2024-05-03 15:07:10
The Iraqi Parliament approved a law on Saturday imposing prison sentences of up to 15 years for homosexual acts, a decision denounced by NGOs as an “attack on human rights.”
Deputies approved with a majority of 170 out of 329 seats a series of amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which also criminalizes transgender people.
A previous draft proposed capital punishment for same-sex relationships, something criticized by LGTBQ activists as a “dangerous” escalation in a country where this community is already the subject of discrimination and attacks.
The new amendments establish penalties of between 10 and 15 years in prison for having homosexual sexual relations, according to the document seen by AFP.
They also impose a minimum of seven years in prison for “promoting” homosexuality and a sentence of between one and three years for men who “intentionally” act like women.
The amendments also criminalize “change of biological sex based on desire” and punish transgender people and doctors who participate in sex-change surgeries with up to three years in prison.
Homosexuality is taboo in conservative Iraqi society, but until now there was no law that explicitly punished same-sex relationships.
Even so, members of the LGTBQ community were persecuted for accusations of sodomy or other criminal offenses linked to morality and prostitution.
“Iraq has translated into law the discrimination and violence to which members of the LGBTI community have been subjected with absolute impunity for years,” said Razaw Salihy, Iraq researcher at Amnesty International.
“The amendments that affect LGBTI rights are a violation of fundamental human rights,” he denounced.
According to deputy Raed al Maliki, who advanced the amendments, “the law serves as a preventive measure to protect society from these acts,” he told AFP.
Approval was delayed until after Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al Sudani’s visit to Washington this month to prevent the law, criticized in the United States and the European Union, from impacting that trip.
The US State Department expressed concern about the law and warned that it “undermines the government’s political and economic reform efforts,” said its spokesman Matt Miller.
LDAV
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2024-05-03 15:07:10