BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The man holds up two pictures of his friend, which tell the story of what it now means to be gay in Iraq.
One photograph, which the man keeps on his mobile phone, is a portrait of a handsome youth with a stylish haircut. The other, a printed snapshot taken last month, shows the body of the same young man lying sprawled in the back of a white pickup truck, his head disfigured by blunt trauma.
According to a police report, Saif Asmar was found bludgeoned to death in the afternoon on February 17.
“They laid him down on the pavement and smashed his head with a cement block,” said his 25-year-old friend, who works as a doctor’s assistant and also as a gay activist under the pseudonym Roby Hurriya. He did not disclose his real name. Homosexuals have lived in fear in Iraq for years, notably since religious militia claimed control of the streets in the sectarian warfare that followed the US-led invasion of 2003, which toppled Saddam Hussein. But Hurriya – whose adopted surname means “Freedom” in Arabic – says a surge in killings in the past two months is by far the worst he has seen.
Since the start of this year, death squads have been targeting two separate groups – gay men, and those who dress in a distinctive, Western-influenced style called “emo”, which some Iraqis mistakenly associate with homosexuality. At least 14 young men have been bludgeoned to death in the last three weeks in east Baghdad, an area dominated by Shi’ite Muslims, according to local security and medical sources who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Killings have been reported by other methods and in other cities as well. Since national authorities are not recording the incidents as a special category, the total is not known.
In recent days, militiamen from Shi’ite groups, mainly in the Sadr City district, have circulated lists of names of people targeted for killings. The threats refer to “obscene males and females”, understood to refer to both gays and emos – an American teenage subculture of spiky hair and black clothes that has spread to Iraq. Hurriya says he believes at least 200 men have been murdered in recent years either for being gay or appearing effeminate. He personally knows 66 of them.
During an interview at the Reuters bureau in central Baghdad, he opens a satchel and brings out a series of photographs of bludgeoned corpses of young men found on the streets of Baghdad. He has been documenting the killings and running a safe house for gay men.
