Group: Stop torturing, killing gay Iraqis

August 17, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Militiamen are torturing and killing gay Iraqi men with impunity in a systematic campaign that has spread from Baghdad to several other cities, a prominent human-rights group said in a report.

Human Rights Watch called on the Iraqi government to act urgently to stop the abuses, warning that so-called social cleansing poses a new threat to security even as other violence recedes.

The bodies of several gay men were found in Baghdad’s main Shiite district of Sadr City earlier this year with the Arabic words for “pervert” and “puppy” — considered derogatory terms for homosexuals in Iraq — written on their chests.

The New York-based advocacy group said the threats and abuses have since spread to the cities of Kirkuk, Najaf and Basra, although the practice remains concentrated in the capital.

“Murders are committed with impunity, admonitory in intent, with corpses dumped in garbage or hung as warnings on the street,” the 67-page report said.

Reliable numbers weren’t available, Human Rights Watch said, blaming a combination of the failure of authorities to investigate such crimes and the stigma preventing families from reporting the deaths.

But it cited a well-informed U.N. official as saying in April that the death toll was probably “in the hundreds.”

The campaign has been largely blamed on Shiite extremists who have long targeted behavior deemed un-Islamic, beating and even killing women for not wearing veils and bombing liquor stores.

Shiite militiamen have for the most part stopped their violence against rival Sunnis after radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s forces were routed by U.S. and Iraqi forces last year and declared a cease-fire. But the report indicated they were conducting a less publicized campaign of social cleansing.

Meanwhile, bombs hidden in plastic bags near a falafel stand exploded at a market in a mainly Shiite area in Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least eight civilians and wounding 21, Iraqi officials said. It was the latest in a series of bombings targeting Shiites and minorities in the capital and northern Iraq.

The bags packed with explosives were left among a pile of garbage and exploded shortly before 8 p.m. as the district was crowded with people enjoying the evening.

Several nearby stores were also damaged, according to police and hospital officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to release the information. Five children were among the wounded, they said.