Iraqis burn LGBTQIA+ flag during protest in BaghdadMohammed Sawaf/AFP
Deputies approved by a majority of 170 votes out of a total of 329 a series of amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which also criminalizes transgender people.
A previous draft proposed the death penalty for same-sex relationships, which was criticized by LGBTQIA+ activists as a “dangerous” escalation in a country where this community is already the target of discrimination and attacks.
The new amendments provide for sentences of 10 to 15 years in prison for anyone who maintains homosexual relationships, according to the document to which AFP had access. They also impose a minimum of seven years in prison for anyone who “promotes” homosexuality and a sentence of between one and three years for men who “intentionally” act like women.
The amendments also criminalize “change of biological sex based on desire” and punish transgender people and doctors who participate in sex change surgeries with up to three years in prison.
Homosexuality is taboo in conservative Iraqi society, but until now there has been no law explicitly punishing same-sex relationships. Even so, members of the LGBTQIA+ community were persecuted on charges of sodomy or other types of criminal offenses linked to morality and prostitution.
“Iraq has translated into law the discrimination and violence that members of the LGBTI community have been subjected to with absolute impunity for years,” said Razaw Salihy, country researcher at Amnesty International.
“The amendments that affect LGBTI rights are a violation of fundamental human rights”, he denounced.
According to deputy Raed al Maliki, who presented the amendments, he told AFP that “the law serves as a preventive measure to protect society from these acts.”
Approval was delayed until after Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al Sudani’s visit to Washington this month to prevent the law, criticized in the United States and the European Union, from affecting the trip. The US State Department expressed concern about the law and warned that it “undermines the government’s political and economic reform efforts”, said its spokesman, Matt Miller.
