How one man is trying to make it safer to be LGBT in Iraq
WHILE Amir Ashour was growing up in Iraq in the early 2000s, he knew homosexuality existed, but he didn’t know much else about it.
“Apart from my personal feelings, wondering ‘Why am I attracted to this person?’ when I was 10 or 11, I had my first experience when I was 16 or 17,” he says.
In his teens, most of what Ashour heard about homosexuality was that LGBTQ people did not exist in Iraq before the US invasion.
Born in Baghdad, Ashour grew up mainly in Su- laymaniyah, in the country’s Kurdish region.
Although most people around him did not talk about their sexuality, he made his interest in men known among his closest friends at school and university, as well as in activist circles.
He discovered more openness by going online – mostly to local gay dating websites – not to meet men, but to “get answers for my questions” on homosexuality, he says.
“Being LGBTQ+ was – and is – a taboo.”
When Ashour signed up for the popular gay dating app Grindr in 2010, he remembers finding only five users in the whole country. The app would scan for users from countries as far as Iran, Turkey, Jordan and Kuwait.
But with the rise of Islamic State in recent years, it’s become even harder and more dangerous to be LGBT in the country.
“There are no spaces for our community in Iraq,” Ashour says.
Until 2006, a few gayfriendly cafés or the occasional party were organised by underground groups for the LGBT community, “but armed militias and government-affiliated groups have been targeting those places”.
Last weekend, for example, an independent Syrian news agency reported that Islamic State fighters had thrown an Iraqi man off a building in Kirkuk after he was accused of being gay.
A report from the International Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Commission and MADRE found Shia militias were acting under the Iraqi government in persecuting the LGBT community.
Ashour says militias “have more space to cover up their activities” under the guise of fighting Islamic State alongside the Iraqi government, “which is why we haven’t heard much about killing campaigns against LGBTQ+ people”.
Ashour has left Iraq – he lives in Sweden now – but from a distance he’s trying to make it easier to be gay in Iraq.
In March last year, he launched IraQueer, a support network and digital resource, available in Arabic, Kurdish and English. Through its publication of first-person essays by its members and reports on human rights violations, the organisation aims to raise awareness on issues of gender identity, expression and sexuality that would otherwise be suppressed.
“Sexuality in Iraq is traditionally defined as straight or gay – bisexuality doesn’t exist in our dictionary – and so most people don’t understand the language of gender,” Ashour says.
“It’s important for LGBTQ+ Iraqis to speak about their experiences from their perspective and to access information relevant to them.”
Ashour has been arrested and detained twice, lost friends and members of his extended family, after rumours were spread about his sexuality as a result of his former work in women’s rights activism.
Although the Iraqi culture of heterosexual men holding hands, hugging and kissing can help protect gay men to an extent, Ashour says queer men live in fear of being outed for the way they dress, due to Iraqi definitions of homosexuality.
But Ashour remains optimistic. One day, he’d like to return to Iraq and become its first gay prime minister.
“The whole Islamic State thing happened in two days, and now it’s lasted two years. The world can change in two seconds. I can’t accept thinking that it won’t change for the better,” he concludes.
n Mari Shibata is a journalist who reports on the intersection of international politics, human rights and socio-cultural integration.
@mshibata_