Peter Tatchell: gay Iraqis fear for their lives

Veteran human rights campaigner and Green Party parliamentary candidate Peter Tatchell talks to Claudia Tanner about the gruesome injustices facing gay Iraqis, and how he is in constant fear for his life because of his work.

It’s Sunday morning when I interview Peter Tatchell, the British gay movement's most prominent campaigner. But there’s no day of rest for Peter, who has doggedly pursued campaigns for forty years on a bewildering range of issues from Aids, animal rights, discrimination in post-apartheid South Africa, to fighting to get Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe tried for human rights abuses.

Death threats

Peter has been attacked by neo-Nazis in Moscow, beaten by Mugabe's bodyguards and interrogated by the Stasi. The leading member of Outrage! tells me that he receives regular hate mail from a combination of far right people, including members of the British National Party, and increasingly from Islamic fundamentalists.
“You are going to be beheaded…we’re coming for you, you’ll be chopped up and destroyed” is the latest menacing warning from a self-proclaimed jihadist. “Most are just bluff and bravado,” says Peter, “but sometimes I worry that one of these people might be crazy enough to actually try and kill me.” Indeed, he has had bricks through his windows, three arson attempts on his flat and even a bullet through his front door.

Pink Iraq

Earlier this month Peter lead a talk as part of Liverpool’s Homotopia festival at the Unity Theatre, called ‘Pink Iraq, Mullahs and Death Squads’, which was originally shown at Soho Theatre in London. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, he argues, gay Iraqis are facing death, persecution and systematic targeting by armed Shiite militias taking advantage of the chaos and lawlessness in post-invasion Iraq.
“Politicians are trying to convince us that the Iraq war has been a success, pushing the line that it’s brought democracy in Iraq,” argues Peter. “But the violence has increased. The suffering of women and lesbian, gay and transgender people is seen as marginal and is being ignored.” He wants to see a UN peacekeeping forces, preferably drawn from Muslim and Arab nations, replace troops in Iraq.

Brutality

Also speaking at the event was Ali Hili, a 33 year-old gay Iraqi exile who fled the country following a grenade attack on his home. His childhood friend, also homosexual, was found dead, having been burnt alive in his car. Ali says, “My friend told me ‘Ali, if something happens to me, I want you to tell the world’”. And so Ali founded Iraqi LGBT three years ago in London to support other gays and lesbians being victimised. He lists examples of the many death squad killings on his website. These include:
· Nouri, 29, a tailor in the southern city of Karbala, whose mutilated and beheaded body was found in February this year. He had received many death threats for being gay.
· Hazim, 21, of Baghdad who also received threats. After police seized him at home in February, his body was found with several gunshots to the head.
· Hasan – also known as Tamara – a 34-year-old transvestite from Baghdad, who was seized in the street by an Islamist death squad and hanged in public in January. His brother-in-law, who tried to defend him, was also murdered.
The violence against gays has increased since 2005, when Iraq’s leading Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, called for gays and lesbians to be killed “in the worst, most severe way.” The fatwa (religious decree) against gay men on Sistani’s website was removed from his website last year, but it was not revoked, says Ali who petitioned Sistani's office to remove it. “It was just a PR exercise,” agrees Peter.
Although Saddam Hussein shut down many of Baghdad's gay bars in the 1990s and passed a law against sodomy in 2001, Iraqi gays and lesbians still socialised, argues Ali. “Saddam was a tyrant, but life wasn’t as bad as it is now,” he says. Under Saddam’s rule, Ali, a DJ, even started a gay night at club in Baghdad, and he says the police mainly left them alone. “Now gay people are afraid to go out of their homes, even for food.”

Helping gay Iraqis

Two year’s ago, Ali’s LGBT group set up five safe houses for gay Iraqis under threat and helps them seek refuge in neighbouring countries. But sadly, three were closed down earlier this month due to lack of funds. “This decision will break a lot of hearts,” says Ali. “Over 30 gay residents now have to take their chances. But we have no other choice. We don’t have the financial support.” The cost of running one safe house for a month is about £900.
Peter’s Outrage! Group and the Iraqi LGBT have helped around 40 Iraqi asylum seekers in the UK and other countries. They argue that the British government is failing to protect them, and instead are focused on reducing immigration figures for political gains. Peter argues that the Refugee Convention needs to be amended to acknowledge a broader ground for seeking asylum, including homophobic persecution.

Pushing for social change

Peter’s campaigning work has earned him being voted sixth on a list of ‘Heroes of our time’ by New Statesman readers last year. But decades of campaigning have taken their toll. “It’s a stressful life,” says Peter, who says he lives in constant fear for his safety. Spending around 70 unpaid hours a week campaigning, Peter lives frugally in a London council flat on an income of £8,000 a year through his freelance journalism (he writes regularly for The Guardian's Comment is Free website). “But the rewards are enormous, and far outweigh the downside,” he says.
Peter has been arrested more than 500 times (he’s now lost count), including a time he attempted a citizen’s arrest on Mugabe. His confrontational tactics have made him a controversial figure, even within the gay community. In the mid 1990s, the Daily Mail labelled him a "homosexual terrorist" over the controversial Outrage! campaign of ‘outing’ allegedly homosexual Church of England bishops on the grounds of hypocrisy.
But he insists, “Shock tactics force open closed doors and closed minds”. He cites his heroes as Mahatma Gandhi, Sylvia Pankhurst, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. “Anyone pushing for social change and taking on the establishment gets vilified and demonised,” he says. “It happened to the Chartists and the Suffragettes. It’s the price you pay for making waves and winning social progress.”

To find out how to donate to Iraqi LGBT visit http://iraqilgbtuk.blogspot.com

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