Sep 16, 2007Quickie Link: Cash Crisis Puts Doubt on Future of 'Safe Houses' for Gays
By vanrozenheim
(Iraq) - Iraqi LGBT is facing a cash crisis in their efforts to assist lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people in Iraq. For over a year, Friends of Iraqi LGBT has been trying to help by funding safe houses in Iraq for those who have come to the attention of the death squads and who have consequently had to flee their homes. Since the US-led invasion of Iraq, gay people in Iraq have suffered particularly intense persecution. Violence against all the gay community has intensified sharply since late 2005, when Iraq’s leading Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, issued a fatwa (religious decree) which declared that gays and lesbians should be “killed in the worst, most severe way”.
