Bush State Department Ignored Iraqi Gay Murders Gay City News

As concern over the killings of gay Iraqis grew in 2006 and 2007, the US Department of State appears to have done little more than develop media talking points and squabble over who at that agency should handle press interviews.

“[I]t is outrageous to see that by walking away from their responsibility to further investigate, document, and then ultimately discuss the human rights abuses with the Iraqi government, the US government missed a great opportunity to prevent the mass-scale attacks against LGBT community, which happened earlier this year in Iraq,” wrote Hossein Alizadeh, regional coordinator for Middle East and North Africa at the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), in an email.

Writing in Gay City News, Doug Ireland first broke the story in March of 2006 that Iraqi gays were being killed by death squads. Ireland and other gay press outlets continued covering the story in 2006 and into 2007, with the mainstream press offering occasional stories. The killings and the gay press reports on them have continued into 2009.

In September 2007 –– nearly two years ago –– Gay City News sent a Freedom of Information request to the State Department that sought all records “that relate to or identify homicides, assaults, or other violent acts committed against homosexual persons in Iraq.”

On May 26 of this year, the department responded, releasing two documents, totaling nine pages, that represent all the records that agency compiled from March 1, 2003, roughly the start of the Iraq War, through the date of the records request. No documents were withheld and only a small portion of the released documents was blacked out. See Bush State Department Ignored Iraqi Gay Murders

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