Gay group in al qamishli, syria

This is the best piece of writing on Syria since the uprising began. Read it. Thanks for taking my call today, and sorry for interrupting your meal with your kids. I hope the hot dogs were good.

Both men and women are criminalised under this law. Syria gained its independence from France in , and adopted its first post-independence penal code in France had not criminalised same-sex sexual activity for more than a century, meaning that the criminalising provision in Syria is of local origin. There is some evidence of the law being enforced in recent years, with LGBT people being occasionally subject to arrest by state authorities.

Globally, the LGBTQI community faces stigma, discrimination, and acts of persecution. In the Syrian context, Articles such as in the penal code criminalize homosexuality, condemning those found guilty with prison terms of up to three years. The conditions of imprisonment constitute humiliation and torture, furthering human rights violations. While the Syrian conflict and the ensuing refugee crisis, where millions fled violence and destruction to civilian life, have been widely covered by the media, perspectives of the LGBTQI demographic have largely been underreported.

A year-old mobile technician and taxi driver from Aleppo was kept for 23 days in an ice cream factory-turned-detention center, where he was physically and verbally abused. While detained, he witnessed the execution of two prisoners charged with blasphemy, and he feared that would be his fate. That was before his family knew. When his former captors outed him as gay, his father called him in Beirut and threatened to find and kill him.