The Islamic State extremist group has claimed responsibility for killing at least 30 people for sodomy, the head of an international gay rights organization said on Monday at the first-ever UN Security Council meeting spotlighting violence and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.
“It’s about time, 70 years after the creation of the UN, that the fate of LGBT persons who fear for their lives around the world is taking center stage,” said US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, who organized the meeting with Chile’s UN envoy. “This represents a small, but historic, step.”
Diplomats said two of the 15 council members, Chad and Angola, did not attend the informal, closed meeting.
International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission executive director Jessica Stern told the council that courts established by the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria claim to have punished sodomy with stoning, firing squads and beheadings and by pushing men from tall buildings.
Fear of the extremist group, which controls about a third of Syria and Iraq, has fueled violence by others against LGBT individuals, she said.
Subhi Nahas, a gay refugee from the Syrian city of Idlib, told the council that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government “launched a campaign accusing all dissidents of being homosexuals” when that country’s uprising started in 2011. Soon afterward, gay hangouts were raided and many people were arrested and tortured.
“Some were never heard from again,” he said.
When the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front took Idlib in 2012, he said, its militants announced “they would cleanse the town of those involved in sodomy,” and arrests and executions of accused homosexuals followed.
Last year, when the Islamic State took the city, the violence worsened, he said.
“At the executions, hundreds of townspeople, including children, cheered jubilantly as at a wedding,” Nahas said. “If a victim did not die after being hurled off a building, the townspeople stoned him to death. This was to be my fate too.”
Stern stressed that persecution of LGBT people in Iraq and Syria began long before the emergence of the Islamic State group and called for UN action to relocate LGBT persons most in need and for bringing the gay community into broader human rights and humanitarian initiatives among other things.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
RSS