Hate Crimes: May 2006 Archives

Shiite death squads in Iraq are carrying out a campaign that targets gay men for murder. This so-called “sexual cleansing” is happening under the nose of the U.S. military--but American authorities in the Green Zone have refused to do anything about it.

The highly organized campaign of beatings, kidnappings and murders of Iraqi gays follows a death-to-gays fatwa issued last October by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the 77-year-old Iranian who is supreme spiritual leader of all Shia Muslims in Iraq. The fatwa, available on Sistani’s official Web site, puts it this way, “The people involved [in homosexuality] should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.” [...]

Tahseen, a 31-year-old photography lab technician and underground gay activist, told me by telephone from Baghdad that, “Just last week, four gay people we know of were found dead. I am afraid to leave my room and go out in the street because I will be killed.” He said that men who seem obviously gay “cannot walk in the street. My best friend was recently killed for being gay.” [...]

“We desperately need protection!” Tahseen pleaded. “But, when we go to the Americans, they laugh at us and don’t do anything.”

According to Hili, “These assaults and murders have been reported by underground gay activists in Baghdad to the Green Zone, but the Americans don’t want to upset the religious authorities, and so they do nothing and treat gay Iraqis with contempt or as an object of humor.” (source)

It makes one proud to be an American doesn’t it? It’s just like the time that our troops liberated the Nazi death camps. The Jews were freed, and the homosexuals left were further persecuted by us.

Your actions define you. This is what we are as a nation. We are there in Iraq. If someone is killed for being gay, and we know about it and do nothing but laugh and add further ridicule, we might as well just pull the trigger ourselves.

The Russian people suffered greater casualties than any other country from Nazism - whose targets were not only Jews and Soviet citizens but also homosexuals. To see open fascists and Nazis parading in Moscow, and assaulting gay and lesbian people, is to trample on the memory of all those who fought against Nazism and particularly the 27 million Soviet citizens who died in the fight against fascism.

The support given by the Russian Orthodox Church, the Grand Mufti, and the Chief Rabbi to a ban on a peaceful gay pride march is reactionary and the Mayor of Moscow should uphold the right of gays and lesbians to demonstrate peacefully.

I strongly oppose the positions of both the Mayor of Moscow and the former Mayor of Warsaw, now the president of Poland, in banning gay rights marches and the support to this given by a number of religious authorities. I strongly endorse the European Parliament resolution of 18 January 2006 calling on all to ‘firmly to condemn and oppose homophobic hate speech or incitement to hatred and violence’ and to treat lesbian and gay people with ‘respect, dignity and protection.’ - Ken Livingstone, The Mayor of London, on the violence in Moscow at the first gay parade demonstration (source)

Yuri Luzhkov, the Mayor of Moscow, banned the parade saying that he was concerned about the safety of gays if the parade were to take place. And when Russian gays did defy that order and did the parade anyway, the police where there in force - not to stop the parade. They stood there and did nothing as gay members of the parade were beaten by an enraged crowd of protesters made up of religious fanatics and skinheads.

After the police felt the gays had had enough, they arrested the gays participating in the parade. The skinheads and the religious fanatics were allowed to leave.

So much for the good mayor’s intentions of protecting those at the parade. But words speak louder than actions. Here are Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s own words on the fact that the gay protesters wanted to lay flowers at the grave of the unknown warrior, a monument to those who died defeating Nazi Germany.

Our way of life, our morals and our tradition -- our morals are cleaner in all ways. The West has something to learn from us and should not race along in this mad licentiousness.

We may have a democratic country, but we live in an organized country and an organized city.

These gays wanted to lay flowers at the grave of the unknown warrior. This is a provocation. It is desecration of a sacred place.

These gays go there, and openly go up to the monument. It is a contamination. People burst through and of course they beat them up. - Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov (source)

Congratulations Mayor Luzhkov. You sound like a young Adolf Hitler. I’m going to repeat your words, and just substitute one word in the statement.

These Jews wanted to lay flowers at the grave of the unknown warrior. This is a provocation. It is desecration of a sacred place.

These Jews go there, and openly go up to the monument. It is a contamination. People burst through and of course they beat them up.

Some memorable quotes from a young Adolf Hitler...

The Jews are a Cancer on the breast of Germany - Adolf Hitler

Why does the world shed crocodile’s tears over the richly merited fate of a small Jewish minority? ... I ask Roosevelt, I ask the American people: Are you prepared to receive in your midst these well-poisoners of the German people and the universal spirit of Christianity? We would willingly give everyone of them a free steamer-ticket and a thousand-mark note for travelling expenses, if we could get rid of them. - Adolf Hitler

For us, this is not a problem you can turn a blind eye to-one to be solved by small concessions. For us, it is a problem of whether our nation can ever recover its health, whether the Jewish spirit can ever really be eradicated. Don’t be misled into thinking you can fight a disease without killing the carrier, without destroying the bacillus. Don’t think you can fight racial tuberculosis without taking care to rid the nation of the carrier of that racial tuberculosis. This Jewish contamination will not subside, this poisoning of the nation will not end, until the carrier himself, the Jew, has been banished from our midst. - Adolf Hitler

Get the point? The real burning question is this: Mayor Luzhkov, what would you really want to do to homosexuals if you had unquestionable power?

I think we all know the answer to that question. Suddenly, my desire to visit Russia has totally lost it’s appeal. I was naive. I thought they were further along than this, and I didn’t realize that the Mayor of Moscow was in spirit, a Nazi.

A 14-year-old boy has been shot by Iraqi police officers for the apparent crime of being gay, the Independent of London reported.

According to his neighbors in Baghdad’s al-Dura district, Ahmed Khalil was shot at point-blank range after a scuffle with the police.

Ali Hili, an exiled gay Iraqi who is Middle East affairs spokesman for the London gay rights group OutRage! said, “According to a neighbor, who witnessed Ahmed’s execution from his bedroom window, four uniformed police officers arrived at Ahmed’s house in a four-wheel-drive police pick-up truck.”

“The neighbor saw the police drag Ahmed out of the house and shoot him at point-blank range, pumping two bullets into his head and several more bullets into the rest of his body.”

Hili claimed that Ahmed was a “victim of poverty” and apparently killed by “fundamentalist elements in the Iraqi police.”

It is believed Ahmed slept with men for money to support his poverty-stricken family. They have since fled the area. (source)

You know, since I’ve returned from Europe, I have avoided the news. I have tried to avoid it on TV and have not read newspapers to any great extent. But I can’t seem to get this story out of my mind, and I guess at this point, I’m sorry I read it. But now that I have and my mind keeps dwelling on it, I will say something about it.

I guess the real burning question in my mind is... well, there are a few.

What was it like for this child (yes, he was a child of only 14 years old), to be dragged out in front of his home and executed by none other than the police - the people who are supposed to protect citizens? The same police that WE PUT IN POWER!

Will there be more of this to come?

Will the United States do one damn thing about it?

And finally, and this is the big question, Is this what we are defending? Is this the “democracy” that we are so proud of putting in place?

Please tell me that this isn’t the best we can do, because if it is, my President, his administration, and our Congress have done a horrible disservice to our men and women in uniform, our country, and to the spirit of democracy itself.