ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The leader of an Iran-backed group in Iraq on Tuesday labelled the “manifestations of homosexuality” as one of the most prominent challenges facing the country, resulting in strong criticism from LGBT+ rights groups and activists.
Prominent Iraqi Shiite leader Hadi al-Amiri took the stage in a ceremony celebrating the 41st anniversary of the foundation of Badr Organization, an Iraqi Shiite party and military organization that was formed to fight Iraq’s former regime.
Amiri spoke to an audience of Iraqi politicians, including the Iraqi president, prime minister, and parliamentary speaker, and said that “the phenomenon of atheism and manifestations of homosexuality and the spread of deviant ideas such as Wahhabism” were the most prominent challenges facing them.
The statement from Amiri comes as Iraq is in a political turmoil, unable to form a new government six months after the country held snap elections. However, neither atheism, nor homosexuality seems to have been an obstacle in front of Iraq’s political process.
Iraqi LGBT+ activists denounced the statement from Amiri, claiming that Badr Organization is in fact one of the main groups responsible for the “failure” in the Iraqi political process.
“Sadly, we are currently ruled by ‘leaders’ whose perception of reality is disturbing. Badr Organization and its leaders have perpetrated violence against people of different identities because they challenge the limited point of view they have of what Iraqis can be,” Amir Ashour, founder and chair of the board at IraQueer told Rudaw English on Tuesday.
Ashour added that groups that are responsible for “spreading so much violence in society” should not have the right to tell Iraqis what threats they face.
“They are the threat, and they continue to use issues like LGBT+ rights, diversity in religious and spiritual beliefs, and others in an attempt to distract the public from the fact that they are one of the groups that take the responsibility for the failure in the political process and the instability in Iraq,” he added.
Members of the LGBT+ community in Iraq are often persecuted by security forces and conservatives. They are subject to arrest, verbal abuse, sexual assault, and even murder.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) in March called on Iraqi and Kurdish authorities to take measures to end violations against members of the country’s LGBT+ community, adding to numerous other calls from rights groups over the years which have gone unanswered.
The crimes committed against the community range from gang rape, extra judicial killing, sexual violence, abduction and online harassment by individuals and groups according to a HRW report released on Wednesday morning which is based on 54 interviews with members of the Iraqi LGBT+ community.
HRW highlighted the failure of the authorities in protecting these citizens of the country and urged Kurdish and Iraqi authorities to “investigate all reports of armed-group or other violence against people targeted due to their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity and expression; prosecute, fairly try, and appropriately punish those found responsible; and publicly and expressly condemn all such violence.”
“The government should take all appropriate measures to end torture, disappearances, summary killings, and other abuses, including based on sexual orientation and gender expression and identity, and compensate survivors of serious abuse and the families of all victims of killings by armed groups,” the watchdog added in their press release however, despite similar calls being made on several occasions, the LGBT+ community in Iraq continue to suffer from continuous societal persecution and discrimination.
RELATED: Queer in Iraq: persecuted ‘for being themselves’
A crackdown on LGBT+ people in Iraq in 2009 saw deaths that probably number "in the hundreds," a well-informed official at the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) told HRW at the time.
This is not the first time Iraqi politicians have publicly spoken out against the LGBT+ community.
The European Union, the World Bank MENA, and the Canadian and British embassies to Iraq all hoisted the flag in Baghdad in 2020 to “highlight the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.”
The move came under attack by several Iraqi leaders such as then deputy speaker of the parliament Bashir Hadad, and influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Sadr tweeted at the time calling LGBTQ+ people “mentally ill and in need of recovery and guidance.” He described the raising of the flags as “attacks on all People of the Book, not just Muslims.”
Earlier in 2020, Sadr went as far as claiming that the coronavirus had been caused by the legalization of gay marriage – a claim which has no scientific basis.
However, with all the antagonism the LGBT+ community faces from Iraq’s political class, Ashour believes that those in support of such statements are very few, and Iraq is going towards a brighter path.
“There might be certain people who buy what people like al-Amiri is saying, but the fact is, most people, especially younger people, are moving in a very different direction. A direction that is more peaceful and inclusive of all Iraqis,” Ashour said.
