The story of current Britain resident Mehdi Kazemi—the gay, Iranian teen whose story has been making international headlines because he faces deportation back to his dangerous homeland—is shedding light on the horrors LGBT people face in the Middle East, and a local organization is taking action.
The Chicago-based non-profit Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights recently initiated a new project, the Global Equality Network. Global Equality Network is a group of LGBT organizations that operate in countries where LGBT people face serious oppression and danger. One of the organizations being helped is Iraqi LGBT, which provides safe houses, food, electricity and medical help to LGBT Iraqis, who are being systematically targeted. In Iraq, LGBT people are frequently hunted down, threatened and murdered by fundamentalist groups.
'This is a life-and-death case,' said Sean Casey, Heartland Alliance's Global Equality Network coordinator and director of Global HIV Initiatives. He added that there is a 'surprising little' amount of money currently coming into Iraqi LGBT.
Iraqi LGBT, founded in 2005, is in dire financial need. The organization already had to reduce the number of safe houses it provides, and can barely keep up with the money needed to keep its remaining two houses, both located in Baghdad, open. It costs roughly $2,000 a month to run one of the safe houses. Heartland Alliance is helping Iraqi LGBT to expand its work providing capacity-building and fundraising support. The immediate focus is getting the overseas organization the funds it needs to continue operating. It will send 100 percent of donations collected here in the U.S. to the organization to fund its network of safe houses.
Heartland Alliance will also work with Iraqi LGBT on more long-term solutions.
'Without stable or constant donations we will always struggle to find the next month's rent to pay, as we have to keep raising awareness and plead for help from groups and human rights and LGBT rights organizations,' said Iraqi LGBT's Ali Hili, who coordinates the group's efforts from the safety of the U.K. Hili was exiled, and is one of the group's founders.
Iraqi police and fundamentalist death squads have been targeting LGBT Iraqis because they think homosexuality is a 'crime against Islam.' Individuals known to be gay or rumored to be gay are hunted down and threatened, kidnapped or killed. In 2005, a religious leader of the Iraqi Shia Muslims issued a legal pronouncement, or 'fatwa,' calling for the death of all gays and lesbians. Following the pronouncement, death squads were formed to hunt down and kill LGBT people.
The Institute for War and Peace alleges that courts meant to try and sentence lesbians and gays to death now exist in Iraq.
Although violence against LGBT Iraqis has always occurred, it escalated since the U.S. invaded Iraq, said Hili. Iraqi LGBT volunteers risk their lives by providing safe houses, food, medical help and other needs to LGBT individuals fleeing persecution and death threats.
Hili said that although Iraqi LGBT has funds to pay rent through March, the organization needs to find money to run the safe houses in April.
A 2007 United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq human rights report confirmed the violenct campaign against LGBT people in Iraq waged by Iraqi police and militia. U.S. Reps. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Barney Frank, D-Mass., have called on the State Department to investigate this issue.
In November, Iraqi LGBT was forced to close three of its five safe houses in Iraq due to low funds. According to Hili, 42 LGBT individuals living in the closed safe houses had to return to the streets, and recently, eight of them have been reported as kidnapped or killed.
Over 425 cases of LGBT people, including minors, being killed have been reported to Iraqi LGBT since the U.S. invaded five years ago. That figure is most likely an underestimate because many such killings are unreported because families fear retribution.
