Gay Egypt in the Dock
The Big Crackdown Might Reflect Cairo’s Own Insecurities
Newsweek, February 11, 2002
251 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019
Fax: 212-445-4120
Email: letters@newsweek.com
By Joshua Hammer, Newsweek International
Harassment of homosexuals is hardly a new problem in Egypt. But in recent
months an unprecedented vilification campaign against gay men has drawn
international opprobrium—and cast new light on the often violent collision
between traditional and Western values that is convulsing the developing
world. The crackdown began last spring, when 52 allegedly gay men were
arrested at a Cairo discotheque and in nearby apartments and hauled before
Cairo’s State Security Court, normally reserved for trying terrorist
suspects. There they were accused of crimes ranging from contempt of religion
to false interpretation of the Qur’an. After a highly publicized trial, 23
were sentenced in November to prison terms of up to five years; the rest were
acquitted. Then, two weeks ago, security forces arrested eight men in the Nile
Delta town of Damanhur on similar charges. Described in the local media as a
"network of perverts," the men are being held without bail. The
crackdown has been a severe embarrassment for the government of President
Hosni Mubarak, which has sought to present itself to the West as a bastion of
moderation in a region fraught with radicalism.
It also appears to be a calculated gamble by an insecure regime. The
crackdown on gays, as diplomats and political analysts see it, reflects
government concern about growing freedom of expression in Egypt—fueled by
the proliferation of Internet chat rooms and Web sites beyond the regime’s
control. The government may also have contrived the prosecutions to bolster
its Islamic credentials at a time when Egyptians are angered by an imploding
economy and the arrests of fundamentalists. The strategy may be working.
Although condemned abroad, the trial of the "Cairo 52" has met with
nearly universal approval at home. "Being gay is not a fundamental right
in Egypt," says a Western diplomat in Cairo. "It’s seen as a
perversion."
Until recently, it was also buried deeply in the Egyptian closet. The media
and the government pretended that homosexuality was a Western
"disease" that hardly existed in Egypt. As a result, many gays grew
up in self-loathing and isolation, desperately searching for soulmates.
"When I first had these feelings, I believed I was the only one,"
says Ramzi, a 24-year-old Cairo lawyer. "Then I met someone, and we
thought we were the only two. Slowly we found our way into the
community." That community has maintained a vibrant yet fragile existence
in urban centers such as Alexandria and Cairo. The capital’s affluent
neighborhoods offer a handful of nightclubs, discos and bars where gay men can
fraternize, although police harassment occurs regularly. Last summer Ramzi was
picked up with 150 other gay men in a sweep of hangouts in central Cairo; he
says he was punched, tortured with electric shocks and held in a cell, without
charges, for three nights.
In the last two years, activists say, gays in Egypt have become more
assertive. Dozens of Internet chat rooms have started up, allowing gay men to
establish support networks, organize parties and arrange dates. (Online dating
can be perilous: last year, gay activists and diplomats say, one man was lured
to a Cairo rendezvous by a date who turned out to be a security agent; he was
arrested and spent time in prison.) Overseas-based Web sites such as
Gayegypt.com poke fun at Egypt’s autocratic regime with an irreverence no
domestic site would dare express. One photograph on the site shows Mubarak
pinning a medal on the uniform of a young soldier; the caption reads that the
president is "choosing the prettiest gay cadet."
Then came last year’s bust. The target was the Queen Boat—a three-deck
floating discotheque and nightclub moored on the Nile whose Thursday-night
parties attracted a sizable gay clientele. Police had raided the boat several
times, usually releasing suspected gay men in a matter of hours or days. This
time it was different. In the early hours of Friday morning, May 11, security
agents rounded up dozens of men on the Queen Boat. After releasing the
foreigners, the police jailed the Egyptians, then tracked down other gay men
at home, using confiscated mobile phones and address books. Arguing that their
actions defiled Islam and thus constituted a risk to the state, prosecutors
tried the case in State Security Court, a tribunal established by the
emergency laws passed after Anwar Sadat’s 1981 assassination. In the past,
the one-judge tribunal has been primarily used to try fundamentalist militants
from the Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian Islamic Jihad; the tribunal
traditionally hands out stiffer sentences than ordinary courts. Verdicts must
be approved by the head of state, and defendants have no right to appeal.
The case laid bare the revulsion felt toward homosexuals by Egyptian
society. Local human-rights groups refused to provide support to the accused
men, arguing that their ability to defend other victims of government abuse
would be fatally compromised. "We’re already vilified as fifth
columnists who take money from abroad to ruin the country’s image,"
says Hisham Kassem, director of the Egyptian Human Rights Organization.
"If we’d taken this on, we would have killed the concept of human
rights in Egypt for 10 years." A respected professor of medicine in Cairo
suggested a "sure cure" for homosexuality: castration. Many lawyers
refused to touch the case, and those who did based their defense on denying
that their clients were homosexuals. Prosecutors forced all the defendants to
submit to anal examinations; Sherif Farahat, a health-club masseur who was
described as the "ringleader" of a homosexual "network,"
drew a five-year prison term; 22 others were sentenced to between one and
three years.
Why did the government crack down so heavily? With about 15,000 Islamic
militants in prison, and the government stranglehold over Egypt’s mosques
becoming ever more extensive, some experts believe the prosecution was
intended as a sop to the country’s conservative masses. The Egyptian
government regularly doles out severe punishments for "defiling
religion," although the Queen Boat trial may be the first time sex was
involved; last week a young man went on trial in central Cairo for, among
other offenses, describing the house of the Prophet Muhammad as a "pile
of stones." Other observers speculate that the government wanted to
intimidate Cairo’s increasingly visible gay population. Western diplomats
believe that Egyptian security forces learned through the Internet that
several activists were contemplating launching a gay-rights movement in Egypt
and applying for Western funding; a gay activist in Cairo confirms that he and
several others have discussed such a project. "It’s possible that the
security forces said, ‘Oh no—we won’t let that happen’," says the
Western diplomat.
Whatever the cause of the crackdown, the consequences for Egypt’s gay
community have been drastic. Gays are avoiding their old public gathering
places, including the Queen Boat. Many members of the community stay away from
private parties as well, fearing they’ll be turned in to the police by
informers. "Everybody is terrified," says "Horus," a
ponytailed 34-year-old who runs an Internet chat room and monitors government
abuses of homosexuals for international human-rights groups. Gay Web-site
users, fearful that their real identities will be ferreted out by
eavesdropping security agents, are logging off in droves; the number of
subscribers in Horus’s chat room has dropped from 400 to nine since the
Queen Boat convictions. Horus, one of a tiny handful of gay Egyptians who have
"come out" to their parents and friends, regards the anti-gay
crusade with a grim sense of irony. "We’ve spent years just trying to
prove that we exist," he says, smiling wearily. "Now everybody knows
that we exist—but they all think we’re monsters."
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