Group says Iraq video proves claims of increasing violence against gays

A group of gay Iraqi exiles said on Mar. 11 it has obtained video evidence of mounting attacks on gays and is calling on the US and Britain to intervene. The group, Iraqi LGBT - based in London, said that the attacks come from the Badr Corps, made up of Shiites seeking an Islamic republic, and from police. The videos show LGBT people being arrested, held in custody and having their heads shaved and taunted with songs of hate and revenge. One of the videos purportedly shows two gay men on their way to what Iraqi LGBT calls a wedding ceremony when they are stopped at a checking point between Al-Kut and Baghdad and violently pulled out of their car. Iraqi LGBT said the second video is of a trans person identified only as Ali. The group said that Ali was living in a Basra safe house supported and run by the Iraqi LGBT. Many LGBT people face threats and violence, and these shelters are the only refuges from attacks, the organization said. In November, Iraqi LGBT was forced to close the three safe houses it ran in the south of Iraq, including the one in Basra, due to lack of funds. "We have, sadly, lost contact with many of those who were sheltered in our safe houses which we were obliged to close," Ali Hili of Iraqi LGBT said in a statement. "Of those with whom we have still had some contact, we know that they have sold everything they had to survive and rent a room to live in, as they were all rejected by their families because of their homosexuality. Some have been forced to work as prostitutes because they are too obviously gay and can get no other work." Iraqi LGBT said that the video was apparently made by police for their amusement. It was obtained by members of the group video by bribing a police officer with $200. "[I]n addition to showing the police standing around and laughing and making crude remarks in Arabic about Ali's sexuality, it is also dubbed with hate and revenge music in Arabic," said Hili. Iraqi LGBT said it has documented over 400 separate cases of LGBT Iraqis who have been murdered by Shia militias. Most of these killings have been the work of the Badr Corps, the armed militia of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the largest Shiite political formation and the core of the current US-backed government. The Badr-Corps spiritual guide, the 77-year-old Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a death-to-all-gays fatwa in 2005. Last year Hili told an international conference that the US-led coalition is doing little to stop the killings. In January the Iraq government said it was considering the release of some 5,000 prisoners but a spokesperson said it would not include terrorists or homosexuals.