ABOVE: Watermark file photo.
An Iraqi lawmaker has said parliamentarians plan to introduce a bill that would ban homosexuality in the country.
Middle East Eye, a website that covers the Middle East and North Africa, reported MP Aref al-Hamami on July 8 told an official Iraqi news agency that members of his Parliamentary Legal Committee have agreed “to collect signatures after returning to session to legislate a law prohibiting homosexuality in Iraq.”
“[The] legislation of such a law will be reinforced by legal provisions that prevent homosexuality and the perversions associated with it,” said al-Hamami.
Homosexuality has been legal in Iraq since 2003, but violence against LGBTQ and intersex Iraqis remains commonplace.
“Despite repeated threats and violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI+) individuals, specifically gay men, the government failed to identify, arrest, or prosecute attackers or to protect targeted individuals,” notes the State Department in its 2021 human rights report. “Some political parties sought to justify these attacks, and investigators often refused to employ proper investigation procedures. LGBTQI+ individuals also faced intimidation, threats, violence and discrimination, and LGBTQI+ individuals reported they could not live openly without fear of violence at the hands of family members, acquaintances, or strangers.”
The U.S. earlier this year condemned the so-called honor killing of Doski Azad, a transgender woman in Iraqi Kurdistan.
A source in the semi-autonomous region of northern Iraq has previously told the Washington Blade that militant groups regularly target gay men in the country. The Islamic State publicly executed men accused of engaging in sodomy in the parts of Iraq it once controlled.
“With an unstable economy and crimes taking place every day without any accountability or follow-up, the Iraqi Parliament’s Legal Committee has considered that putting an end to the LGBTQ community is a priority that must be achieved as soon as possible,” tweeted an activist in Iraq who calls themselves Anas Gilgamesh.
Amir Ashour, executive director of IraQueer, an organization that advocates on behalf of LGBTQ and intersex Iraqis, on July 12 told the Blade that it won’t be “that long” until lawmakers approve the bill because “they claim to have what they need to pass it.” Ashour added his organization is “working behind the scenes to try and stop the law from passing.”
