custody and deported.” Other LGBTQ+ people in Qatar have been extorted by officers who found them on gay dating apps, he added.

Mohamed, who won asylum in the U.S. last year and started the Aiwan Foundation to support LGBTQ+ Qataris, said persecution has stepped up this year. That’s happened despite assurances around the World Cup, which concluded last December. Retired soccer star David Beckham, who was an ambassador for the tournament, has said he talked to many LGBTQ+ fans who “felt it was the safest World Cup they’d had for a long time,” but Mohamed questioned that account.

“Why would anybody do that when there is actual evidence of abuse and atrocities?” Mohamed told The i. And the situation has worsened since this summer, with LGBTQ+ people being jailed and, upon release, being forced into conversion therapy, he said.

Qatar’s government “doubled down hard,” he said. “It has been brutal. There were so many arrests. And now they shifted the operations from the Preventive Security Department to another arm of the Ministry of Interior, which is a lot more vicious. They have been jailing, beating, and abusing LGBT people. Three people I’ve been in touch with were captured in the last 30 days and were abused.” Those from other countries are usually deported, he noted.

There is little pressure on Qatar to change, he said, because it serves as an important intermediary between Western countries and Middle Eastern ones with Islamic fundamentalist governments — and even terrorist groups such as Hamas. Qatar recently helped arrange the release of American hostages held by Hamas during its war with Israel.

“So the West wants to continue to have Qatar as an ally that can bridge negotiations,” Mohamed said. “And for those entities [such as Hamas] to continue to engage with Qatar, it has to be aligned with their value system. So Qatar can’t give gay rights publicly.”

He also expressed concern that Saudi Arabia, another country with an anti-LGBTQ+ government, will likely host the 2034 World Cup. “We’re still giving it to abusive, authoritative regimes,” he said. “We need to move away from that — it gives the illusion of free speech.” To pro-LGBTQ+ countries and activists who will be involved with that event, he said, “Change is not going to happen magically with your presence. We need your actions. What are you doing? Are you giving proceeds of your football money to people or organizations addressing the human rights violations? Or are you just empowering abusers and walking away?”

Pictured: Gilbert Ignatius