Iraq horrifically torturing, killing gay people.

Awful. From Gay City News:

In a 67-page report released on August 17, Human Rights Watch (HRW) — the most prestigious international human rights watchdog organization — has detailed an intensive “sexual cleansing” campaign of murder, torture, kidnapping, beatings, and blackmail carried out against those perceived to be gay in Iraq.

The report, entitled “They Want Us Exterminated: Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq,” is based on interviews recently conducted by an HRW team in Iraq with more than 50 men who identified as gay, as well as with doctors, journalists, United Nations aid officials, and others.

It says doctors and morgue attendants routinely see horrifically mutilated bodies of gay men. HRW said doctors have confirmed an earlier Gay City News report of men being killed by having their anuses glued shut before being force-fed laxatives, causing painful and slow death.

Since March 2006, Gay City News has reported, in a series of articles, on the anti-gay murder campaign by fundamentalist death squads targeting Iraqi LGBT people. The HRW report confirms the deaths of hundreds of Iraqi sexual and gender dissidents in the wake of the security chaos created by the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, but it is largely focused on the changing face of the sexual cleansing campaign, which has intensified greatly since the beginning of this year.

Typical of the heartrending testimonies gathered by HRW is that from one man, identified as Hamid, 35, who developed a speech impediment and went into hiding after the murder of his lover of ten years. Speaking through tears to HRW just three weeks after his partner’s murder, Hamid said: “They came to take my partner at his parents’ home. Four armed men barged into the house, masked and wearing black. They asked for him by name; they insulted him and took him in front of his parents. All that, I heard about later from his family. He was found in the neighborhood the day after. They had thrown his corpse in the garbage. His genitals were cut off and a piece of his throat was ripped out.”

Hamid continued, “Since then, I’ve been unable to speak properly. I feel as if my life is pointless now. I don’t have friends other than those you see; for years it has just been my boyfriend and myself in that little bubble, by ourselves. I have no family now — I cannot go back to them. I have a death warrant on me. I feel the best thing to do is just to kill myself. In Iraq, murderers and thieves are respected more than gay people.”