Egypt: Crackdown on Homosexual Conduct Exposes Torture Crisis

[Resistance]

Human Rights Watch

(Cairo, March 1, 2004) -- The Egyptian government continues to arrest and routinely torture men suspected of consensual homosexual conduct, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The detention and torture of hundreds of men reveals the fragility of legal protections for individual privacy and due process for all Egyptians.

“The prohibition against torture is absolute and universal, regardless of the victim,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “Accepting torture of unpopular victims—whether for their political opinions or their sexual conduct—makes it easier for the government to use this despicable practice on many others.”

The 144-page report, “In a Time of Torture: The Assault on Justice in Egypt’s Crackdown on Homosexual Conduct,” documents the government’s increasing repression of men who have sex with men. The trial of 52 men in 2001 for the “habitual practice of debauchery”—the legal charge used to criminalize homosexual conduct in Egyptian law—was only the most visible point in the ongoing and expanding crackdown.

[BayCityProgressive]

1. they torture their own people?????

when do we invade and liberate them?

[Resistance]

2. better to punish them

with another billion or two in 'aid' money.

[packerssuck]

3. pathetic

[Darranar]

4. So that's where our billions of dollars in aid money is going...

US foreign policy is just great, isn't it?

[packerssuck]

5. It's not aid money, it's payoffs.

You see, they play nice and buy our weapons with the aid we give em while their leaders keep the leftover money for themselves.