"My boyfriend and I travelled to Turkey, seeking a safe place due to the threats we got in Iraq, but I came back home as my mother was sick. This is why I am trying to protect myself as much as I can," added Qasim. "The Iraqi passport is not good enough to get visas for safe European countries. Many members of LGBTQ+ communities in Iraq have fled the country to seek asylum in Europe in search of a safer life. "This dangerous tweet constitutes a very clear and direct threat to my life and that of all other LGBTQ people, especially since I live in a very conservative city," he said. Mohammed Qasim, a 27-year-old gay Iraqi, told MEE that Sadr's tweet could jeopardise the life of LGBTQ+ people in the country.
'This dangerous tweet constitutes a very clear and direct threat to my life and that of all other LGBTQ people' "This will, unfortunately, be at the cost of Iraqi LGBT+ lives," he added. Therefore, they scapegoat LGBT+ individuals not only to distract the public, but also as a way to counteract the LGBT+ movement that has been emerging," he told MEE. "Politicians are realising that they can no longer ignore the LGBT+ movement and deny its existence. Sadr aims, he said, to distract the public from other important issues and the political unrest in the country while reacting to the growing visibility of LGBTQ+ communities in Iraq. Mohammed added that Sadr's statements constituted "hate speech" against LGBTQ+ communities. This information should not be published when we are living in a homophobic world," Mohammed told Middle East Eye. This identification/information of men who have sex with men does not do any good to anyone. "A statement like this will have consequences far beyond what the WHO might have intended. The WHO issued a public health advisory after the uptick in monkeypox cases, specifically addressed to LGBTQ+ people and "men who have sex with men" due to the fact that the virus had been identified in these communities.īut the organisation emphasised that the risk of the virus was not limited to men who have sex with men.Ĭoronavirus: Iraqis criticise Muqtada al-Sadr for same-sex marriage claims Read More » Israel and the United Arab Emirates are the only Middle Eastern countries to record cases of the virus as of Thursday. No cases of monkeypox have been detected in Iraq so far. He also blamed the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic on the legalisation of gay marriage in western countries. But this is not the first time that Sadr blamed the LGBTQ+ community for disease outbreaks. In 2016, Sadr himself called for an end to violence against the community, in a statement welcomed by HRW and other rights groups. Human Rights Watch has said that LGBTQ+ communities in Iraq live under the constant threat of abduction, rape, torture and murder at the hands of armed groups and the police. Homosexuality is illegal in Iraq, and being publicly queer is not socially accepted, which constantly puts the community at risk of threats and abuse. To win by this move is called paça kazık.Who is Muqtada al-Sadr, Iraq’s most influential religious-political figure? Read More » Thus, the pehlivan aims to control his opponent by putting his arm through his opponent’s kisbet. Oil wrestling matches may be won by achieving an effective hold of the kisbet. The wrestlers, known as pehlivan (hero), wear a type of hand-stitched leather trousers called a kisbet. The term “Güreş” is shared with other forms of wrestling practiced by Turks as well. Wrestlers called pehlivan douse themselves in olive oil prior to competing. Oil wrestling ( Yağlı güreş in Turkish) is the national sport of Turkey. The school trains youth and adults in a variety of sports disciplines, including football (soccer) for amputees in addition to the boys Turkish oil wrestling. The students train at Antalya Büyükşehir Asat Spor Kulübü, an outstanding sports academy on the Asian side of the beautiful city of Istanbul. Coach Harun Doğan was gracious in allowing me to spend half a day shooting his boys training and demonstrating a Turkish Oil Wrestling match in a field nearby.