Meem News Desk » homosexuality

Iraqi Police Raid Karbala Safe House

meem — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:26:05 +0000

Iraqi police raid Karbala safe house
By Paul | Published: June 19, 2010

Press statement

There is growing concern that the Iraqi government is stepping up a witch-hunt against gays and lesbians in the country after a police raid on a Karbala safe house.

On Tuesday 16th June, twelve police officers burst into the house, then violently beat up, and blindfolded the six occupants sheltering there, before bundling them off in three vans. According to a source who witnessed the raid, the police also confiscated computer equipment before burning down the house.

According to reports, one of the arrested people has turned up in hospital. Nothing is known about the whereabouts of the other five individuals, which include two gay men, one lesbian and two transgender people. It is feared they may have been taken to the Interior Ministry in Baghdad, where, it is reported, many gay people have been tortured and executed in the last two years.
The one victim found so far – in hospital with slashed throat

Government forces have previously sized people particularly at roadblocks and handed them to militias who have then tortured them and their bodies have later been found.

None of the previous occupying powers have taken any action or delivered any criticism for these atrocities.

Iraqi LGBT feel that the reason the British and United States government in particular didn’t criticises the Iraqi government is because of the legacy of the occupation.

They have criticised the Malawian government and the Ugandan government.

In both those countries there is a strong religious opposition to homosexuality — as there is in Iraq.

Since the fall of Saddam, militias loyal to Shi’a clerics Grand Ayatollah al Sistani and Muqtada al Sadr, both of whom have called for homosexuals to be put to death, have been only too keen to carry out their leaders’ wishes. Over 720 LGBT people have disappeared or been murdered, many of whom have been tortured to death.

There is strong evidence that the government is colluding with these militia groups, by rounding up known homosexual and transgender people. A small number of safe houses, set up for LGBT people to live in relative safety, have been funded by Iraqi LGBT, a London based human rights group. In the current climate, these homes have been life-savers for those taking refuge in them. The house which was raided on Tuesday had been established in January this year.

With the arrest and the seizure of computers, it is feared the government will step up efforts to round up more of the country’s LGBT population.

Ali Hili, who is the leader of Iraqi LGBT, comments: “The UK media and politicians have been too quiet for too long about the violence LGBT people in Iraq. The militia and the powers that be know they can get away with it while that silence continues. It really is time for the Iraqi government to act on this and stop playing the role of guilty bystanders, while our brothers and sisters are murdered in silence”

Currently the UK Border Agency is deporting many Iraqis, some who left the country in fear of their lives after death threats from gangsters and religious militia. “The government is grossly underestimating the danger faced by Iraqi refugees.” says Ali. “The raid on Tuesday proves for LGBT people especially, Iraq is a no-go zone”.

http://iraqilgbt.org.uk/news-home/iraqi-police-raid-karbala-safe-house/

Bareed Mista3jil: Pressed to Express: By Alexis Pauline Gumbs

meem — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:25:02 +0000

Pressed to Express

By Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Published on: October 01, 2009

BAREED MISTA3JIL: TRUE STORIES
BY MEEM
bareedmista3jil.com, 2009

Bareed Mista3jil—roughly translated as “Express Mail”—is the perfect name for this collection of 41 personal stories by “lesbians, bisexuals, queer and questioning women, and transgender persons from all over Lebanon.” I waited by the door for my copy to reach me, with its urgent evidence and affirmation of affectionately-dubbed “Lesbanese” lives in process.

The collection is as groundbreaking in its process as in its subject matter. Taking seriously the task of breaking a dominant silence in Lebanon, the LBTQ group Meem (founded in 2007) operated with hopscotch precision, making a road to walk with rapid, successive leaps of faith. The creators of Bareed take a culturally specific and accountable approach, buying into neither the story that queer sexualities are imported from the West, nor the narrative about the progression of the backwards East into the enlightened Western embrace of sexual diversity. Meem also challenges the value placed on emigration by emphasizing the desire and right to find community and safety at home. They share this stance in common with Aswat, a Palestinian LGBTQI group that has published two anthologies of their own [see Reviews, LT #32].

The stories here are published anonymously. While many echo a wider discourse about struggling with relationships, identity and acceptance, the editors place these stories in their specific context. “Lebanese family norms are especially important because people rely on them for all kinds of services and support, mostly due to the absence of the public sector, which makes it even harder for Lebanese to distance themselves from their families or risk rejection.” The editors’ approach combats stereotypes of irrational tradition by reminding the reader of the practical economic concerns that make challenging family norms a very risky thing to do.

While this collection has lessons to teach a North American reader (challenging their own narrow views of the world), the book was not made to export Lebanese stories westward. It was produced in order to create and affirm and transform a Lebanese community to which the editors remain committed and accountable. Releasing the book in both Arabic and English versions, Meem was intentional in its choices about navigating language—mixing classical Arabic, regional dialects, and slang internal to their communities, and with many things immediately translated. They chose to create the text in multiple languages to reach a wider audience, within their targets of heterosexual and homophobic Lebanese as well as Lebanese young people who are questioning sexual norms.
The struggle with choosing language(s) strikes me as a poetic struggle. No normative language is rich enough to describe the culturally nuanced and experimental relationship to sexuality Meem is documenting and experiencing. Like so many of us who are committed to radical transformation, they struggle to make the concepts they are passionate about understandable to the people they want to be in conversation with. By refusing to give up on this task, Meem contributes to the production of new visionary language for expression and exploration.

Recognizing that the stories’ various themes are interconnected, Meem chose not to divide them into sections. Instead, with a shout-out to the importance of online community, Meem chose to tag the pieces like blog entries, highlighting which 2 or 4 or 11 themes are addressed in each story. While this makes it harder to find specific stories to use for a syllabus or workshop, it also keeps the reader from pigeonholing them. Instead, we’re encouraged to see them all as part of a multiple and evolving story—with episodes as varied as “My Forgotten Penis,” “The Hunt for a Gay Husband,” and “That One Love that Breaks You.”

In “The Motorcycle Gender,” the author describes how her use of a motorcycle allows her access to a certain type of masculine mystique—while her parents use their disapproval of her motorcycling to express their deeper disdain for her transgression of gender norms. She refuses to shape her thick eyebrows or shave her armpits—a major problem for her family—it makes her feel “nonconformist and sexy.” Unfortunately, “in a blink of a second all that can disappear. I can get into an elevator with women with high heels and botox and, suddenly, I can feel like shit again.”

Creating community

“My Hijab and I” tells the story of a woman who is committed to wearing hijab, but struggles with the fact that it seems to make her “dykeness” invisible to women she is trying to attract. She ultimately affirms her choice to keep wearing hijab as she moves and grooves—she feels that it keeps women from objectifying her, and keeps people focused on what she has to say, which is a lot!

Not all of the stories have happy endings in which the speaker emerges from a closet with identity and self-esteem intact. Some of the stories end with questions. Some end in despair and frustration. And while the introduction is very intentional, critical and self-critical, the stories are not so careful—the tellers are free to speak their personal truths and opinions. We understand that speaking for themselves is enough of a victory, without the burden of having to speak for everyone whose sexual and gendered lives challenge the norm.

Though not every storyteller has found the nurturing community they want or need, this book is able to exist only due to the community created by the members of Meem—along with their comrades in the LGBT organization Helem (founded in 2004). On February 22 of this year, Helem led their first public sit-in in Beirut, with 200 people protesting violence against “homosexuals, women, children, domestic and foreign workers, and others.” On May 30, 400 people attended Meem’s Beirut launch event for Bareed Mista3jil.

This book is poetic evidence of a group of people finding language and space for the expression of their complicated journeys to love themselves and the people around them. Mail a copy to someone you love today.

—Alexis Pauline Gumbs

http://www.leftturn.org/?q=node/1366

USJ Student Writes about Homosexuality for University Newspaper

meem — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 17:18:44 +0000

L’Homosexualité au Liban

Il ne faut surtout pas râter, dans presque tous les films hollywoodiens, le personnage cliché du gay-meilleur-ami ou le styliste au grain de folie attachant. Les Libanais les regardent et les trouvent bien sympathiques. Ils regardent regardent Elton John se marier avec sont amant (n’est-ce pas logique après 20 ans de vie commune?) et la Gay-Pride à Paris : c’est bruyant, exotique, avec ces looks extravagants… puis ils changent de chaîne.

Au Liban, on accepte l’homosexualité, mais passée sous silence. Ici, l’homophobie c’est une phobie à l’échelle nationale! Les libanais se targuent d’être les plus ouverts du Moyen-Orient; il est vrai qu’ici, on n’assassine pas son frère pour cause d’homosexualité (question d’honneur familial) comme cela arrive chez les voisins, mais on préfère entendre: «Non le type est normal. Il n’est pas gay!». Il n’est pas gay, il est normal. Depuis quand est-ce que la différence est qualifiée d’anomalie? Cela rappelle l’époque où l’on se demandait encore si les noirs avaient une âme ou pas!

En marge de la société encore traditionnelle – où on fait l’amour avant le mariage et on dort tranquillement le soir car le compte en banque suffit pour se faire recoudre l’hymen le moment venu – et emmitouflée dans le quasi-culte du silence et des apparences, les plus efféminés de la communauté gay sont le plus souvent reniés par leur famille.

C’est seul l’Etat qui a le pouvoir de changer cet état de choses. Or, celui-ci considère les homosexuels comme des hors-la-loi et les accuse de «conjonction charnelle contre l’ordre de la nature» (Article 534 du code pénal libanais). Ils encourent ainsi jusqu’à un an d’emprisonnement. Ledit article, qui constitue en fait une atteinte aux droits de l’Homme, incita M. Georges Azzi à créer en 2004 l’association « Helem » (la seule du genre au Moyen-Orient, qui n’est d’ailleurs pas reconnue par le ministère libanais de l’Intérieur). Parallèlement au travail social réalisé au sein de Helem, un avocat, Me Souheil Jouneh, apporte son aide généreuse à l’association en défendant les homosexuels arrêtés par la police.

« Ceux-ci, rarement attrapés en fraglant délit sont souvent accusés de vol ou d’autres délits… un simple prétexte pour pouvoir leur mettre le grappin dessus… » nous explique un responsable de l’organization.

A ce niveau Me. Jouneh tente, d’une part, de sensibiliser les agents de la police à la cause des homosexuels (la rafle à l’Acid, night-club pour gays, en 2006 ne s’est plus reproduite) et d’autre part, de remuer des moeurs surannées. D’ailleurs le même avocat a présenté un projet d’abrogation de cet article au ministre de la justice. Celui-ci est en cours d’examen…

Il faut souligner que cette question juridique est de première priorité car, socialement frustrés, les homosexuels trouvent refuge dans la drogue et la prostitution pour s’en sortir. D’où la proliferation des MST. Même les boîtes de nuit et pubs ne sont pas appelées « gay-bar » mais plutôt endroits « extravagants ». Cela vient renforcer le caractère clandestin de la société gay libanaise. D’ailleurs, beaucoup d’homosexuels quittent le Liban, souvent avec l’aide de l’association…

L’aboutissement ultime du progrès sur le plan juridique serait la légalisation du mariage entre des personnes du même sexe. Néanmoins, certains considèrent qu’il faudrait d’abord commencer par légaliser le mariage civil des couples hétérosexuels, avant de débattre de l’union des homosexuels!

Andrea C.

1ère année de sciences politiques

Raynbow.org the lebanese nonprofit store

news_editor — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 10:20:31 +0000

We’d like to thank raynbow.org, the Lebanese nonprofit store for their continuous support of Meem. Their Media Monitor is the best online reference for media articles on Arab homosexuality since 2005.