human rights watch report issued

Source: www.news24.com

March 2, 2004: Egyptian authorities have entrapped, arrested and tortured hundreds of gay men according to a New York-based human rights group said a news 24 report yesterday.

Egyptian authorities have entrapped, arrested and tortured hundreds of gay men suspected of engaging in consensual homosexual sex, a New York-based human rights group claimed in a report released on Monday that demands an end to such actions.

Human Rights Watch urged Egypt to repeal legislation allowing the prosecution of consensual homosexual relations - covered under the country's debauchery laws - and permitting police surveillance and entrapment. It also urged punishment for those who torture suspects.

In its 144-page report, "In a Time of Torture: The Assault on Justice in Egypt's Crackdown on Homosexual Conduct," Human Rights Watch documents what it describes as Egyptian government repression of gay men. It condemned the practice of police agents surfing the Internet and answering personals placed by men seeking men, then arranging meetings with them and arresting them.

General Ahmed Shehab, who oversees Internet-related crimes for the Interior Ministry, said he had not yet seen the report and was unable to comment on it. However, vice officials in the past have acknowledged the practice of answering Internet personals by gay men and praised it for getting results.

The 2001 trial of 52 men for "the habitual practice of debauchery" was the most visible point in the crackdown. However, Human Rights Watch said the crackdown started before, and continued after, the trial, in which 23 were convicted and sentenced to up to five years in prison. The rest were acquitted.

Egyptian government spokesperson Taha Abdel Aleem did not respond to several phone calls to his office seeking comment on the Human Rights Watch report. Ihab Gamal el-Din, in charge of the Foreign Ministry's Human Rights Department, also did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Homosexuality is a taboo in Egypt's conservative society.

Islam prohibits homosexuality, and it is a taboo in Egypt's conservative society. Though homosexuality is not explicitly referred to in the Egyptian penal code, the report criticised legislation originally meant to penalise prostitution that is used to include consensual, non-commercial gay conduct.

The rights group "knows the names of 179 men whose cases under the law against 'debauchery' were brought before prosecutors since the beginning of 2001," adding that hundreds others have been harassed, arrested and often tortured, but not charged.

Early last year, the rights group interviewed 63 men who had been arrested for homosexual conduct. It said they spoke of being whipped, bound and suspended in painful positions, splashed with ice-cold water, burned with cigarettes, shocked with electricity to the limbs, genitals or tongue. They also said guards encouraged other prisoners to rape them, according to the report.

General Assem Omran, the Egyptian police official in charge of vice, whose department was specifically mentioned in the report, declined to comment.

The report said that doctors also participated in torturing the men. Prosecutors would refer suspects to the Forensic Medical Authority, an arm of Egypt's Justice Ministry, it said. "Doctors there compel the men to strip and kneel ... subjecting them to intrusive, abusive and degrading examinations to 'prove' the men have committed homosexual conduct."

By creating "a moral panic" through these arrests as well as the scandals and stigma accompanying the cases, the Egyptian government diverted the media from mounting political and economic crises, the report added.

Egyptian officials and media long had attributed differences between the Egyptian government and international rights groups on the treatment of homosexuals to cultural differences. On Monday, however, five Egyptian human rights organisations added their backing to the Human Rights Watch report.

Aida Seif el-Dawla, who represents two of the legal rights groups, acknowledged that some Egyptian groups had been slow to speak out on the issue of police harassment of homosexuals because of the sensitivity of the issue. "This was not a human rights attitude, this was a political attitude," said el-Dawla who represents el-Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and the Egyptian Association Against Torture.

Presenting on the report at the recent All Africa Programme conference in Johannesburg, author Scott Long also told of how some inmates claimed to have been walked on by guards while lying naked on the floor. on one occasion a group of school children were allegedly invited into the prison cells to see how homosexuals "end up" - they were also encouraged to walk on the prisoners according to one survivor of the ordeal.