Photo: MEHDI FEDOUACH / Reform Agency
An amendment to the law is being discussed in the Iraqi Parliament, where capital punishment is being proposed for homosexual relations, in what activists call a “dangerous” escalation in the country where LGBTQ people already face frequent attacks and discrimination.
The amendment to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which passed first reading in Parliament last week, would allow courts to impose sentences of “death penalty or life imprisonment” for “homosexual relations”, according to international agencies.
Members of the LGBTQ+ community and human rights advocates called the initiative “dangerous.”
In a country where there is no specific law on homosexuality, LGBTQ+ people already face discrimination and persecution. Since 1969, an article of the penal code has been used to impose sentences of “life imprisonment or several years’ imprisonment” for the crime of sodomy.
Besides, Iraqi members of the LGBTQ community have been forced to remain in the shadows, often subjected to “kidnapping, rape, torture and murder” who go unpunished, according to a 2022 report by Human Rights Watch and the non-governmental organization IraQueer.
So far, the text was submitted to first reading last week, where it proposes severe penalties, including “the death penalty or life imprisonment” for any individual involved in a homosexual relationship. Besides, “incitement to homosexuality” would be punished with at least seven years from prison.
Although the text is still under discussion, different voices have taken it very seriously, such as the deputy Saoud al-Saadi, a member of the Islamist Houqouq party and representative of the Hezbollah Brigades, an influential armed group linked to Iran, who pointed out that the The law seeks to fill a legal vacuum.
Even Chérif Souleimane, belonging to the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), argued that this law aims to affirm “moral and human values” and combat what he considers “abnormal phenomena of society”.
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