Atif, 27, from the Zayouna area of Baghdad, fled for northern Iraq at the beginning of April. “I
call people in Bagdhad and they tell me, don’t come back, they are massacring us: they are
massacring gays here.”

Human Rights Watch, the international NGO fighting human rights in the world, published a stunning report yesterday that reveals the massacre of homosexuals in Iraq. Executed my militias who torture and murder the men that they suspect of being homosexuals.

The report, called "They want us exterminated", puts forward a murderous campaign of executions, kidnappings and tortures, that started in early 2009 around Bagdad and that has spread out since on the full Iraqi territory. The report also publishes testimonies indicating that the killers burst into houses, kidnap and torture their victims to get names of other homosexuals (The report talks about castration and inserting glue into the anus). Before killing them and throwing their mutilated bodies in dumpsters. The silence and taboo on sexuality in this country renders difficult any exact number of victims, which are presumed to be above the few hundred already according to an official member of the UN.

Human Rights Watch asks the Iraqi government to urgently put everything in motion to make these violent crimes stop and punish their authors. "Iraqi leaders are supposed to defend all Iraqis, not abandon them to people armed with hate", declared Scott Long, director of the LGBT program of that NGO.

Tariq, 18, who lived in Baghdad al-Jadida, a development in the southeast part of the city,
told Human Rights Watch,

At the end of March, I started to hear from friends that the Mahdi Army was
killing gays. The newspapers also reported there was an increase in the
“third sex” in Iraq, also known as “puppies” [jarawi]. Then on April 4, I found
out that two of my gay friends, Mohammed and Mazen, had been killed. I
think those were their names; within a gay group, gays rarely give out their
real names. We were friends, we met in cafes or chatted on the Internet, and
one day they just disappeared.

A few days later, I met the brother of one of them and he told me they were
killed. They were kidnapped on the street and then their bodies were found
near a mosque, with signs of torture. One was 18, one was 19.

A couple of days after that, on April 6 or 7, I was in my parents’ house, and
someone threw a letter at the door. I didn’t see who. Inside the envelope was
a bullet. It had brown blood on it, and the letter said, “What are you still here
for? Are you ready to die?”

I think those two were tortured into giving my name, because two days after I
learned they were killed I got this threat. ... I spoke by phone to a friend of
mine yesterday night: he is also gay but he’s very masculine and no one
knows about him. He said, “Get out if you can and save yourself. They are
killing gays left and right.”

Read the full report here: http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/iraq0809webwcover.pdf