Jan 18, 2007News: Iraqi government rejects U.N. report
By vanrozenheim
(Baghdad, Iraq) - Iraq's government on Thursday criticized a report on human rights issued by the United Nations. The report estimates the loss of civilian lives in 2006 at 34,452, and discusses subjects that are ignored by the Iraqi government, in particular human rights of gay people. The U.N. report is also very critical about the Iraqi government's performance on human rights violations on other vulnerable groups.
"The current environment of impunity and lawlessness invites a heightened level of insecurity for homosexuals in Iraq. Armed Islamic groups and militias have been known to be particularly hostile toward homosexuals frequently and openly engaging in violent campaigns against them," the U.N. report reads. "There has been a number of assassinations of homosexuals in Iraq."
The Iraqi government remained unimpressed.
"There was information in the report that we cannot accept here in Iraq. The report, for example, spoke about the phenomenon of homosexuality and giving them their rights," spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said. "Such statements are not suitable to the Iraqi society. This is rejected."
"They should respect the values and traditions here in Iraq," he said.
What these assumed values and traditions are, was manifoldly demonstrated in the past monthes. Several reports by the veteran gay journalist Doug Ireland and the British LGBT rights group Outrage! disclosed that murder, abduction and torture of gay people is commonplace under the new rule in Iraq.
The group Iraqi LGBT has reported that death squads, often wearing the official Iraqi police uniforms, abduct suspected homosexuals from their homes and execute them sometimes direcly before their terrified neighbours and relatives.
The reaction of the Iraqi government to the U.N. report backs the opinion that Iraqi officials not only are turning a blind eye on violence against gay people, but that this violence is endorsed by the government itself.
