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Mar 31, 2007 Quickie Link: Danger At Every Turn --by Peter Tatchell
By Kyleovision

Hasan Sabeh was a happy, talented 34-year-old transgender fashion designer, affectionately known as Tamara. He lived in the al-Mansor district of Baghdad. Two months ago, he was tending his fashion accessories stall in a street market. Out of the blue, an Islamist death squad, wearing Iraqi police uniforms, seized Tamara. They stripped off his clothes in the street and, discovering that he was a man dressed as a woman, shot him dead.

Tamara's brother-in-law was nearby and rushed to cradle his body. He, too, was shot dead at point blank range. The killers then took Tamara's body, and hanged and mutilated it, as a warning to other gay and transgender Iraqis.

Gay people like Tamara are now being systematically targeted for execution by Shia death squads. The killers are hell-bent on turning the country into a fundamentalist Islamic state, cleansed of all "impure, unIslamic elements." Some operate within the police and others independently. All owe their allegiance to firebrand, militant clerics.

The rest of the article is in the Guardian




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