The cost of being gay in Egypt 17 December 2001 Written for World Voices Norway by Mukul Devichand mdevichand@hotmail.com Early evening in downtown Cairo, Egypt. I meet two young men in one of the hundreds of coffee shops, replete with mirror tiles and sisha pipes, that litter the streets. They are energetic and expressive, but -- despite the noisy clink-clink of tea glasses around us -- they speak in fearful, hushed tones. They are used to doing so because they are that most unacceptable of things in Egypt - gay men. One of them, 'Horus' (he is too afraid of persecution to use his real name) describes how he was once detained and sexually harassed by police. He tells me he got off relatively easily. He describes how someone he knows was kept in prison for six months without trial, tortured daily and raped publicly by both guards and prisoners. His companion 'Hana' (also not his real name) agrees. "I have to live a double life, a life of fear," he says. Homosexuality has never been accepted in modern Egyptian culture, but in recent months State persecution of homosexuals has become more visible. On 11 May, 54 men were arrested on the Queen Boat, a night-club in a boat moored on the Nile. 52 were charged with "habitual debauchery" and "contempt of religion." The trial of the 'Cairo 52' wore on for five months and was splashed around the Egyptian media where the defendants were vilified and branded as agents against the State. In mid November, judgement was finally handed down: 23 faced prison sentences of between one and five years of hard labour. Horus became visibly distressed as he remembered the day he was detained. "They took me into a room, stripped me to my underwear and searched me," he recalls, "and then one of them asked me if I liked sex... that way. He asked me if I like to have cock. He put his hands all over me, and on my private area, and said that he knew I liked it this way and that I shouldn't pretend. He threatened to do things to me, to find a criminal record on me and keep me there for weeks. The other officers watched and laughed while I was humiliated." Horus was so frightened by the experience that for some weeks afterwards, he was afraid to even leave his home. Now he is leaving the country. "I don't feel safe here. The doorbell rings and I think the police are coming to get me. I can't bear everyday life anymore, I'm scared all the time and I can't do the work I want to." Being gay in Egyptian culture is difficult enough without being persecuted by the State. "Our lives are full of pretence," Hana said. "Many gay men have a girlfriend as a front, or even get married. Only very few -- a small minority of a small minority -- feel they can get on and identify themselves as gay publicly." Recently, however, arrests and trials of gay people have become a convenient way to divert media attention away from the ailing economy. Horus told me that things began to get worse last year. "Police started surfing the net and pretending they were gay. Once they had earned your trust, they arranged to meet you somewhere. They made you think you were going on a date. Then they would arrest you." Egypt's gay websites were closed down one by one, because their webmasters were either arrested or afraid of being arrested. Today, there is only one site -- www.gayegypt.com -- left, and it is run from abroad. But was there any sort of strong gay community in Egypt before the recent wave of arrests? Horus believes there was. "Yes, it existed, even if the government claims that homosexuality is a recent European malaise. There were parties and gatherings, and people arranged to meet each other using websites and secret places." He told me a story he had heard from the 1960s. "Six men were in a car, dressed in full drag, some in dresses, some in belly dancing costumes. They were stopped by police. The police looked them over carefully - and then waved them on. That would not happen today, they would no longer turn a blind eye." Hana disagrees with his friend, however. "There was no gay community here," he told me. "You cannot talk about it in that way. Of course people knew about each other and met - as they do in any social ghetto. But there was no leadership, no agenda for progress." This has begun to change after the Queen Boat trial. "People are beginning to step forward." The trial itself is a sign of changes in the Egyptian establishment, said Hana. "At least they are now acknowledging that we exist, if only to persecute us. The people arrested on the Queen Boat were only tortured for the first three days. After that, the eyes of the world's human rights organisations were on them. The situation is better than it used to be. One of the guys who was arrested had been in prison for six months immediately before, where he was tortured and raped throughout the time he was there. He wasn't even tried. This time, though, he received a trial and was found innocent." Throughout the Queen Boat affair, newspapers and magazines in Egypt discussed homosexuality as a Western perversion being unleashed on Egyptian soil. Horus and Hana see it differently. "In the middle ages, homosexuality was rife in Egypt, and was documented my many foreign explorers. It was only when Egyptian intellectuals began to defend accusations by European writers -- who claimed that our society oppressed women and allowed immoral sex between men -- that gay men began to be politically oppressed. To maintain their image in Western eyes, Egyptians and Arabs took women out of the closet and put homosexuals in it." Being gay and Muslim is another conundrum for most Egyptian homosexuals. "The Qu'ran itself does not ban homosexuality," Hana said. "The ban on homosexuality in fact goes back to Caliph Ali and is not well supported by authentic Hadiths (sayings) of the Prophet," he said. In the wake of the September 11 attacks on New York, international attention is being focused increasingly on Egypt and the Arab world -- though the status of homosexuals is largely ignored. Nevertheless, Hana told me that the beginnings of a gay movement are beginning to emerge. "On 15th August this year, Al-Fatiha (a gay Muslim group based in the USA) called for a global show of solidarity for the 'Cairo 52'. 60 organisations on four continents, from Uganda to Brazil, took part. This gives us confidence." Neither Horus nor Hana see big changes on the immediate horizon, however. "This society does not even allow pre-marital sex," Horus pointed out. Hana said that "Egyptian society needs to push for freedoms and rights across the board, such as a recognised right to intimacy. I don't feel more victimised than other marginal groups, like women. In fact, I feel like a political dissidents." He is right. In Egypt, more now than ever, being gay is a political rebellion that can cost very dearly indeed. END -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOW, TAKE ACTION! World Voices Norway invites you to take action. Write to your Member of Parliament (MP), asking them to pressure Egypt on human rights abuses affecting homosexuals and on issuing the unconditional release of the 23 men who were tried and imprisoned in November 2001 simply for being gay. Please send a copy of your letter or e-mail to post@worldvoices.no If you are Norwegian, you can find your MP's e-mail address here: http://www.stortinget.no/om_stortinget/reprepost.html To visit the World Voices Norge web site please click on www.worldvoices.no |