IRAP is today featured in a France 24 article about the increasingly grave risks faced by LGBTI individuals living in Syria. France 24 reports that the Islamic State (ISIS) is currently targeting gay individuals and sentencing them to death. ISIS militants recently executed one gay man by throwing him to his death from the top of a building.
IRAP works with many gay Iraqi and Syrian clients, and one of IRAP’s lawyers in the field was interviewed for the article. “A lot of the LGBT who have escaped from zones in Syria and Iraq under the control of the Islamic State organisation, and who we help to resettle, tell us that some of their gay friends were executed,” she explained. “People suspected of being gay are arrested, interrogated, and tortured. A lot of them are then executed. Very often, the jihadists have no proof that a particular individual is gay. They might be under suspicion for something as simple as the way they walk.”
“Before, if people living in these areas didn’t openly declare their homosexuality, they were left alone. It’s no longer like that. It has become very dangerous for them.”
You can read the full article here.