Homosexuality, commercial sex trade and occupation in Iraq

A growing number of Iraqi boys are being forced to join the commercial sex trade --many forced to do so by criminal gangs through threats and violence, intimidation, and blackmail in a country where "honor killings" of youths who engage in same-sex relations by their families is encouraged by Sharia law and religious fanaticism; and some out of poverty in a country where official government figures for youth unemployment at 48 % (although the real figure is undoubtedly much higher). All this is confirmed by a new report from the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs' Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN). And this goes on as the U.S. occupying force is silent and does nothing about it. One boy whose story was told in the report was "Hassan Feiraz, a 16-year-old boy, [who] has started a desperate new life since being forced into the sex trade in Baghdad, joining a growing number of adolescents soliciting in Iraq under the threat of street gangs or the force of poverty. "Every day I cry at night,” Feiraz said. “I’m a homosexual and was forced to work as a prostitute because one of the people I had sex with took pictures of me in bed and said that, if I didn't work for him, he was going to send the pictures to my family. My life is a disaster today. I could be killed by my family to restore their honour,” he said, explaining that homosexuality was totally unacceptable in Iraq due to religious beliefs.

OCCUPIED IRAQ: BOYS FORCED BY GANGS INTO SEX WORK, U.S. SILENT by Doug Ireland, DIRELAND